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opening play at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York, Vu Du Pont (A View From the Bridge) (Paris), Eugene Onegin (Met., New York), 1958; The Fighting Cock (New York) 1959; The Visit (London), Irma La Douce (New York) 1960. By 1960, the use of improvisatory method had grown on Brook so that when in May he directed Jean Genet’s Le Balcon at the Théâtre de Gymnase in Paris Brook mixed actors of differing backgrounds (some classically trained, some in film or ballet, and some who were simply amateurs) and allowed them to respond directly to each other. For Moderato Cantabile (film 1960 with Jeanne Moreau) no conventional script was used and the camera acted as an impartial observer. In June 1962 Brook was appointed co-director of the Newly Christened Royal Shakesspeare company (RSC) which had also acquired a London home at the Aldwych, and in November, for the Shakespeare Festival, he directed King Lear (Stratford) Aldwych ¡World Tour) with Scofield in the title role. Charles Marowith then Brook’s assistant director in his journal of the rehearsal period ’Lear Log’ described the production approach as ’relentlessly (and at times, maddeningly) experimental’. In the film Lord of the Files (released 1963) Brook improvised from William Golding’s novel. Brook’s interest in the dynamics of theatrical expression, however, underlined the growing need for an intensive experimental workshop. The RSC agreed to subsidize such a venture and LAMDA offered its Earls Court Theatre. The workshop was called Theatre of Cruetly as a tribute to Antonin Artaud, and in January 1964 a first public work-in-progress session was performed. Certain ideas tested in this ’laborator’ formed the basis of Peter Weiss’s Marat ¡Sade ( Aldwych 1964) New York 1965 —for which production Brook won the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Director). Further experimental documentary led to US (Aldwych 1966) a collaboration with original text by Denis Canaan vhich dramatized the intervention of American troops in Vietnam, For ten days of the rehearsal period the company worked with Jerzy Grotowski. In 1968, under the title Tell Me Lies the film version of US was released and the same year Brook directed the long considered unactable Oedipus of Seneca ( Old Vic) translated by Ted Hughes. Gielgud played the title role. Brook’s association with the Round House began in 1968: Jean-Louis Barrault, controller of the Théâtre des Nations in Paris, invited Brook and the RSC to present public open work sessions whereby actors from different countries nad cultures could cross-fertilize a common project. The French Minister of Culture offered the bare gallery at the Mobilier National, and methods of performing were explored using as a basi smaterial from The Tempest. Then, the French Government was forced to close the Théâtre des Nations due to the revolutionary situation with which it was confronted, but in July, thanks to many sponsors, the group moved to London for a few public performances at the Round House. What the audience saw was an hour of work-in-progress and sequences of

vocal and physical experiment. It was the success of this undertaking that led to the decision to create a permanent international centre and, two years late, on November 2nd 1970, the major part of the nucleus of the international Centre of Theatre Research had been formed and was ready to start work. In August 1970, Brook returned to Stratford-upon-Avon to direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream (later Aldwych and World Tour) for which production he had never had a stronger critical response. In December the Dream had a special performance in the Round House, to demonstrate that the work of the actors could be equally valid away from the proscenium, the sets and the costumes of the Stratford production. The International Centre of Theatre Research undertook its first engagement in 1971: a visit to the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival as guests of the Iranian Government where Brook directed Orghast written by Ted Hughes in three dead tongues and in a fourth language of his own making. More recently, Brook directed the Centre’s productions of Timon of Athens and Les Iks (both Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord 1975).