Threads of Time: Recollections

From Barnes & Noble

The ever-innovative Peter Brook, the man The New York Times has called "the English-speaking world's most eminent director," now offers this look back at a half century spent creating magic in the fields of opera, stage, and film.

Anthony Cronin

[A] rich and absorbing book....The prurient may be disappointed, as may the vulgarly curious; but the student of the theatre, the student of human nature and those interested in 'something else' not so easily defined will find much matter for reflection. -- New York Times Book Review

Mel Gussow

. . .[Brook] opens the doornot too wide but enough to offer a revealing self-portrait. . . .the book is less a memoir than an introspective look at an artist's interior journey. —The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Stage and film director Brook's soulful, introspective autobiography is as different from the conventional show-biz memoir as his imaginative productions are from traditional commercial theater. Born in 1925, London-raised and Oxford-educated, Brook made his mark in the 1950s and '60s with inventive Shakespeare (a blood-soaked 'Titus Andronicus,' an acrobatic 'Midsummer Night's Dream') and avant-garde European works ('Marat/Sade'). He relates also that he was immersed in the mystical teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, and in 1971 founded the International Center for Theater Research, which brought together actors from different traditions and countries in an attempt to make theater reach across cultural boundaries and become truly universal. The productions resulting included 'The Mahabharata' and 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' (based on the writings of neurologist Oliver Sacks); Brook's descriptions of how these unusual pieces were collaboratively created are as absorbing as his cogent analyses of earlier working relationships with actors like Paul Scofield and John Gielgud. The director is not an other-worldly metaphysician: he relates his spiritual discoveries very precisely to the insights they gave him about the theater. Instead of personal chit-chat, Brook offers the chronicle of a committed quest. It leaves a moving impression of a man deeply fulfilled both spiritually and artistically.

Library Journal

From Brook, our most tireless explorer of theatrical performance, comes this memoir, a collection of memory fragments arranged in very loose chronological order. Brook explores how theatrical ideas, spiritual impressions, experiences, and people have created the fabric of his art. His performance work has included traditional Western-scripted classics and deeply religious myth from Persia, Africa, and India, while his spiritual study, following Gurdjieff, has been an exploration of the universal in the concrete, the mystical in the practical world. As Brook is also a traveler, some of the most luminous writing here describes Afghanistan, India, New York, Africa, and Paris. Though he has no formal theatrical training, Brook has reformed our ideas about theater through his energy, discipline, curiosity, and openness to a multicultural/multilinguistic program of study. Required reading.--Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., MA

John Tytell

The book is elegantly written but ultimtely veiled. . . .American readers who are sick of the soap opera of sensational tell-alls will welcome Brook's civility, [but] others may feel that the details that animate a memoir are too often missing. -- Bookforum

Mel Gussow

. . .[Brook] opens the door, not too wide but enough to offer a revealing self-portrait. . . .the book is less a memoir than an introspective look at an artist's interior journey. -- The New York Times