Peter Brook's "Tempest"
Author(s): Margaret Croyden
Source: The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Spring, 1969), pp. 125-128
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1144467
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125
Peter
Brook's
Tempest
MARGARETCROYDEN
Peter Brook's "experiment," as it became known, was originally launched by
Jean-Louis Barraultin Paris in May, 1968, under the auspices of the Theatre des
Nations, and later performed in London. Barrault had invited Brook and the
Royal ShakespeareCompany to organize a company of internationalartists-actors,
directors, scenic designers (including Joe Chaikin, Victor Garcia, and Geoffrey
Reeves)-to examine and experiment with some fundamental questions in form:
what is theatre,what is a play, what is the relationshipof the actor to audience,and
what are the conditions which serve all of them best? As a frame of reference for
this research, Brook decided to work on ideas from The Tempest. The play appealed to Brook because, according to him, it had always appearedon the stage as
something sentimentaland pallid. Among other things, he wanted to "see whether
The Tempest could help the actors find the power and violence that is in the play;
whether they could find new ways of performing all the other elements which
were normally presented in a very artificial way... and whether the actors could
extend their range of work by using a play that demanded this extension."1But
most important,Brook hoped that by commingling foreign artists,he could achieve
a synthesis of style relevant to our times, which could obviate the conventional passivity of bourgeois audiences.
The experiment was performed in the Round House in London, formerly a 19thcentury station house for the end-of-the-line trains, and currently a center
for Arnold Wesker's working class theatre group. The Round House is a circular
building with an enormous round dome; one has to climb a steep flight of old
wooden stairs to reach its entrance. Inside, the place is equipped with dressing
rooms, rehearsalrooms, and offices. The "theatre"appearsto be a huge gymnasium;
no stage, but enormously high ceilings, from which Brook had hung a circus-like
white canvas tent. The only other "scenery": a number of low Japanese-type
wooden platforms of various dimensions, jutting out into the open space. Stationed right, left, and diagonally are several giant mobile pipe scaffoldings with
wooden planks, on which actors and spectators sit. At various moments, these
scaffoldings,complete with passengers,are "rolled"or "flown" into the open playing area. Otherwise, the audience sits on three sides: on boxes, benches, stools, and
folding chairs; five musicians (drums and percussion) sit parallel to the platforms.
Most of the time the lights remain on-at full blast and very white.
1From my interview with Brook in London, June 1968.
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126
MARGARET CROYDEN
Spectatorscan sit anywhere, and many choose the scaffolding-especially the highest planks. Before the performance, people mill around the arena: actors and
audience are indistinguishable.But soon the actors vocalize, dance, play ball, do
handstands,turn cartwheels, and limber up.
Finally a group appearsin the center of the open space: they arrangethemselvesin
pairs,stand perfectly still for a moment, and then begin the "mirror"exercise. This
is combined with a low hum that grows louder and louder as the audiencebecomes
quieter and quieter; we know the play is about to begin. Suddenly the actors
"breakthe mirror,"and run onto the platform.What follows is not a literalinterpretation of Shakespeare'splay but abstractions,essences, and possible contradictions
embedded in the text. The plot is shattered, condensed, deverbalized;time is discontinuous,shifting. Action merges into collage, though some moments are framed,
then, as in a film, dissolve and fade out.
The actors wear work clothes. Ariel, played by a Japaneseactor, wears his native
kimono; Prospero,played by an English actor, wears a white Karate suit. Both are
thereby set apart.
Having broken the ritual of the mirror, the actors face the audience and display
archetypalmasks (made with their facial muscles) and correlative physicalizations.
Accompanying these are animalsounds, grunts, moans, howls, whispers, intonations,
and gibberish-attemptsto find a correspondencebetween the facial, the physical,
and the vocal. The "masks"are those of the people aboardthe ship, just prior to the
tempest;they mean to be essentiallysocial as well as archetypal.(According to one
actor, the maskswere derived from a study of the seven deadly sins. Later, someone
suggested the actors study the seven deadly virtues so that they could assume a
mask-on-top-of-a-mask,as people do in life. The difficulty of creating contradic-
From bottom up: Ariel, Sycorax, Prospero.
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Caliban reigns.
tory masksis obvious: there was so much distortionthat no mask was really clearly
delineated.) While part of the group plays the passengers,others play the ship itself; the remaining enact the altercationbetween Prospero and his brother. Meanwhile, Ariel has been evoking the storm: he uses the sleeves of his kimono as
wings with which he calls forth the spirits; his voice (a combination of Japanese
and non-verbal sounds) and powerful Noh foot movements evoke the wind, rain,
and thunder.As the storm increases,the shipwreckedcrew moan: "Lost, all is lost,"
counterposedto the sounds of those in lifeboats, the crash of the ship as it sinks
(the percussioninstrumentshelp), and the rest of the cast (a chorus) who echo key
words. Meanwhile, Miranda and Prospero converse: she intones the Shakespeare
lines-using no end stops. As she speaks,she jumps,runs, skips, climbs the scaffolds,
and once appearson the runway on top of the tent about 60 feet up. The Shakespeareanlines are delivered ametrically,the object being to imagize or abstractthe
driving force beyond the symbolic word-gesture and sound are central.
