<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2022/jul/Rahul-op_e.jpg" alt="Rahul Da Cunha" width="200" height="69" />&ldquo;I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged&rdquo;
Peter Brook
Peter Brook was a hero of mine. A deep, deep, revered hero. My admiration was steeped in his ability to look at words on a page&hellip; and then rack them up on a stage, in the most impossibly creative way.
When you embark on a career, in my case the theatre, in the 1980s, I was obviously, searching for an approach&mdash;at this time, two Peters were my heroes: Peter Hall and Peter Brook. The two Peters approached their theatre in markedly different ways&mdash;Hall looked at the bound script, Brook looked at the bare stage.
Initially, I was always more drawn to Hall, because he explored words and dialogue&hellip; found ways to interpret Harold Pinter and Peter Schaffer&mdash;till I saw Brook&rsquo;s The Mahabaratha&mdash;he did what had always terrified me, used his source material as an empty stage.
A slight variation from the Sting song, in the winter of 1987, I was an Indian in New York&mdash;freezing in sub- zero temperatures, in a pre -Wikipedia, WhatsApp world, I longed for something home, anything familar&mdash;that&rsquo;s when the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), publicised their production of Peter Brook&rsquo;s The Mahabaratha. &nbsp;
Like all Indians, I felt a combination of cynicism and curiosity.&nbsp;
There was an option, see the play straight through as a nine-hour experience or watch the three acts over three evenings. My uncle and aunt, Gerson and Uma daCunha had bought us tickets for the Mahabara-thon!
The thought of someone having adapted the one hundred and twenty five thousand verse epic, sounded intriguing.
The thought of a nine-hour straight through, sounded exhausting.
An unwelcome wisdom tooth appeared on the morning of the performance.&nbsp;
This, to be honest, was pain mixed with relief.
The less strenuous three hours per evening became a reality, the three parts titled, The Game of Dice, The Exile in the Forest and The War.
Peter Brook had piqued my interest, in an interview, when he said two things-
1. A stage space has two rules: Anything can happen and Something must happen.
2. The first audience for any of my productions is myself, if I am bored, so will the audience be.
As I sat down, that first evening in Brooklyn, and soaked in the &ldquo;five minutes to show time&rdquo; tingle, I looked at the bare stage, Peter Brook&rsquo;s palette, his perspective, the empty physical space, nothing prepared me for what was about to unfold in front of my eyes
I sensed the beginning of a spiritual experience. This was the great Indian story, on a New York stage, directed by an Englishman, adapted and written by a Frenchman, 21 actors from 16 countries, a Caribbean Karna advising an Italian Arjuna, and the battle scenes vs a Polish Duryodhana.
And yet there was no gimmickry, only sheer gravitas, on this stage, that heightened minimalism could yield such a spectacle.
Peter Brook, even while he carried the label of a showman, remained the explorer of spaces (when this production opened in Avignon , France, he chose a dawn-to-dusk staging in an open air quarry).
And yet this humble, patient man, said of himself, that he was &ldquo;simply a director penetrating into human questions through human material&rdquo;.
The actor, Adrian Lester once said of him as they rehearsed Hamlet, &ldquo;Peter directed your thoughts, he was interested in what you meant, you were always left digging into deeper parts of yourself, in doing a play with him, you didn&rsquo;t know where his work finished and your work started, it just felt like you were completely free on stage.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Peter Brook directed well into his 90s.
Rest in peace, sir, thank you for never letting the old man in.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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A stage space has two rules: Anything can happen and Something must happen.

Playing it by the Brook

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Playing it by the Brook

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