Quotes from Peter Brook

Theatre is, occasionally, capable of moments of truth.

The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful.

The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

Every choice I've ever made has been dictated by a formless hunch rather than by strict logic.

A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates the need for expression.

To be violent is the ultimate laziness. War always seems a great effort, but it is the easy way. And false non-violence is also an idol.

It takes a long while for a director to cease thinking in terms of the result he desires and instead concentrate on discovering the source of energy in the actor from which true impulses arise.

A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.

Reality' is a word with many meanings.

Time, which is so often an enemy in life, can also become our ally if we see how a pale moment can lead to a glowing moment, and then turn to a moment of perfect transparency, before dropping again to a moment of everyday simplicity.

A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates the need for expression.

There are prophets, there are guides, and there are argumentative people with theories, and one must be careful to discriminate between them.

I am ready to disclaim my opinion, even of yesterday, even of 10 minutes ago, because all opinions are relative. One lives in a field of influences, one is influenced by everyone one meets, everything is an exchange of influences, all opinions are derivative. Once you deal a new deck of cards, you've got a new deck of cards.

A large part of our excessive, unnecessary manifestations come from a terror that if we are not somehow signaling all the time that we exist, we will in fact no longer be there

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all is for an act of theatre to be engaged.

Because if one starts from the premise that a stage is a stage -not a convenient place for the unfolding of a staged novel or a staged poem or a staged lecture or a staged story- then the word that is spoken on this stage exists, or fails to exist, only in relation to the tensions it creates on that stage within the given stage circumstances.

You become a director by calling yourself a director and you then persuade other people that this is true.

The life of a play begins and ends in the moment of performance. This is where author, actors and directors express all they have to say. If the event has a future, this can only lie in the memories of those who were present and who retained a trace in their hearts. This is the only place for our Dream. No form nor interpretation is for ever. A form has to become fixed for a short time, then it has to go. As the world changes, there will and must be new and totally unpredictable Dreams.

It's easy to give up, and that's the one thing we cannot do. That's what gives me a reason for working: to leave people with a little more courage, with a little hope that has been nourished. Even if, of course, it's going to disappear, whatever touches one isn't lost forever.

Once a computer was asked, "What is the truth?" It took a very long time before the reply came, "I will tell you a story…

Iš teisyb?s, režisierius niekada negali pripažinti, kad tai jo pirmasis pastatymas. Gird?jau, jog pradedantis hipnotizuotojas niekuomet neprasitaria pacientui hipnotizuoj?s pirm?kart.

Theatre is always a self-destructive art, and it is always written on the wind.

Today the theatre of doubting, of unease, of trouble, of alarm, seems truer than the theatre with a noble aim.

Of course, it is most of all dirt that gives the roughness its edge; filth and vulgarity are natural, obscenity is joyous: with these the spectacle takes on its socially liberating role, for by nature the popular theatre is anti-authoritarian, anti- traditional, anti-pomp, anti-pretence. This is the theatre of noise, and the theatre of noise is the theatre of applause.