Peter Brook on Stanislavski, Meyerhold and his Russian Relatives

Interview held in the theatre “Bouffes du Nord“, Paris (june 2009). Peter Brook (1925-2022) was an English theatre and film director, author and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s. Konstantin Stanislavski (1863 – 1938) was a seminal Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognised as an outstanding character actor and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his ’system’ of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique. Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874 – 1940) was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre. During the Great Purge, Meyerhold was arrested, tortured and executed in February 1940.