Revelations and Discoveries

Abstract

Peter Brook’s description of the power of what he called ‘rough theatre’ to conjure up a whole complex fictional world for an audience that becomes gripped by it and yet remains aware that it is listening to a story finds a parallel in the experience of Henry V playgoers at the Globe.

In a Hamburg garret I once saw a production of Crime and Punishment, and that evening became, before its four-hour stretch was over, one of the most striking theatre experiences I have ever had. By sheer necessity, all problems of theatre style vanished: here was the main stream, the essence of an art that stems from the storyteller looking round his audience and beginning to speak …. We were gripped by living theatre.... We were listeners, children hearing a bedside story yet at the same time adults, fully aware of all that was going on …. We never lost sight of being crammed together in a crowded room, following a story.

Peter Brook, The Empty Space¹