Peter Brook

The Shiraz-Persepolis Festival of Arts (Jashn-e Honar-e Shiraz, in Persian), took place from 1967 through 1977 in and around the city of Shiraz, in Iran. It was a pioneering festival incorporating music, theatre, dance, dance-drama and cinema, with a democratizing mission, creating a transformative inter-cultural and multidisciplinary experience. Emphasis, from a Global South perspective, was on the traditional performing arts and Iranian and international contemporary and the avant-garde-all while commissioning and encouraging new creations. Below is a detailed list of all that took place during the eleven years of the life of the Festival. The author was a member of the organising committee and director of music and dance. The research involved access to Festival catalogues and daily News Bulletins, Iranian and international newspapers and magazines reporting directly from the Festival, printed programmes from various events, personal communications with participating artists, their agents, related institutions and various research libraries. This catalogue was initially made available to the public in January 2018, updated in Dec. 2020 and has since been improved with corrections and additional details.

The act of writing is firmly embedded within the praxis of the lighting designer. A script is annotated, documents to communicate creative concepts are created and records to facilitate the realised design are carefully crafted. Less formalised writing includes doodles, sketches and drawings to amplify design ideas conveying simply what few words can not. This act of writing, planning, plotting and recording is contrasted by the nature of light, an ephemeral effect that illuminates an object in space at a moment in time and is then gone. This article will examine some of the roles that illumination plays as both storyteller and communicator within a performance, through an examination of the lighting design for Epicentre Theatre Company's 2014 production of Reginald Rose's seminal play Twelve Angry Men (1955). The article will examine the role of the lighting to interact with the stage and the actors, as well as in supporting and reinforcing the communication and storytelling within the performance environment.

L’article étudie la relation de Peter Brook avec l’Afrique : ses voyages, ses spectacles et sa longue collaboration avec des acteurs africains. Après une première approche issue d’une fascination étrange et d’un désir de régénération, Brook se détache progressivement de l’Afrique imaginaire qui nourrit une certaine création artistique et il se lie d’amitié avec de nombreux artistes africains : dramaturges, scénographes, écrivains, conteurs, musiciens et comédiens. Avec ces artistes, Brook établit une relation de collaboration réciproque, en encourageant le développement d’une nouvelle conscience artistique africaine.

Tragic Seneca has enjoyed a varied reputation. As T.S. Eliot put it, "In the Renaissance, no Latin author was more highly esteemed that Seneca; in modern times, few Latin authors have been more consistently damned". The author of this damnation of Seneca was the German early Romantic, August Wilhelm Schlegel, in his 1808 series of lectures on dramatic art. This essay examines these lectures in detail, exploring the motives for Schlegel's influential condemnation of Seneca Tragicus, and similarly explores his late 20th century revival, which had strikingly similar reasons for extolling Seneca as Schlegel had for condemning him.

The paper covers the mission and organizational makeup of the Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis, 1967-1977, and highlights its international programs in music, dance, theatre and film. The report concludes with the cancellation of the festival at the onset of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Etude de l'adaptation de l'opéra Carmen de Georges Bizet par Brook en 1981 et du film tiré de cette mise en scène en 1983. Quel discours sur les genres spectaculaires du cinéma, du théâtre et de l’opéra, sur la mise en scène et la performance de l’acteur Brook développe-t-il dans le double geste de la captation et de l’adaptation cinématographique de sa Tragédie de Carmen ?

The article argues for a “textural” understanding of “theatricality,” across three fairly distinct models: the image – deep or shallow, as for Richard Wagner and Georg Fuchs; the platform – of skill or tension, as for Vsevolod Meyerhold and Bertolt Brecht; and the tightrope – this is Peter Brook’s metaphor for a kind of theatrical immediacy that navigates between the “holy” and “rough” aspirations of the above. Beyond such central authorities, authorship itself is seen as woven within the work; ‘texture,’ throughout, implies a dramaturgy of interweaving strands or processes, as opposed to the assemblage ofpre-existing parts or components. What marks each of the three models as specifically theatrical is how the very density or sparsity of their textures ostensibly deviates from some historically specific performative norm – be it operatic convention, stage naturalism, capitalist society, literary or “deadly” theatre.

