Shakespeare in the Global Village: Shakespeare and the Director

Alternative title: Shakespeare and the Director
Synopsis: Two sessions given during the First World Shakespeare Congress, held in Vancouver, B.C.

Peter Brook is interviewed in Paris by Moelwyn Merchant. Merchant outlines the qualities which have made Peter Brook one of the leading forces in British theatre for the past 20 years. Merchant also provides a brief biographical sketch of Brook’s career (8 mins). Discusses Brook’s method for coming to grips with a drama or a dramatic problem (12 mins). Brook’s tendency to ‘wipe the slate clean’ before starting a new production, a process which puts tradition into abeyance until it can be used as a reference point and not a point of decorum. Brook also comments on the chemical reaction which can occur during a performance and occurs only between cast and audience - without the audience the play is only half realised (15 mins). How much of Peter Brook’s personality and preferences colour his direction of drama (10 mins). Whether Brook’s interpretation of the scene in King Lear where the blinded Gloucester meets the ‘blind’ Lear, each possessing a peculiar sight of their own. They also discuss the validity of Jan Kott’s ‘Beckettian’ interpretation of this same scene in his essay ‘Lear: Sudgame’. The apparent paradox of feelings that dramatic horror engenders: ‘the presence of horror evokes in the spectator a non-presence of anti-horror, (which in turn)...leaves one with a taste of joy’ (5 mins).
Series: Ideas
Language: English
Country: Canada
Medium: Radio
Transmission details: 31 Jan 1972 at 19:00 (Channel: CBC-FM)
Duration: 60 mins

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Shakespeare in the Global Village: Shakespeare and the Director

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Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

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