THE RADICALS & AVANT-GARDE 1920–1970

Picture an empty stage – just a bare space. Now imagine someone walks across that space while someone else watches. “That is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged,” wrote Peter Brook . This simple yet radical idea guided Brook, one of the 20th century’s great directors. He sought the essence of theatre beyond all ornament. Brook famously declared: “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage” . For him, theatre was a living encounter that could happen anywhere, unhindered by convention or clutter.

Brook’s 1968 book The Empty Space defined four modes of theatre – the Deadly, the Holy, the Rough, and the Immediate . Deadly Theatre was what he rebelled against: boring, conventional productions done out of habit for comfortable audiences . This was theatre as a lifeless museum piece, full of “stuffy productions… done conventionally for conservative audiences” . Against that Deadly norm, Brook posed the idea of Holy Theatre – theatre that strives for a kind of transcendence, where performers and viewers alike touch the mysterious or sacred . Then there was Rough Theatre, the raw, energetic, populist strain – he loved how theatre could thrive in rough-and-tumble settings, even a makeshift show in a bombed-out ruin, with minimal props and maximum spirit . And finally Immediate Theatre, a more elusive concept of theatre that is fully alive in the present moment, immediate and transformative. These categories weren’t rigid; they were provocations. Brook was urging theatre-makers to shake off complacency and find authentic connection.