Product Description

Revised edition of an established favourite: Peter Brook's take on Shakespeare - with a cheeky new chapter added on the end Evoking Shakespeare addresses a number of essential questions about performing Shakespeare today.? 'Why is Shakespeare not out of date?'? 'What do we mean by Shakespeare's "genius" or "creativity" or "poetry"?'? 'What, in fact, is the Shakespeare phenomenon?' The new chapter, Forgetting Shakespeare, urges us to put to one side the mountains of preconceptions about Shakespeare in order to get at the truth in the plays...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #404263 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 48 pages

About the Author
Peter Brook is one of the world's best-known theatre directors. Outstanding in a career full of remarkable achievements are his productions of Titus Andronicus (1955) with Olivier, King Lear (1962) with Scofield, The Marat/Sade (1964) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970), both for the RSC. Since moving to Paris and establishing the Centre International de Creations Theatrales at the Bouffes du Nord, he has produced a series of events which push at the boundaries of theatre, such as The Conference of the Birds (1976), The Ik (1975), The Mahabharata (1985) and his recent Hamlet (2001). His films include Lord of the Flies (1963) and King Lear (1970). His books, especially The Empty Space (1968) and The Shifting Point (1987), have been hugely influential.

Customer Reviews

Brevity is the soul of wit in this excellent book.
Appearing almost simultaneously with Harold Bloom's magnum opus, Peter Brook's 40 page account of Shakespeare's continued importance to contemporary readers, audiences and performers could not be more different to Bloom's ludicrous "Shakespeare. The Invention of the Human." Adapted from a lecture given in Berlin last year (and featuring a transcript of some of his audience's questions), "Evoking Shakespeare" is permeated with the wit, intellect and understanding that has contributed to Brook's standing as one of the greatest of the theatre's Shakespeare interpreters. Committed primarily to considering why Shakespeare retains his relevance when so many other writings have failed to, this is a book that is keen to avoid reductionism and trite "solutions". Instead, Brook suggests that an appreciation of the levels of meaning, the refusal to claim single allegiances and an ability to shift his perspectives constantly is key to understanding Shakespeare's genius and continued domination of our theatrical (and literary) tradition. It's an hour's read at most, but the reward of reading it is disproportianately great.