This thesis examines how mental illness has been represented in British theatre from c. 1960 to the present day. It is particularly concerned with the roles played by space and embodiment in these representations, and what emerges as bodies interact in space. It adopts a mixed methodology, drawing on theoretical models from both continental philosophy and contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research, in order to address these questions from the broadest possible range of perspectives. The first part of the thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre to explore the role of institutional space, and in particular its gendered implications, in staging madness. The second part introduces approaches to the body drawn from the cognitive turn in theatre and performance studies. These are connected to the approaches of the first section through phenomenology’s concern with lived experience. Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher’s work on ‘the phenomenological mind’ provides important context here. In addition, Emmanuel Levinas’s critique of ontology offers a solid basis from which to think about how to act ethically as both a producer of, and an audience member for, representations of mental illness. Through these explorations, this thesis suggests a model of madness, not as something to be bracketed as ‘other’ and belonging to a deviant individual, but as emerging between bodies in space – there is no madness outside of social, spatial and embodied contexts. This in turn suggests a new approach to understanding the role theatre can play in addressing the lived experience of mental illness. While many productions currently attempt, unilaterally, to reduce the ‘stigma’ of mental illness, this thesis suggests that, in fact, discrimination against people experiencing mental illness is more likely to be reduced through the interaction between an ethically minded production and an ethical spectator. Such a model does not claim to be able to reduce the experience of madness to a totalising concept which can be communicated through theatre, but rather insists that it is only through an embodied, empathic interaction that a true concern for the (‘mad’ or ‘sane’) Other can emerge.

In search of the unfinishedness of the theatrical place

Based on that the origin of the word “performance” means "to complete", this article offers a proposition that the spaces where the performing arts are performed, namely the theatrical places, are "unfinished" but complete, even "liberated", when the audience enters and watches the performance. This article discusses this proposition through examples both designed but not built and realized since the 1970s. In the context of the notion of atmosphere in architecture, where the emotions felt while being in “here” and “now” by focusing the bodily presence, it is concluded that the atmosphere of the found spaces contains more of the unfinishedness than the designed ones. The article ends with the question of whether one of the ways to achieve unfinishedness in the theatrical places designed from scratch is through creating atmosphere.

An examination of the relationship between theatre and film that focuses on the work of figures associated with the postwar British theatre but whose film work was often understood in terms of horror. In particular, it examines the ways in which their work was understood as shocking audiences through a confrontation with repressed materials and as narratively staging conflicts between protagonists that represent conflicting ideas. In other words, these stories were often understood as staging battles between characters that sought to assert domination and control over their adversaries, battles that often featured psychological cruelty and destructiveness.

"In Africa, tutto è invisibile" è il sibillino aforisma che Peter Brook ripete spesso. Ed è forse la formula che sintetizza meglio le motivazioni che stanno all'origine del suo interesse per il continente. Nella lunghissima carriera di Brook, l'Africa emerge come una presenza costante che si articola in varie forme: il regista instaura con il continente un rapporto privilegiato fatto di viaggi, di collaborazioni con attori africani, e soprattutto di una serie di spettacoli che disegnano un percorso coerente all'interno del suo variegato repertorio. Le prime timide tracce di questa predilezione si possono scorgere già agli inizi della sua carriera di quando, nel 1947, mette in scena a Londra The Respectable Prostitute con Orlando Martins. La pièce è il presagio di un'affinità elettiva che si concretizzerà più tardi in una forma particolarissima di collaborazione con artisti africani.

What happens when critics seem to misread a production? This paper examines the reviews of Peter Brook's 1955 production of Titus Andronicus by Evelyn Waugh and Kenneth Tynan. It explores the preconceptions of the play prior to that seminal production and also ways in which the 1955 Titus might have been somewhat misunderstood by the critical consensus.

In this article, I draw on Gurdjieff's philosophy to initiate a phenomenology of aesthetic experience, which I define as any intense emotional engagement that one feels in encountering or creating an artistic work, whether a painting, poem, song, dance, sculpture, or something else. To consider how aesthetic experience might be understood in a Gurdjieffian framework, I begin with an overview of phenomenology, emphasizing the phenomenological concepts of lifeworld and natural attitude, about which Gurdjieff said much, though not using phenomenological language. I then discuss Gurdjieff's 'psychology of human beings' as it might be interpreted phenomenologically, emphasizing three major claims: first, that, human beings are 'asleep'; second, that they are 'machines'; and, third, that they are 'three-centered beings.' I draw on the last claim—human 'three-centeredness'—to highlight how aesthetic experiences might be interpreted via Gurdjieff's philosophy. Drawing on accounts from British philosopher and Gurdjieff associate J. G. Bennett, I end by considering how a Gurdjieffian perspective understands the role of the artistic work in contributing to aesthetic experience.

