Monday, February 27, 2023

Book Note: Evoking (and Forgetting) Shakespeare


Brook, Peter. Evoking (and Forgetting) Shakespeare. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2003.

This brief volume has considerable profundity. It consists of a lecture Peter Brook gave in Berlin in 1998 and (if I'm reading it right) a second, shorter speech he gave in Paris in 1994.

It's the second that particularly interested me. It gives a general overview of acting principles during Brook's long life in the theatre and his advice for portraying Shakespeare characters.






As one would expect from something by Peter Brook, that's insightful. I'm not sure I agree with everything there, but it is certainly an invigorating process that he imagines.

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Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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