Threads of time : recollections /

For more than four decades British theater director Brook has specialized in defying tradition, stretching the medium, and proving again and again that the theater is far from dead. His work in the '60s for the Royal Shakespeare Company set the tone for all "hip" interpretations of the bard; his later work, especially his multi-evening staging of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, mated Western and Eastern traditions to create a global theater for a global age. Meanwhile, he wrote books, including the universally praised The Empty Space (1968), to set down his theatrical ideas. The latest is a memoir of sorts, recounting, roughly chronologically, his development from a young film and theater buff into a struggling director coping with the chaos of war-torn and postwar Britain and thereafter into the late '60s lion of experimental theater. Sadly, some 200 pages aren't enough space for a man of Brook's magnitude. One closes this book feeling one has only scratched the surface of a busy, inspired, fruitful life. --Jack Helbig

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 (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. There is no gossip; his two children are mentioned just once; his wife (actress Natasha Parry) appears primarily as a working companion. 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. Photos. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.