Peter Brook’s “The Empty Space”.
Chapter 3, The Rough Theatre.
Rough Theatre is the theatre of torn edges, dirt, makeshift and make-do. In direct contrast to the Holy, the Rough gives more validity to down-to-earth crudeness than to the eloquence of prayer (p. 71). Brook reminds us that theatre can exist in an attic or a bombed out theatre because the audience recognizes its necessity and purpose. One of the responsibilities of the theatre is to meet this expectation of necessity (the “usefulness” of performance). Whether it is to provide an hour of escape during wartime or to awaken the spirit of revolution, the rough theatre uses what is at hand to fulfill its purpose.
Brook points out that there is a kind of antagonism between the rough and the holy; the rough is self-consciously less high-aiming than the holy. But Brook also reminds us that while the Rough Theatre makes an effort to exist outside of style it, in fact creates its own (while denying that it has – a knd of reverse snobbery).
In discussing the slippery slope between the rough and the deadly, Brook looks to Brecht; a subject anyone interested in performance cannot overlook. But the “Brechtian” elements of contemporary theatre can often become victims of their own inflated sense of self-importance. Brook criticizes misreadings and half-baked imitations of Brecht’s work in this chapter. I am of the opinion that today’s audiences are more skeptical, more intellectually engaged and already more alienated than Brecht’s original audience. Perhaps this is why Brecht said what he did near the end of his days; that the theatre should have naivety as well.
The chapter ambles from history and anthropology to politics and the actor’s studio work. He draws the reader to Shakespeare as an example of a theatre where the rough and the holy coexist and seem to energize each other with their contrasting qualities. He is a advocate of connecting the work on stage to its surroundings by using costume, setting (or no setting) to give the action of the play meaning and to assist in the fluid interchange between the outer and inner worlds that Shakespearean structure navigates so freely.
I would like to highlight one section that really stood out for me this time around. It is quite short; pages 77 to 79 where Brook addresses the over-simplification of the terms “psychological” and “naturalistic” in current aactor training. It interests me because the first hurdle one addresses in actor training revolves around the distinction between playing emotion and playing action. There comes a point where one leads the other and they seem (to the outside eye) one and the same.
Other Reading:
