-Everyone has an absolute need to find meaning in life. The world is in chaos because it lacks meaning. Theater is like a microscope with different lenses to look through. It offers the possibility to see inside a given situation and to find the hidden meaning. It’s like when you use a microscope to look at a culture broth and you can see the differences between the microbes. Theater is only useful to society if it is concentrated and small if it is concentrated and small. Theater is life concentrated. From the political point of view, the mistake that was made in my time was to think that a small theater group could change society as a whole, but it is clear that a theater that can at most address five or eight hundred people is not going to have any impact on the chaos that is the world. In another sense, theater could also be compared to going to the doctor: some people have the need to go to the doctor’s office. There are also people who have the need to take a closer look, even if only for the hour that the performance lasts, at the different aspects of life or any of its situations: political, spiritual, psychological, and to find meaning. For some people, this possibility of looking through the theater is as important as being examined by a doctor.<\/p>
-But today in the theater, is reality interpreted or represented?<\/strong> -You understand theater as a collective creation.<\/strong> -I was not saying that theater is a religion in the literal sense but that it is articulated around a certain mystery and mystery is also the center of religions.<\/strong> -In relation to Je suis un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne<\/em> and the interest in the brain and memory, it may be happening that now that scientists have discovered that everything is in the DNA, artists are rushing to resituate the spirit in the brain, once the romantic belief that placed it in the heart has been abandoned.<\/strong> -So, will the argument of the future be intelligence?<\/strong> 25 de agosto de 1998 | Suplemento Culturas La Voz de Galicia\n<\/p> There is no art that has not speculated on whether memory is the true homeland of the individual. It is a speculation as extensive as the need we have to remember that memory betrays us as much as it allows us to survive that permanent, daily and deaf combat against oblivion. After all, it is the intensity of the struggle that defines us. <\/p> Je suis un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne<\/em> speculates less with memory, with its presences and absences, than with the anguish of the portent chained to its own virtues. Because the main character is farther from that Mozart who is amused by his virtuosity than from that elephant man who suffered rejection for his differences. <\/p> Peter Brook flees from the portentousness of the character to delve into what is human and spiritual in remembering. While defining this non-mechanical dimension of memory (or should I write non-chemical to reassure scientists), he opens the door to the character’s suffering. <\/p> It is true that this man of prodigious memory is a stoic and he resists being the phenomenon he is said to be and resists the difficulties that the prodigy brings with it. He is on the edge of the precipice and walks along it. <\/p> It is precisely in the mirrors that the world lends to the mnemonist that the strength of the montage lies. In the mirror of that doctor and biographer, in the story of the friendship of two people destined to admire each other. In the stoically confident mirror of his wife. Apart from the perfectly traced character and his most immediate relationships, Je suis un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne<\/em> seems a fragile work, with an excessive distance between the central and the accessory. Outside the work of the protagonists, so nuanced, so natural in its accuracy, the montage loses tension, as if the intensity of the story were directly proportional to the closeness to the central character. <\/p> It loses weight and loses density, perhaps it loses the memory of theatre and delves into the more than surpassed paths of hieratism. The work also loses weight at the end, perhaps a point out of the trajectory due to a certain pretentious eagerness of the text, or perhaps a little too much for a protagonist who remembered as much as he lived.\u00a0<\/p> Je suis un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne\n<\/em>\nDirector: Peter Brook.\nAutor: Marie H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Estienne, Peter Brook sobre o libro e Alexander R. Luria. \nReparto: Maurice B\u00e9nichou, Genevi\u00e8ve Mnich, Bruce Myers, Sotigui Kouyat\u00e9, P\u00e9irre B\u00e9nichou, Natacha Maratrat.\nFestival Millenium. Santiago de Compostela. 1998.\n<\/p> Life must be an exercise similar to surviving in quicksand. An exercise in optimism mixed with the limited hope of having no way out no matter how much hand-wringing you do. The protagonist of Oh les beaux jours <\/em>suffers a lot of this, a parabolic play in the best sense, with a character in the worst circumstance who performs small daily numbers of deluded optimism. Lest there be any misinterpretation, it should be noted that the play is not optimistic in a single second. <\/p> Peter Brook’s proposal serves with care Beckett’s purpose of not offering answers and leaving the spectator facing the questions. He leaves him and, to do the job well, he leaves him very much alone. <\/p> This play develops with great intensity that subtle game of mirrors that is theatre: it provides what is necessary, what is indispensable to give the spectator the ultimate sensation that all the characters in the theatre are the character and that any spectator can be that character. He does it, moreover, in that immediate and little-used way of making the difficult easy, of telling the complicated in a simple way. <\/p> It is a meticulous version without tricks. A luminous montage on the circumstance and the capacity of response, on survival and on the distances that separate travel companions. Finally, it is also a play about loneliness, but almost every play of this century has some of that. Perhaps, unlike other cases, here loneliness is treated in the right measure, in the exact square meter in which the human being has a plot for it. <\/p> On the other hand, Oh les beaux jours<\/em> is also an exercise of scenic plenitude, of knowledge and communication. It is an exercise of the actress Natasha Parry\u2019s acting plenitude and perhaps some spectators could not resist the temptation to wonder if the resistance of the actress was as great as the one exhibited by the character she plays. <\/p> The play is a play about resistance and perhaps there lies the vital question. In resisting fate