“Not one evening when we did not cry so much the public applauded”, Anne Consigny, interpreter of Ania in “the Cherry Orchard” by Anton Chekhov (1981)
“I remember that we rehearsed twelve hours a day, but that we devoted three-quarters of the rehearsals to children’s games like candlelight, until the last day. I understood very well that it was a question of putting us all on the same level, of making us forget both experience, and hierarchy, and authority, by simple gestures: greeting each other by shaking hands as quickly as possible, for example. For me, who was nobody and who had so little experience, it was extraordinary. Being a beginner was no longer a sign of anything. I remember that, three weeks before the premiere, Peter Brook started bringing strange or unusual audiences into the room. He made us rehearse in front of a whole room of blind people, for example, or had invited all the merchants in his neighborhood.
Always three weeks before the premiere, he had us play in a school gymnasium in front of children, so that we lost all our bearings. We had no backstage, the staging as we knew it no longer existed. We thought the show would never be ready, would never be set. The day of the premiere, we were at the café, we saw people in a queue, and we were flabbergasted. What were they doing ? When we started to play, there wasn’t an evening when we didn’t cry so much the audience applauded, stamped their feet, we thought they were going to break the theater. We were surprised at each performance by his emotion. I remember that the day before the premiere, Niels Arestrup had asked Peter: “Do you think this will work?” Peter replied: “I don’t know, but in any case, it will be your fault.” It stuck with me. He thought there was never a bad audience, that the actors were entirely responsible for the performance. I remember empty space, his essay, and how he put us in the empty space to leave room for the imagination. The decor of the cherry orchard, it was just a rug, a rolled rug or a falling rug. For all of us, it was our greatest theatrical emotion. Robert Murzeau, who was a very old actor and who played Firs, told me: “You’re out of luck. Because as you begin your acting life with Firs, you will always be disappointed.I was not always disappointed, but he was right: such an experience was never found. One last time, just before confinement, almost forty years after this first one, we all had dinner together, with Peter. He was our only one.”
“He had a particular genius for unearthing what is most alive in each of us”, François Marthouret, title role in Shakespeare’s “Timon d’Athènes” (1973)
“The very first meeting was behind the scenes. I was 19 and I saw for the third time Le Roi Lear which Peter was directing in English with the troupe of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was so upset that I slipped backstage and when I saw his figure I rushed over to kiss him. I fled before he could say anything.
“The second meeting was in 1970, when he put together his troupe of actors from all over the world. The work was intense and open, it immersed us in the theater like a committed craftsman. He had a particular genius for unearthing what is most alive and most mysterious in each of us, thanks to exercises that pushed us towards the greatest sincerity. For me, Peter embodied the two qualities necessary for theater to happen: presence and imagination. It took me over a year to be able to relate to him. Of course, the research was important and it was spread over several months, without counting the time. But it was not about working in a vacuum. During this period, certain works were presented in public, because Peter proclaimed that the theater only exists with this third partner which is the public. For example, we created Gaspard, Peter Handke’s play, in the most unlikely places, both at the Ecole polytechnique and in shanty towns. It was before he unearthed with Micheline Rozan, this hall in ruins and abandoned for ages, the Bouffes du Nord which he made the most beautiful theater in Paris and which we opened with Timon of Athens the Shakespeare.
“The richness and fraternity of this group, its solidity and our understanding when we all had very different experiences, languages and lives never ceased to amaze me. Peter was no guru. He was not a proselyte, had no doctrine to teach us, because he too was searching. He knew how to do it so that we work in peace in the best possible conditions. Of course, he had this extraordinary intelligence and culture. But he was never driven by a need for authority. His requirement was devoid of tyranny, though there was an iron force behind his gentleness. He was a full man, carried by a permanent opening. Until his very last breath, Peter is a man who has never lost his childhood. I loved him very much.”
“I remember the faces of the actors at the salutes”, Isabelle Huppert, actress
“The first big show I saw in my life was A Midsummer Night’s dream with the Royal Shakespeare Company which Peter Brook presented on tour at the Théâtre des nations [l’ancien nom du Théâtre de la ville, ndrl]. A dazzling. I remember the salutes, the faces of the actors at the salutes. Livid faces. They had been at the end of themselves. It struck me a lot. I remembered it for a long time and this image comes back to me in force today. We felt that they had just had an exceptional experience. Just like us… Just like me…”
“His vision of theater broadened our minds”, Marilú Marini, actress, “Tempest Project” (2022)
“Having known Peter Brook, having worked with him on his last production with Marie-Hélène Estienne, Tempest Project, was a gift of life. He illuminated what he wanted from you on set, but always with precision. We owe him so much: his vision of theater has broadened our minds. In rehearsals, he was not only present and active, but his ear was extraordinarily fine. He knew how to guide the actor towards the essential.
“This rigor in freedom” David Geselson, actor and director
“I was 20 years old and a young student at the conservatory. empty space, his essay on the theater which was already old since it appeared in 1977, was the book that we read and re-read constantly. A passage has not ceased to inhabit me. This is the moment when Peter Brook explains that he does not know if he is going to be a director. Someone replies: “You don’t need to know that. Decree it and then you will become it. There are no prerequisites.” I no longer know if this little voice is his double, but it is certain that this freedom and this determination are like a signature of Peter Brook, at work in his finest shows. This rigor in freedom, unparalleled and with lightness.