Peter Brook Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Peter Brook's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Theatre Director Peter Brook's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 27 quotes on this page collected since March 21, 1925! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
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  • I am ready to disclaim my opinion, even of yesterday, even of 10 minutes ago, because all opinions are relative. One lives in a field of influences, one is influenced by everyone one meets, everything is an exchange of influences, all opinions are derivative. Once you deal a new deck of cards, you've got a new deck of cards.

  • Time, which is so often an enemy in life, can also become our ally if we see how a pale moment can lead to a glowing moment, and then turn to a moment of perfect transparency, before dropping again to a moment of everyday simplicity.

  • A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.

    Two   Space   Stage  
  • I've always worked a bit like a cook in a big restaurant, where you've got lots and lots of things laid out and you go and look into one cauldron and you look into the other and you see what's coming to the boil.

  • In the theatre, every form once born is mortal; every form must be reconceived, and its new conception will bear the marks of all the influences that surround it.

    Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.16, Simon and Schuster
  • I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.

    Space   Empty   Stage  
    Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.9, Simon and Schuster
  • The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful.

  • The closeness of reality and the distance of myth, because if there is no distance you aren't amazed, and if there is no closeness you aren't moved.

    Distance   Reality   Myth  
  • I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.

    Men   Space   Theatre  
    Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.9, Simon and Schuster
  • Tradition itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force which must be safeguarded.

  • Preparing a character is the opposite of building-it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore.

    Peter Brook (2017). “The Shifting Point: Forty Years of Theatrical Exploration, 1946-87”, p.16, Bloomsbury Publishing
  • Reality' is a word with many meanings.

    Reality  
    Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.27, Simon and Schuster
  • An icon painter starts not with Jesus Christ but by finding earth and rubbing. Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

    Jesus   Icons   Earth  
  • The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

    Simple   Two   Directors  
    "On Directing: Interviews with Directors". Book editing by Gabriella Giannachi, Foreword, 1999.
  • It takes a long while for a director to cease thinking in terms of the result he desires and instead concentrate on discovering the source of energy in the actor from which true impulses arise.

    Thinking   Long   Desire  
    Peter Brook (2017). “Peter Brook: Threads Of Time: A Memoir”, p.64, Bloomsbury Publishing
  • Nothing in theatre has any meaning before or after. Meaning is now.

    Theatre  
    "Does Nothing Come from Nothing?". Ernest Jones Lecture at The Edward Lewis Theatre, London, ciret-transdisciplinarity.org. June 13, 1994.
  • Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

    Real   Oddities   Hands  
  • There are prophets, there are guides, and there are argumentative people with theories, and one must be careful to discriminate between them.

    People   Prophet   Guides  
  • One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down - so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer's instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance.

  • Shakespeare doesn't belong to the past. If his material is valid, it is valid now. It's like coal. The only meaningfulness of a piece of coal starts and finishes with its combustion, giving us light and heat. And that to me is Shakespeare.

    Past   Light   Giving  
  • We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

    Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.42, Simon and Schuster
  • The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are sudde nly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life ... The marvel of being one.

    Law   Community   Theatre  
  • Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding.

  • A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates the need for expression.

    Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.12, Simon and Schuster
  • Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

    Earth  
  • You have to live to the responsibility of the person who has won, which is even greater than the responsibility of a person who has lost.

    "A Guilt-Ridden Winner Takes Center Stage In Peter Brook's 'Battlefield'". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. October 8, 2016.
  • Many audiences all over the world will answer positively from their own experience that they have seen the face of the invisible through an experience on the stage that transcended their experience in life. They will maintain that Oedipus or Berenice or Hamlet or The Three Sisters performed with beauty and with love fires the spirit and gives them a reminder that daily drabness is not necessarily all.

    Fire   Oedipus   Giving  
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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 27 quotes from the Theatre Director Peter Brook, starting from March 21, 1925! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
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