TOO Episode 225 - Book Club 03 | The Empty Space by Peter Brook

In this episode, join Adam and Budi as they review our third book for the 2024 TOO Book Club, 'The Empty Space' by Peter Brook.

Peter Brook is one of the most innovative British directors of the post 1950 period. His industrious and celebrated career began in London's wartime club theatres and he joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1945. His career flourished after the war and he increasingly staged plays in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Brussels, Paris and New York. In 1961, he became one of a triumvirate of directors at Stratford's Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). While he is often recognised for the experimental workshops and productions he staged while working there, he has also directed classical and contemporary texts, musical comedies, opera, and films including Lord of the Flies (1962) and Meeting with Remarkable Men (1979).
'A number of his stage productions have also been filmed, including The Mahabharata (1985) a nine-hour epic that was developed over a period of ten years and adapted from the sacred Vedic text of the same name. This final work was one of the productions that developed from the collaborative and multi-cultural work done at a centre Brook founded in Paris in 1970 called the International Centre for Theatre Research (ICTR). At this centre, Brook continues to research, direct and produce work in collaboration with an internationally mixed company of performing artists who share his desire to create and perform a universal theatre language.