The crew lands on the island half-dead and half-blind. Miranda and Ferdinand
meet, fall in love; as innocents, they touch, look (part of the mirror exercise),
and make love in the rocking position. This is homosexuallymimicked and mocked
by Calibanand Ariel; other membersof the cast in turn mirror Ariel and Caliban.
The possibility that Ferdinand and Miranda themselves embody monster characteristicsappearsto be the implicationhere. (The "mirror"exercise is essentialto the
meaning of the performance:every image used in the production is either contradicted, counterposed,or mocked by the "mirror.")
The awakeningof the near-deadcrew is a fascinating sequence. They stir blindly.
As if in "The Garden of Delights," they touch, smell, look, feel, and copulate-to
the echoes of "bravenew world" and "how beauteousis man." The islandersrevel
in sensuality, a primitive microcosm. But soon the forces of darkness are unleashed upon the "good"-Caliban is born. He and his mother Sycorax represent
those evil and violent forces that rise from man himself regardlessof his environment. The monster-motheris portrayed by an enormous woman able to expand
her face and body to still larger proportions-a fantastic emblem of the grotesque.
Running to the top of the platform, she standsthere, like a female King Kong, her
legs spread.Suddenly, she gives a horrendousyell, and Caliban,with black sweater
over his head, emerges from between her legs: Evil is born.
Prospero tries to contain Caliban by teaching him the meaning of "I," "you,"
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128
MARGARET CROYDEN
"food," "love," "master,""slave"-the last two words unleashing Caliban'sapparent
rebelliousnessand innate brutality. Helped by the percussion instruments and the
"flying" scaffoldings, he escapes Prospero, climbs the scaffolds, jumps to the platforms, rapes Miranda,and tyrannizesthe whole island, only to be captured and imprisoned in the "caves" (openings between the platforms). The percussion, accompanied by atonal music, begins again. Ariel moans, "Ah, ah, brave new world"; the
chorus moans (or mocks), "how beauteous is man." Caliban escapes; the takeover
of the island begins.
The islandersbecome monsters;the slave, Caliban,is now monster-master;he and
his mother dominate the scene, enacting a wild orgy, mirrored by the company's
fast and fluid sexual configurations.Caliban,large and fat, but somehow acrobatic,
stands on his head, legs spread;Sycorax (also large and fat) stands behind him, her
mouth on his genitals. Then they reverse positions. The others follow suit: fellatio, cunnilingus, and other variations of anal and oral intercourse convey a
monster-sexuality,a Dantesque phantasmagoria:the "Garden of Delights" has been
transformedinto the "Garden of Hell." The entire cast forms a giant pyramid on
the scaffoldings: Caliban on top, Sycorax on the bottom, holding Ariel prisoner.
"This thing of darknessI do acknowledgemine" is the leitmotif echoed by the group
as they prepareto kill Prospero.
Prospero is pursued and captured. He is wheeled in on a table, and then thrown
to the floor. Now the group seems a pyramid of dogs: they are on top of him, they
bite him, suck him, and chew him. The leading image is homosexualrape, Caliban
and Prospero locked in each other's arms. All at once, there are loud obscene
sounds-gulping, swallowing, choking, defecating, and farting. For a moment,
everything is post-coitally still: the "dogs" lie spent at Prospero's stomach and
genitals.
The tension is broken by Ariel's arrival;he brings ribbons, costumes, gay clothingmaterial things-to bribe the dog-pack. The group breaks into game improvisations, and the scene dissolves into Miranda'sand Ferdinand'smarriage ceremony,
performed in Hebrew-Hippie-Japaneserites. On some nights, the rites are discarded for the Hokey-Pokey dance. The wedding over, Prospero says: "I forgot
the plot." Each actor stops where he is, thinks a moment, then someone begins the
lines from the epilogue: "And my ending is despair";another picks up, "Unless it
be relieved by prayer";a third, "Which pierces so, that it assaults/ Mercy itself and
frees all faults." The verse is spoken in various rhythms, inflections, intonations,
and phrasings-all of which mix until the sounds fade out, leaving the audience in
stillness.Only the echoes of ". . . ending . . . despair. . . relieved . .. by prayer . .."
are heard in the distance. The lights do not go off, there is no curtain, the empty
space remains quite empty...
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