General Editors: Ian McCormick, James Armstrong, Jane Stabler.
Roger McGough: Interview
Binary: Gillian Clarke
Caterpillars / Tuesday: Robert Deas
Michael Longley and Douglas Dunn: Jane Stabler
Ken Currie: Interview
Poem: Gordon Finlayson
On Translating Seamus Heaney: David hare
Horror Films - A Defence - William McNie
Thoth and Aura: David Holbrook
1987: A Bad Year for Freedom - Norman Buchan M.P.
Anne Stevenson and Gillian Clarke (Reading): Jane Stabler
Poem - Aberdeen : Anne Stevenson
Uncle Edward: Robert Deas
Peter Brook Lecture: Ian McCormick

Avanti! was an undergraduate magazine produce at the University of St Andrews.
It included some of the first review from the St Andrews Poetry Festival, created by Dr Nicholas Roe.

https://encore.st-andrews.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1297634

This research examines the intersection of politics, aesthetics and new media technologies in 1960s-70’s Iran. I argue that the Shiraz Arts Festival needs to be analyzed in the context of contemporary communication theory to fully understand its importance as a historical and political event. By doing this, I build upon the dominating scholarship that big media (TV/radio) was used by the Shah, and small media (casettes and copies) were used by Islamic Revolution. This argument contends that there were no other sites of communication or political outlet during the reign of the Shah. I argue that the Shiraz Arts Festival was exactly that- a media of communication on its own that ignited dialogue, exchange, and political commentary. This looks at the festival and the medium of performance as a site of reconciliation and active mediation. When we see the festival in this way, it becomes a new interpretation of the past that might serve as a roadmap for the future. Where art and performance are powerful tools of political activism.

Apstrakt: Antonen Arto (1896-1948) se smatra jednim od najuticajnijih pozorišnih stvaralaca u 20. veku iako se njegova teorija uzima za nekoherentno i teško razumljivo štivo. Rad ima za cilj da prikaže Artoov nacrt pozorišta surovosti i načine na koje je ta ideja uticala na kasnije pozorišne stvaraoce, tačnije na Pitera Bruka, Ježija Grotovskog i Euđenija Barbu.
Ključne reči: Arto, pozorište surovosti, Grotovski, Euđenio Barba, Piter Bruk, po-svećeni teatar

Shakespeare has become a boomerang business in the twenty-first century—a phenomenon that is fueled simultaneously by globalized local economic and cultural developments. His plays have been traveling the world since his lifetime and now returned to Britain with many different hats, making the familiar strange and bringing home the exotic. U.K. tours have come to define some of the most memorable productions today, and international collaborations have inspired artists in Britain and elsewhere. Boomerang Shakespeare encompasses a range of events, including non-Anglophone productions, co-productions by British and foreign artists, local events celebrating Shakespeare’s global afterlife, and British productions that incorporate elements from more than one culture in its cast, style, or set.

/// The book has received 3 awards

American Association of Publishers awards:
Over-all award for Excellence in Reference Works
Category award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities & Social Sciences
(https://proseawards.com/winners/)

Library Journal:
Over-all award as Outstanding Print Reference Work of 2016 (Humanities)
(announced in January 2017 issue)

American Library Association:
An Outstanding Academic Title of 2016
(announced in January 2017 issue of Choice)

L’article analyse la notion de communauté selon Peter Brook. Lorsqu’il fonde le Centre International de Recherche Théâtrale (CIRT), Brook tient à souligner qu’il s’agit d’un centre et non d’un groupe, car les membres doivent changer continuellement. Brook met en œuvre une circulation perpétuelle des éléments qui reflète sa philosophie du mouvement et de la fluidité. Le CIRT est un organisme dynamique qui encourage les échanges ; il est nomade, métissé et en continuelle métamorphose. Pour Brook, le théâtre est un mini-cosmos où on peut s’aventurer à la lisière de l’utopie sociale et la vérifier, à l’aide du public.

