Brook’s shifting-point

Abstract

When I first arrived in England in the early sixties one of my most refreshing and, in retrospect, fertilising experiences was my encounter with Peter Brook. We had written for the same theatre publication, Encore Magazine, and gradually got to know each other — so much so that we agreed to collaborate on a theatrical project — although ‘collaboration’ is far too active a word to describe that first association at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964 when I acted as a kind of aesthetic kibitzer and ‘noises off’ on the Paul Scofield King Lear. I was struck forcibly by the airborne quality of Peter’s imagination and the remorselessness with which he sought production-results. I was also struck by the overriding seriousness with which everyone at the RSC treated their work. Although there was as much levity and horseplay as one finds in any theatrical milieu, underlying the pranks and badinage was a palpable conviction that Shakespeare was important and difficult and demanding of one’s most strenuous efforts.