The Medieval Space: Early Medieval Documents as Stages

Abstract

Peter Brook begins the second chapter ofThe Empty Space,“The Holy Theatre,” with a lament for the loss of sacred approaches to theatre; approaches that satisfy a community's need to make visible its identity, its hope, and its history. In describing the vacuum within the modern theatre once occupied by ceremony—what he defines as the importance of a noble aim for theatre—Brook critiques hollow and backward attempts to fill new and grand spaces with old and meaningless ritual. In postwar Europe, he saw a need for new spaces that “crie[d] out for a new ceremony, but of course it is the new ceremony that should have come first—it is the ceremony in all its meanings that should have dictated the shape of the place.” Brook's assessment of postwar European bourgeois theatre and its search for new and meaningful agendas is framed by conceptions of space as antecedent to action, requiring only performer and audience in order for theatre to occur, and for a space to be called a theatre. Indeed, theatrical space is always a product of well-established cultural performance conventions—a phenomenon common throughout history. Brook's critique focuses on the conventions of theatrical space that developed from the romantic dramas and spectacle-driven performances of the late nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth century. Echoing Bertolt Brecht, Brook rejected theatres that predetermined the limits of drama and performance, arguing that it was necessary to strip them of conventional expectations in order to lay bare their potential. Essentially, he asks: When and how does a space become a theatre?