Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Peter Brook received his M.A. at Oxford, where he founded the Oxford University Film Society. A former codirector of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he currently heads the International Centre of Theatre Research, which he founded in Paris in 1971. He has directed more than fifty productions, and his films include the original Lord of the Flies. He lives with his wife Natasha Parry in Paris.

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For fifty years, Peter Brook's opera, stage, and film productions have held audiences spellbound. His visionary directing has created some of the most influential productions in contemporary theater. Now at the pinnacle of his career, Brook has given us his memoir, a luminous, inspiring work in which he reflects on his artistic fortunes, his idols and teachers, his philosophical path and personal journey. In this autobiography, the man The New York Times has called "the English-speaking world's most eminent director" and The London Times has named "theater's living legend" reveals the myriad sources behind his lifelong passion to find the most expressive way of telling a story. Whether in India's epic Mahabharata or a stage adaptation of Oliver Sask's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, South Africa's Woza Albert or The Cherry Orchard, Brook's unique blend of practicality and vision creates unforgettable experiences for audiences worldwide.

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Threads of Time

Counterpoint Press

I could have called this book False Memories. Not because I wantconsciously to tell a lie but because the act of writing proves that there isno deep freeze in the brain where memories are stored intact. On the contrary,the brain seems to hold a reservoir of fragmentary signals that have neithercolor, sound, nor taste, waiting for the power of imagination to bring them tolife. In a way, this is a blessing.

    At this moment, somewhere in Scandinavia, a man with a prodigious capacityfor total recall is also recording his life. I am told that as he puts downevery detail that his memory provides, it is taking him a year to write ayear, and as he started late he can never catch up. His predicament makes itclear that autobiography has another aim. It is to peer into a bewilderingconfusion of indiscriminate, incomplete impressions, never quite this, neverquite that, in an attempt to see whether, with hindsight, a pattern canemerge.

    As I write, I do not feel a compulsion to tell the whole truth. It isimpossible, however hard one tries, to penetrate into the obscure areas ofone's own hidden motivations. Indeed, there are taboos, hang-ups, and areas ofobscurity behind this story that I am not exploring, and I certainly do notfeel that personal relationships, indiscretions, indulgences, excesses, namesof close friends, private angers, family adventures, or debts ofgratitude--which alone could fill a ledger--can have a place here, any morethan the well-known splendors and miseries of first nights. I have no respectat all for the school of biography that believes if every social, historical,and psychological detail is added together, a true portrait of a life appears.Rather, I side with Hamlet when he calls for a flute and cries out against theattempt to sound the mystery of a human being, as though one could know allits holes and stops. What I am trying to weave together as best I can are thethreads that have helped to develop my own practical understanding, in thehope that somewhere they may contribute usefully to someone else's experience.

The nurse tries to be kind to the five-year-old boy, who is puzzled at findinghimself in a hospital bed in the middle of the night. "Do you like oranges?"she asks. "No," I answer stubbornly. Irritated that her customary trick hasfailed, she loses her patience. "You're going to have them anyway," shesnaps, and I'm wheeled to the operating theater. "Here, smell these oranges,"she says, as a mask is clamped over my nostrils. Immediately, there is aroaring and a bitter smell, a wild plunging and a surging swing upward. I tryto hold on, but I lose; noise and fear merge into pure horror, then oblivion.It was a first disillusion, and it taught me how hard it is to let go.

Years go by. I am dressed for war. It's a disguise; this anonymous figurecan't be me. But there's a war on and a student at Oxford has to pay for hisprivileges once a week by training to be an officer, because an undergraduateis officer material. Since childhood, the thought of war has terrified me, butbecause it seemed to take place far outside normal time, I always believedthat if it came, I could escape by hiding under my bed for the duration. NowI see that I can't get out of it so easily and, all excuses and evasionshaving failed, I'm on parade, in heavy boots and a scratchy tunic.

    Today is our first experience of the Obstacle Course. When the whistleblows, we set off, the sergeants shouting encouragement and all theenthusiasts charging forward, with leaps at the ropes, vaulting over thebarriers, eagerly scaling the scaffolding. I come last, from school days aprofessional shirker, ignoring the sergeant's jeers, dragging myselflaboriously over the mock-up walls and instead of jumping, sliding down untilI hang by one hand, before dropping cautiously to the ground. By the time itcomes to crossing the river on a log, the others have long since reached theother bank and are vanishing with joyful shouts into the distance. Thesergeant waits for me. "Come on, sir!" he roars. The tone is insulting, but Iam a budding officer, so the "sir" is mandatory.

    I put my great boot on the log and grab a branch from an overhanging tree.Now both feet are on the log. "Come on, sir!" I advance. "Let go of thebranch!" I do so. Two more steps, I reach up to steady myself and catch holdof a leaf. The leaf gives me courage, I walk forward, my balance is good, Ican manage. The log stretches ahead of me across the water, the sergeantbeckons encouragingly. Another step. The hand holding the leaf is even with myshoulder; another step and it's behind me. I'm balanced, confident, but myarm's fully extended. I can't take another step unless I let go of the leaf,and I can't let go. "Let go of the leaf!" the sergeant bellows. "Damn it, letgo of that bloody leaf!" I resist. He roars. I call on all my willpower toforce my fingers to let go, but they refuse. With my arm way behind me, I tryto go forward. The leaf still gives me confidence, my arm is stretched to itsfull limit, it pulls me one way, my feet go the other. For a moment, I leanlike the Tower of Pisa, then at long last I let go of the leaf and fallsplashing into the stream below.

    Again and again I return to this picture: the log and the leaf have becomepart of my private mythology; in a way they contain the essential conflictthat I have tried all my life to resolve--when to cling to a conviction, andwhen to see through it and let go.

When I was a child, I had an idol. It wasn't a protective deity, it was a filmprojector. For a long while, I was never allowed to touch it, as only myfather and my brother could understand its intricacies. Then the time camewhen I was considered old enough to attach and thread the little reels ofnine-and-a-half-millimeter Pathe film, to set up a tiny cardboard screen withinthe proscenium of my toy theater and to watch with ever-repeated fascinationthe scratched gray images. Despite my love for the pictures it produced, theprojector itself was a dour and charmless machine. There was, however, a shopI would pass every day on my way back from school, and in the window stood acheap toy projector, made of red and gold tin. I coveted it. Again and again,my father and my brother would explain to me that this object of my desireswas nothing compared with the serious grown-up instrument we had at home, butI refused to be convinced; the lure of the trashy redness was stronger thanany persuasion they could offer. Then my father would ask me, "What would youprefer, a shining golden penny or a dirty gray sixpence? I was tormented bythe question, I could feel it had a catch to it, but I would always settle forthe gleaming penny.

    One afternoon, I was taken to Bumpus, a bookshop in Oxford Street, to see aperformance for children on a nineteenth-century toy theater. This was myfirst theatrical experience, and to this day it remains not only the mostvivid but also the most real. Everything was made of cardboard: on thecardboard proscenium, Victorian notables leaned stiffly forward in theirpainted boxes; under the footlights in the orchestra pit a conductor, baton inhand, was suspended for eternity preparing to attack the first note. Nothingmoved; then all of a sudden the red and yellow picture of a tasseled curtainslid upward and The Miller and His Men was under way. I saw a lakemade of parallel rows of blue cardboard with...