The Empty Space— A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate
Peter Broook
Atheneum (1968)

I don't where to begin with this review. Obviously, this book's title has lent itself as the title of this blog, and that in itself should say something about how much Peter Brook has influenced my thinking about space; he and Michel Foucault, more so than anyone else. Yes, The Empty Space is about theater, but in Brook's hands it is about so much more. Yes, too, The Empty Space may seem to some to be dated; yet, what Peter Brook writes applies just as much to today, as it did to his day. Fortunately for us, this seminal classic, simultaneously about both space and theater, can still be found in our libraries, still purchased.

Peter Brook writes, "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, someone is watching him, and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged." Brook warns us to be careful though, lest we let our less than accurate definitions and understanding of theater get in our way. Almost ways, Brook writes, our ideas of theater become "confusedly superimposed in a messy image covered by one all-purpose word."

Although writing of the the theater, Brook is reminiscent of Foucaults' words, "The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the the erosion of our lives, our time, and our history occurs .... (Architecture-Mouvement-Continuité, 1984, translated Diacritics, 1986, p. 23)."

Peter Brooks, considered to be one of the few theatrical geniuses still living, divides "theatrical experience" into four parts: the deadly theatre, the holy theatre (my favorite chapter), the rough theatre, and the immediate theatre. Each makes up a chapter of The Empty Space. For each category Brook analyses what makes the difference between the event that "catches fire" and moves an audience and the one that is stillborn. As he does so, Brook draws on his own unparallel wealth of theatrical experience to support his ideas.

In the chapter on the Holy Theatre Brook writes, "Certainly we all wish to capture in our arts the invisible currents that rule our lives... (p.45)." True in 1968— still true today.

Earlier I stated that this is a much a book about space as it is about theater. All we need to do is to substitute the word "space" for "theatre" in the above quote to realize the fact that theater is just one façet of what we call space, thus all that we say about theatrical space has relevance to space in general.

The book jacket unabashedly states: "The is no book quite like it, no book to compare to it." I concur.