“He's more than a director, he's a master”
.
Jean-Michel Ribes' tribute to his British counterpart Peter Brook encapsulates the dimension of the giant who bowed out on Saturday at the age of 97.
With him, the theater world unanimously cried this weekend for the disappearance of the long-term director, who died in Paris after a 76-year career behind the boards.
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“Peter Brook gave a kind of line, almost a religion to the theatre. He is a high priest of the theater who has opened the way,
underlined Jean-Michel Ribes for Franceinfo
.
He had an eye for discovering quite unusual casts and comedians often not seen by mainstream theatre.
The director shared a vivid memory of the immense mastery deployed by Peter Brook.
“I especially remember
La Cerisaie
, which was a moment of theater that really marked me.
We were really in the music of words.
There was no need for illustration.
They said to me:
“But why?
There is no decor.”
Well, the decor is in the words.
Listen to the words and you will see the whole scene.
»
Blow up the scenic frame
Equally admiring, Olivier Py also hailed a pioneering designer who knew how to get out of the box.
"
He's more than a great director, he's a true legend of the theater
", indicated on France Inter the director who directs this year for the last time the Festival d'Avignon.
“He marked Avignon with the
Mahabharata
, it's a very moving memory for me, because it was my first festival, in 1985
, he remembered.
He had adopted
Shakespeare 's formula
, “the stage is a world and the world is a stage”, and not only was diversity invited on his sets - even before this term diversity was fashionable - but also, he was interested in India , to Africa, to Asia in general”.
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“There is not an actor of my generation who has not dreamed of playing under his direction. Peter Brook literally blew up the stage setting, revolutionizing the acting space, stripping all layers of convention from the art of acting - e.g. projected voice, bearing
, testified for
La Croix
,
the actor Denis Podalydès.
He invented an alloy between epic and intimate, managing to represent an idea with the maximum power and the minimum of means, just by the grace of the gesture, the presence, the detail.
He was essentially a poet, who had kept this curiosity, this rigour, this requirement to see something beautiful, living, thoughtful, conscious, new emerge.
François Marthouret, on France Inter
He was
“absolutely not a guru, despite the legend that has formed around him
, explained the director and director François Marthouret, on France Inter.
He was essentially a poet, who had kept this curiosity, this rigour, this requirement to see something beautiful, living, thoughtful, conscious, new emerge.
He was a true “animator”, in the sense that what interested him was what was alive.
He was someone who was trying to bring out something in his troupe, in his actors.
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The director David Geselson remembered, for
Liberation
, a passage from
Empty Space
, the brief essay-manifesto by Peter Brook released in 1977:
“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.
Provocateur, prophet and trickster
“I remember that we rehearsed twelve hours a day, but that we devoted three quarters of the rehearsals to children's games like candlelight and this, until the last day,
also remembered for
Liberation
the actress Anne Consigny, who had played in
La Cerisaie
staged in 1981.
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 , with 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 rookie was no longer a sign of anything."
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Across the Channel, director Simon McBurney hailed on Twitter the work of a
"visionary, provocateur, prophet, trickster and friend".
Comedian Adrian Lester, who had collaborated with Peter Brook in his adaptation of
Hamlet
paid tribute to a national figure in the theater.
“This man was a giant in our field,
he testified.
His influence changed everything in western theatre, right down to the design of some of our buildings.”
Finally, on the side of the political scene, President Emmanuel Macron hailed on Sunday
“an extraordinary director who extracted the quintessence of theater and pushed it outside his three walls”
.
The same day, the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak for her part regretted the disappearance of the one who
“will forever remain the soul of the Bouffes du Nord theater in Paris”
.
“Peter Brook gave us the most beautiful silences in the theater, but this last silence is infinitely sad.
With him, the scene was refined to the most intense intensity,”
the minister said in a statement.