Introducción Este trabajo tiene como objetivo indagar la problemática que conlleva el entendimiento de la noción de personaje en la actualidad, y específicamente en los personajes de la obra de Shakespeare. La temática de la noción del personaje será estudiado en relación al actor, ya que nos interesa centrarnos en una perspectiva desde la actuación. De acuerdo con nuestra hipótesis principal, el personaje en Shakespeare cuenta con la particularidad de encontrarse en el marco de un espacio despojado de escenografía, en el cual requerirá necesariamente de la acción para contextualizarse. En este marco, encontramos que los personajes shakespeareanos proporcionan elementos objetivos para el trabajo del actor. Estos elementos son la acción, la palabra en verso, y la palabra en prosa. A su vez, estos elementos, que el actor puede encontrar en el texto, serán necesarios para comenzar a indagar al propio personaje con su instrumento corporal en el espacio, y así poder materializarlo. En este marco, utilizaremos los planteos propuestos por Peter Brook, en referencia al estudio del teatro isabelino desde una perspectiva actual. A su vez, tomaremos el planteo de Robert Abirached en torno a la problemática moderna de la comprensión del personaje teatral y, específicamente, shakespeareano. Robert Abirached. Del personaje escrito al personaje escénico Teniendo en cuenta que el eje de esta investigación es la materialización del personaje escrito en el escenario, Abirached nos permitirá estudiar el pasaje del personaje escrito al personaje teatral. En el capítulo ―La mimesis: esbozo de una teoría del personaje‖, de su libro Crisis del personaje en el teatro moderno, Abirached sostiene que el personaje solo encuentra su significado cuando este se representa en la escena. La actividad teatral y los agentes que la componen se produce entre la relación triangular de: 1) el personaje 2) el actor y 3) el público. Esta relación de dependencia entre estos agentes se irá modificando a lo largo de la historia. Según el autor, a partir de la modernidad, y como consecuencia de que a partir de ella el personaje ya no se establece en marcos definidos, se produce la imposibilidad de la mimesis en el teatro. El punto más relevante de la investigación de Abirached es la necesidad que tiene el personaje escrito de ser representado por el actor para darle una verdadera ―existencia‖ escénica. Estudiaremos este fenómeno, ya que nos encontraremos con este suceso en la representación del material de Shakespeare. En primer lugar, Abirached establece su noción de personaje de la siguiente manera: ―Únicamente en el escenario encuentra el personaje su materialidad, el signo su significación y la palabra su destinatario‖ (Abirached, 1994: 14). Utilizando esta determinación, puede entenderse la diferencia entre el teatro y la narración, el pasaje del personaje escrito al personaje teatral, y la necesidad de la presencia del actor y el público. Además, utilizaremos el planteo de Arbirached, ya que en la actualidad, resulta complejo a los actores comprender en qué consiste la noción y delimitación de un personaje. Como mencionamos más arriba, para Arbirached el personaje escrito es un material en potencia que necesariamente tiene que ser representado. De los planteos que enumera en relación a la noción de personaje, tomaremos su tercera definición en la que se considera al personaje como la persona ficticia. Retomando la relación con la mimesis, para el autor no hay una distinción entre el papel y el ejecutante: ―El personaje se concibe por tanto a la vez como una figura surgida de la realidad y como una entidad

Profile article. Jean-Guy Lecat's guiding hand can be gleaned in the construction of Teatro Azul de Almada in Lisbon, the building of the New Young Vic in London, the major renovation of the historic Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the remaking of the Naves del Antiguo Matadero into a performing arts space in Madrid — and now the construction of Theatre for a New Audience's new home at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn.

Prior to the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, Lecat was known in New York for transforming a literally crumbling 1904 space, two blocks from the Brooklyn Academy of Music into the BAM Harvey Theater. The Harvey was built specifically to house Peter Brook’s nine-hour production of "The Mahabharata" and his subsequent "The Cherry Orchard." Lecat's hand also hewed Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre and La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre (formerly the Annex).

L’articolo analizza il rapporto di reciproca influenza tra il lavoro di Peter Brook e il teatro sudafricano clandestino dell’epoca dell’apartheid, in particolare i registi Athol Fugard e Barney Simon. Brook instaura con la drammaturgia sudafricana un rapporto stretto e singolare. Negli anni 1970 il suo testo Lo Spazio Vuoto diventa un modello teorico per la creazione di un teatro innovativo e rivoluzionario in Sudafrica. Brook, dopo aver scoperto la produzione sudafricana, non smette di interessarsene, organizzando durante gli anni dell'apartheid, un Festival Musique et Théâtre d’Afrique du Sud a Parigi. Dagli anni 1980 in poi, Brook porta in scena numerosi testi della nuova drammaturgia sudafricana tra cui Woza Albert!, Sizwe Banzi is dead, Le Costume, The Suit. La linea circolare che Brook e i drammaturghi sudafricani disegnano, ruota intorno alla nozione di Spazio Vuoto, riaffermandola.

