Peter Brook: From Self-Discovery to Influence from Iran

Ninety-three-year-old Peter Brook arrives at the hall with the help of his companion and quietly sits on a chair next to the audience without announcing his presence; he is there to watch his latest play, "The Prisoner," which he directed alongside Marie-Hélène Estienne and is being performed at the Edinburgh Festival. Brook, regarded by a critic as the most influential theater director in Britain in the 20th century, has a global reputation largely derived from his works in the 1970s and 1980s; these are diverse, modern pieces often inspired by Eastern theater, from Japan and China to India and Iran. "The Prisoner" is a clear continuation of Brook's later works (such as "The Magic Flute" and "Eleven and Twelve"), maintaining the same style and atmosphere. The stage is almost empty, and everything serves only the inner journey of the main character; a kind of self-discovery. A man who killed his father for sleeping with his sister is sentenced to prison, but shortly after, his uncle convinces the judge to allow him to serve his sentence in the open air in front of the prison. While he could escape, he remains for many years in front of the prison, burdened with remorse. Peter Brook states that forty years ago, he saw a man sitting in front of a prison in Afghanistan for a long time, and the penetrating gaze of that man has stayed with him to this day. Over the decades, Brook has been in search of a kind of Eastern mysticism and has increasingly tried to find a theatrical language to narrate it; a narrative that is not simple and comes with its own challenges. In fact, Brook wants to minimally deprive his actors of all theatrical means so that they can only turn inward and share that with the audience. Eastern narrative techniques, such as storytelling and Ta'ziyeh, and techniques like distancing are also employed here so that only one character, in front of the unseen prisoner, can be stripped bare from within. The first and most important problem with this type of work is the urgent need for extraordinary actors who can harness the energy around them. However, the main actor in "The Prisoner" (and the actors in "The Magic Flute" and "Eleven and Twelve") do not possess this power. A documentary made by his son, Simon, titled "The Narrow Rope," recounts the relentless efforts of a director whose theatrical exercises resemble a kind of yoga for his actors: their practice involves standing on their toes and walking on the edge of a carpet without looking at the ground. In another exercise, Brook asks several of his actors to choose numbers from one to twenty within themselves and each to say a number aloud without repeating any number among them; an obvious exercise aimed at achieving an inner connection among the actors. The result: Brook's actors repeatedly make mistakes and ultimately cannot accomplish this task. This unsuccessful exercise could be key to a performance like "The Prisoner," which, despite showcasing the director's distinct and different affinities, fails to fully convey the world of its creator to the audience. Brook spent a significant amount of time in Iran before the revolution and traveled to various villages and regions of Iran, trying to uncover the secret of the audience's connection and the type of distancing in traditional Iranian performances such as Ta'ziyeh and Rouh-ozi. One of Brook's most famous works was "Orghast," performed in 1971 at the Shiraz Arts Festival in collaboration with Arbi Avanesian. Brook had actors from various countries, and a group of Iranian actors joined them; the performance took place at sunset and sunrise next to Persepolis with an incomprehensible language invented by the prominent English poet Ted Hughes. In 2013, at the Avignon Festival, I asked him how much he had changed since the performance of "Orghast," and he said he didn't know but hoped he had changed. He paused for a long time and continued: "It was a long time ago..."; a flicker of a pleasant or bitter - or perhaps vague - memory could be read in his gaze; a memory that remained unspoken.