with small traps, in accepting that if you are buried up to your waist one day you may be buried up to your teeth. We should know that this form of resistance is another way of defeat, but it is honest and, above all, very human. <\/p> Oh les beaux jours <\/em>\nDirecci\u00f3n: Peter Brook Reparto: \nNatasha Parry, Fran\u00e7ois Bert\u00e9. \nEscenograf\u00eda: Chlo\u00e9 Obolensky\nFestival Millenium. Santiago de Compostela 1998<\/p>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Peter Brook (1925-2022) visited Santiago de Compostela in 1998 as the main character of the first edition of the Festival Millenium. Two of his plays were part of the programming, Je suis a ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne and Oh les beaux jours. Brook explained over and over what he considered theatre and the festival took place in a closed cinema Capitol that, for the director, seemed to have the advantage of being very close to ruin. The past week (2nd of July, 2022) Brook died and from 1998 an interview came back along with two critiques and a conclusion. The interview and the critiques of his two shows in Santiago are still here. The conclusion is that, despite his prestige, recognition, intelligence and even Brook\u2019s success, the theatre didn\u2019t pay him any attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":249500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview"],"acf":[],"post_template":"entrevista","post_subscription":"no","pretitle":"","content_extract":"Any empty space can be a theater if one man walks through it while another observes. That is the starting point of theater for Peter Brook, a director who is as little given to spectacle as to believing that directors should be all-powerful when it comes to theatrical creation. Brook, who sought in theatrical research...","reading_data":{"word_count":"2017","reading_seconds":"484","reading_time":{"minutes":8,"hours":0,"seconds":4},"reading_string":"8'4''","reading_human":"8 minutos"},"announcement":{"finishdate":"","finishdate_text":""},"opinion":{"subject":"","subject_info":[]},"event_info":{"startdate":"","starttime":"","enddate":"","endtime":"","entertainer":null},"interview":{"interviewed":"Peter Brook"},"phototext":{"text_author":"","text_photo":""},"video":{"video_source":""},"promotion":{"action":"default","action_data":""},"categories_list":[{"name":"Interview","id":90,"slug":"interview","parent":0,"template":"default"}],"visible_author":"Camilo Franco","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252248"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281443,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252248\/revisions\/281443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/249500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-It should be both because there must be many levels of understanding. If the representation is merely abstract, it is not human; if everything is centered on the surface, on the visible, then we learn nothing. There has to be a contact between both forms provoked by the interest of telling a story. In this way, representation opens up to interpretation. For me, interpretation is not the commentary on things but bringing to life or bringing to light something that was hidden beneath the surface. Interpretation is not a critical argument, it is a revelation.<\/p>
-The plays that are cited as mine are not so much. They are plays in which the creative process depends a lot on the debate with the members of the company, on their ideas and contributions. Theater is a sum of decisions and tensions so, as I have written, I understand that a theater collective needs stability to create. It is not so much stability to represent, but to investigate, to test and to change things day by day. I think it is necessary for the members of a company to live together and get to know each other. This allows a favorable climate to investigate, to look for the point of surprise that brings the spectator closer to the mystery. Also so that the theater is not a dead or systematic form of expression because perhaps repeating oneself is one of the great evils of theater.<\/p>
-Reading The empty space<\/em> or The open door<\/em> one can come to understand that theater is a religion, a belief, a work that needs dedication, vocation and that has something non-tangible, material and in which converge emotional, physical and also ritual aspects. In this context and making the comparison, who should provide faith?<\/strong>
-Theater is not a religion, nor is it a rite. The difference between a religion and theater is that theater brings the mystery closer to the spectators. Je suis un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne<\/em>, which we performed in Santiago, has nothing to do with ritual or religion, but it has the same purpose as Mahabharata, which could indeed be closer to ritual. The purpose is that the actors, the author, the director and the spectators are aware of the mystery and are all interested in unveiling it, they want to participate in it. This desire to understand the unknown is the real action of the theater and this only happens when there is a simultaneous opening of the author, the director, the actors and the spectators to look at the other side of the psychological, social or personal aspects and perceive the unknown. This process, in turn, awakens the interest in the search, in the investigation.<\/p>
-But you speak of true religion, but it happens that, conventionally, when we speak of religion we refer to the church.<\/p>
-In a sense, yes. In theater it happens as in the conversations we have every day: there are arguments that are always alive, that remain interesting. But it also happens many times that we talk about society, politics, economics and we already know all the points of view since the beginning of humanity, even before someone opens his mouth we already know what he is going to say. They are, therefore, boring arguments. Miraculously, DNA and neurology is a fresh argument. It has just appeared and it can be said that it is the newest thing and that it is in a very rapid development, as much as the development of computers. Every two or three years there is an update and everything that came before is already obsolete, so we can’t be boring.<\/p>
-For the future? I am not a prophet.<\/p>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/4823C7DA-87AE-43E7-B0DA-C556D9E1028F-800x600.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAnatomy of memory<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/p>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6E1BABA0-6A64-4830-A00B-F94060E286DB-800x600.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tQuicksand<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t