Using Peter Brook’s most recent production, Battlefield (2015), this chapter will examine the soundscape of an intercultural performance in the ways that vocalities, rhythms and accepts that determine a(n) (audial) politics of reception.

Battlefield (2016) is a 70 minute excavation of selected episodes in the final books of the Mahabharata written and directed by Peter Brook. Like Brook’s The Mahabharata (1985) before it, the performance is a renewed attempt at performing universals. Considering the acoustemologies of Battlefield and postulating a politics of listening – to vocalities and rhythms – this chapter will examine Brook’s purported universality as it is heard. The political rhetoric that underscores much of intercultural criticism has been erected on the visual acuity awarded by the mise en scène; the matter of what one listens to is rarely considered In Listening (2007), Jean-Luc Nancy posits how sound is ‘made of referrals … it resounds, that is, it re-emits itself while still actually “sounding,” which is already “re-sounding” since that’s nothing else but referring back to itself.’  The state of referral constructs meaning [le sens] in a reference [renvoi] as a totally. Re-Sounding is, thus, an apt metaphor to consider the relationship between ‘meaning’ and ‘sound’ in Battlefield for both are comprised of a series of referrals. Listening to the sounding voices and vocalities of resonating bodies, and of the rhythms and resonances that compose Battlefield’s soundscape, engenders an aural act/ion that ‘strain[s] toward a possible meaning and consequently one that is not immediately accessible.”

Il cinema analizzato in questo libro si costruisce attorno alle due interdizioni che secondo André Bazin sanciscono i limiti della rappresentazione cinematografica, ovvero la morte e la piccola morte, l’orgasmo. L’universo letterario e biografico di D. A. F. De Sade costringe i registi che vi si avvicinano – nomi fondamentali nella storia del cinema quali Luis Buñuel e Pier Paolo Pasolini e outsider quali Peter Brook e Jesús Franco – a muoversi sui terreni dell’osceno, del proibito e dell’irrappresentabile. L’analisi dei testi produce una costellazione in cui ogni film dialoga con le altre pellicole, con l’opera di Sade nel suo complesso, con la letteratura critica su Sade e infine con spazi che fungono da cassa di risonanza per gli echi prodotti dai film. Nel bicentenario della morte (1814-2014) Sade dimostra di essere ancora un “prossimo nostro”, un autore che continua a far capolino dall’oscurità in cui è costretto e si costringe.

"Là dove si enuncia qualcosa come un 'limite' del pitturale, è là dove si espongono i paradigmi su cui, di fatto, la pittura lavora”. Georges Didi-Huberman "

Disponibile al sito: http://mimesisedizioni.it/sguardo-corpo-violenza.html

Dentro de la esfera teatral, nuestro tema se aproxima al Teatro Tosco (taxonomía empleada por Peter Brook en su libro “Es espacio Vacío”), como un tipo particular de teatro, que será tomado por sus características como anclaje estratégico para aproximarse a los límites y entrecruzamientos de la realidad concreta íntima del sujeto y el acceso de éste a la televisión como realidad ficcional paralela. Este trabajo constituye una posibilidad para investigar sobre los niveles de ficción, estudiar las diversas posibilidades de confección y composición de un hecho teatral. Explorar nuestras potencialidades creativas, expresivas y actorales, a través de los recursos dramáticos del Teatro Tosco en intersección con el discurso televisivo y las nuevas tecnologías.

This thesis examines how mental illness has been represented in British theatre from c. 1960 to the present day. It is particularly concerned with the roles played by space and embodiment in these representations, and what emerges as bodies interact in space. It adopts a mixed methodology, drawing on theoretical models from both continental philosophy and contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research, in order to address these questions from the broadest possible range of perspectives. The first part of the thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre to explore the role of institutional space, and in particular its gendered implications, in staging madness. The second part introduces approaches to the body drawn from the cognitive turn in theatre and performance studies. These are connected to the approaches of the first section through phenomenology’s concern with lived experience. Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher’s work on ‘the phenomenological mind’ provide...

