Peter Brook on Theatre, Redemption, and The Prisoner at Romaeuropa Festival

Ahead of the Rome premiere of The Prisoner at Teatro Vittoria (October 11–20), Peter Brook reflects on the origins of his new play. The piece, co-written and co-directed with Marie-Hélène Estienne, centers on a man sitting before an enormous prison in a desert landscape—a scene inspired by Brook's encounter in Afghanistan with a young man guilty of an unmentionable crime. Brook explains that the play explores themes of guilt, punishment, liberation, peace, forgiveness, love, and hate, suggesting that imprisonment is both concrete and internal. He contrasts punitive systems with a story of Aboriginal redemption in Australia, where a mutilated prisoner who survives alone on a hill is welcomed back to his community. Brook insists theatre's role is not to teach but to provoke personal questions; he avoids post-show debates, valuing individual reflection. He discusses his collaborative process with Estienne since 1976, emphasizing workshops over auditions to discover actors. Brook praises Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Beckett for their texts' 'resonance'—a quality that allows actors to discover anew each performance. He dismisses fashionable playwrights who write to express themselves rather than for actors, and refuses to engage in debates about Shakespeare's identity, focusing instead on the 36 plays' capacity to contain all aspects of human life.