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Deadly Theatre In Peter Brook's The Empty Space

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“The Empty Space”, a book written by the director Peter Brook outlines his four theories of theatre each that evokes a different meaning, Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate. In his opinion, Deadly Theatre is the most common type of theatre, which fails to modernize, instruct or even entertain. This style concentrates on the act of imitation by mimicking successes from the past and relying on old schemes instead of exploring the deeper meaning from the text (Brook, Peter). However, Shylock, a character from the Merchant of Venice a play written by Shakespeare, has had various interpretations from actors through out time, causing tendentious reactions from its audience. This thought fueled my inquisitiveness to investigate the importance on how …show more content…

A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged” (Brook, Peter). Peter Brook is a European theatre director who studied at Oxford and is recognized for directing Shakespearean productions. He believes that in order for a theatre production to be successful one has to step out of the orthodox and repetitiveness. Consequently, there are four types of theatre, Holy theatre, Rough theatre, Immediate theatre and Deadly theatre. Unfortunately, as stated by Peter Brook, Deadly theatre is recognized as the most common and seen type of theatre, also known as “bad theatre”. This means is that this type of theatre is identified from performances perpetuated to be dull, boring, traditional, consumeristic and conventional. Hence, as Brook states, one of the reasons why this type of theatre still remains is due to the deadly spectators who enjoy watching a performance with lack of intensity and entertainment. Likewise, other individuals have the tendency to associate culture and tradition with historical costumes and the sensation of being bored. Therefore, the right amount of boringness can create the illusion that the play was worthwhile to see (Brook,

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