Peter Brook’s “The Empty Space”.
Chapter 4, The Immediate Theatre.
The Immediate Theatre is the theatre of the fresh. In this chapter Brook generously positins himself as a fellow student of the art. The most valuable thing I have taken from this book, and that I continue to practice years later is a tolerance for ambiguity. This is largely because, as Brook implies, performance is constantly recreated. Film is a representation of the past. There are great and timeless films, but a popular film loses its “playability” in 10 years. Production designs for theatre have an even shorter life span according to Brook. Even beyond the design elements which might incorporate fashionable colors or costume details borrowed from popular culture, the character of a performance changes in the course of a run. Opening nights are filled with tension and newness, the edgy risks of the new production are highlighted because they have not been done before an audience yet. By second night, the audience is not as exposed because they know it has been done at least once.
In this chapter, more than in the others, Brook addresses Time and the theatre. In a cast of older and younger performers, you can see the differences in actor training techniques and the practices of different “generations”. Brook calls upon all the ranks in a company to aid in the art of reinvention and re-creating (of play-ing) during rehearsals. He speaks of the importance of improvisation, not to indulge in the self or for its own sake, but to step outside of the defined and preconceived and begin to create a creative language unique to the needs of the present work.
Brook also talks about the director in contemporary theatre and the need to guide and unify. A director must keep an eye on all elements of the performance from the shapes suggested by the floor plan to the context of the performance in the culture of its audience. He also speaks of a kind of balancing act, seeing the merits of both the physical and psychological approaches to performance and always outlines the need for adaptability while serving one vision. Discussion of this chapter is probably better served by comparing experiences in one’s performance and directing with those in the book.
Finally Brook outlines that the search is ultimately a search for form. As we progress forward, sideways and sometimes backward, the art of performance progresses as well. For this reason, there is never likely to be a “World Theatre” (p. 135) but there will be situations where a form will reach a moment of achievement that makes all distinctions and labels (Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate) redundant when compared to the lasting impression it leaves. We are always on the move. One of the hardest things for a young actor to do is to place value in the act of training. We are a society that validates Victorian ideals of forward progress. Reinvention seems counter-productive. Athletes understand the value of training, musicians and dancers do as well. But actors have a task of making their work seem effortless, effacing or masking the evidence of labour. The formula that Brook discusses (Theatre = R r a) is a great tool to examine exactly what we do. Theatre is Repetition, representation and assistance. Repetition gives technical perfection, confidence and strength, but it is hollow. The act of representation breathes life into the work, searching for the immediate, the real and comparing it to the fake. Assistance comes from the director, who is a privileged observer and guide, and also from the audience, who assists by participating: by making it meaningful and allowing the truth of the performance to become a truth of life, for two or so hours.
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