In this essay, Craigo-Snell brings Karl Barth into conversation with performance studies and theatre theorist Peter Brook to reify the role of human performance, which cannot “conjure incarnation nor summon God” into the practice of performing church.  She reminds readers that God does not require human effort in order to become visible, but if churchgoers will foster a discipline and practice of emptiness--a practice of humility, of making room for and hoping in the Spirit, we might contribute to the conditions in which the invisible-made-visible could be perceived.

Στην παρούσα εργασία θα επιχειρηθεί μια θεωρητική σκιαγράφηση αυτού που αποτελεί το πολιτισμικό ισοδύναμο της γενικότερης σύγχρονης τάσης ανατολικοποίησης στη σφαίρα της οικονομίας και της πολιτικής, μέσα από την κριτική παρουσίαση μιας ιδιότυπης εκδοχής του σαιξπηρικού Άμλετ σε μορφή κινέζικης Όπερας Kunqu. Η έννοια της ανατολικοποίησης στην οικονομική και πολιτική της διάσταση θα επισκοπηθεί μέσα από την πρόσφατη σχετική βιβλιογραφία. Μέσα από τη χρήση κειμένων διαφόρων στοχαστών, που προσέγγισαν το κλασικό σαιξπηρικό δράμα θα εντοπιστεί ο διαχρονικός χαρακτήρας και το προσδιοριστικό πρόσημο του Άμλετ για τον δυτικό πολιτισμό, ενώ από την εφαρμογή τους στην εκδοχή της παράστασης I Hamlet θα αναδειχθεί η ιδιαιτερότητα και η ριζοσπαστικότητα της προσέγγισης του δημιουργού της.

This book defines theatricality and performativity through metaphors of texture and weaving, drawn mainly from anthropologist Tim Ingold and philosopher Stephen C. Pepper. Tracing the two concepts' various relations to practices of seeing and doing, but also to conflicting values of novelty and normativity, the study proceeds in a series of intertwining threads, from the theatrical to the performative: Antitheatrical (Plato, the Baroque, Michael Fried); Pro-theatrical (directors Wagner, Fuchs, Meyerhold, Brecht, and Brook); Dramatic (weaving memory in Shaffer's Amadeus and Beckett's Footfalls); Efficient (from modernist 'machines for living in' to the 'smart home'); Activist (knit graffiti, clown patrols, and the Anthropo(s)cene). An approach is developed in which 'performativity' names the way we tacitly weave worlds and identities, variously concealed or clarified by the step-aside tactics of 'theatricality'.

The seminal work Empty Space (1968) by English theatre director and researcher Peter Brook, examines the notion of the theatre through a lens that posits the idea that any space, with an actor and an audience, results in a theatrical engagement. This chapter will examine this position, with particular focus on light and lighting. There is a well-known theatrical adage that if you cannot see an actor then you cannot hear them. In this way Brook's thesis of theatrical engagement – that is connected to space and the bodies within that space – is, technically, divorced from lighting. Yet, if you cannot see an actor and, in turn, cannot hear them, is there a genuine theatrical engagement? This chapter argues that the illumination of a space is a prerequisite for such theatrical engagements, or transactions, that while space is an assumed quality in a theatre it is light that realises the space: thus making the stage, and the actors who adorn

At the 1976 Theatre Biennale, Peter Brook provided one of the best demonstrations of the breakup of the traditional role of the actor. In three different events, Brook played with genres and replaces the player by the performer, a real mediator. Brook’s presence at the Biennale heralded in an embryonic way some of the fundamental aspects which would shape a new scenic art: the performance.

La importancia histórica de la tragedia shakesperiana la sitúa como una de las fuentes privilegiadas para la filosofía trágica contemporánea. Sus autores más representativos, Schopenhauer o Rosset, confirman por otro lado la antigua sospecha platónica en torno al estatuto filosófico de “lo trágico”. Esto nos lleva a reflexionar sobre el modo en que el teatro resuelve el intento de aproximar las bases de esa alternativa filosófica a los espectadores.

Palabras clave: estética, filosofía trágica, puesta en escena, Peter Brook, Calixto Bieito

Abstract
The historical significance of the Shakespearean tragedy places it as one of the privileged sources for contemporary tragic philosophy. Its most representative authors, including Schopenhauer and Rosset, confirm by the other side the old Platonic suspicion about the philosophical status of "the tragic". This leads us to reflect on how theater solves the attempt to approximate the foundations of this philosophical alternative to the spectators.

Keywords: Aesthetics, Tragic Philosphy, Theatrical Staging, Peter Brook, Calixto Bieito