Peter Brook

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.

Hacking – improving software through a process of trial and error – is a mode of rehearsal. Such is the claim made by Miguel Escobar Varela in this article, which he furthers by exploring the similarities between the ways theatre makers and software programmers speak about their crafts. Understanding software programming as an essentially creative process should be of interest for theatre scholars, who are constantly searching for modes of academic discourse that are sensitive to the specificity of theatre. By offering examples from interface design for the study of Javanese theatre, Escobar argues that creating software, through an iterative process of trial and error, can become part of the methodological palette of theatre scholars. Miguel Escobar Varela is Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore, and has worked as a theatre researcher, computer programmer and translator in Mexico, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Singapore. His articles on the intersection of digital technology and theatre studies have been published in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Asian Theatre Journal, Performance Research, Contemporary Theatre Review and are forthcoming in TDR and Theatre Research International.

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 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.

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.

L’article retrace les origines de l’attrait de Brook pour l’Afrique et les principes qui motivent cette affinité : du premier voyage du Centre International de Recherche Théâtrale en 1972, au spectacle Sizwe Banzi est mort, présenté à Avignon en 2006. On analyse les spectacles issue de cette passion : Les Iks, histoire d’un tribu des chasseurs nomades, L’Os farce de l’ecrivain sénégalais Birago Diop, le « cycle sud-africain » constitué par Woza Albert !, Le Costume et Sizwe Banzi est mort, pour finir avec Tierno Bokar, portrait de l’Afrique au début du XXème siècle.

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.

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

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.

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 paper 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 paper 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 it, real. Moreover, this paper will explore the various roles of the space, the body and the light in the construction of a theatre experience in which both actors and audience are equally engaged.