About the Book:

The Empty Space is a highly influential – and highly readable – treatise on the state of modern theatre from the most influential stage director of the twentieth century.

First published in 1968 but still appropriate today, The Empty Space, has long since been required reading for serious students of western drama. The groundbreaking director and co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company Peter Brook divides dramatic productions into four categories – the Deadly Theater, the Holy Theater, the Rough Theater, and the Immediate Theater – so that he may address the importance and potential of the theatrical form. He draws on a life in love with the stage to explore the issues facing a theatrical performance – of any scale. He describes important developments in theatre from the last century, as well as smaller scale events, from productions by Stanislavsky to the rise of Method Acting, from Brecht's revolutionary alienation technique to the free form happenings of the 1960s, and from the different styles of such great Shakespearean actors as John Gielgud and Paul Scofield to a joyous impromptu performance in the burnt-out shell of the Hamburg Opera just after the war.

Passionate, unconventional, and fascinating, The Empty Space shows how theatre defies rules, builds and shatters illusions, and creates lasting memories for its audiences.

What people say:

"Peter Brook speaks of the theater of the past and the present, of its changes, of its various forms, of what he has seen and sees and of his own work. He speaks with the eloquence, and with the excitement of the explorer finding his way into a vast unknown but, he believes, knowable world ... The Empty Space is a brilliantly written, even ecstatic book, full of information of the world's theater and of this leading worker in the theater." — Chicago Sun-Times

About the Author:

Peter Brook CH CBE (1925-2022) was a highly influential British theatrical producer and director. During the 1950s he worked on many productions in Britain, Europe, and the USA, and in 1962 returned to Stratford-upon-Avon to join the newly established Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Throughout the next the 1960's he directed many ground breaking productions for the RSC before in 1970 forming The International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris.