ABSTRACT

Obviously I don't believe the theatrical status quo is healthy [remarks Peter Brook, as we share a taxi back from London airport]. I don't believe it is even promising. Single events flicker here and there. Different schools of theatre come and go. A new playwright emerges. But I don't see much hope in any of this because I don't believe it begins to grapple with the essential problems. How to make theatre absolutely necessary to people, as necessary as eating and sex? Something that is a simple organic necessity – as theatre used to be and still is in certain societies. Make believe is a necessity. It's this quality, lost to Western industrial societies, I am searching for.