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Practitioners and theatre companies
Quick questions on Brook, Grotowski and the poor theatre - OCR A-Level Drama and Theatre practitioners
5short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is the empty space?Show answer
Brook's empty space is the founding idea: "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to take place." The principle focuses the theatre maker on the essentials: the actor's presence and action, and the relationship with the watching audience. The space becomes whatever the actor and the audience's imagination make it.
What is the poor theatre?Show answer
Grotowski's poor theatre deliberately rejects the "rich" theatre of elaborate sets, lighting, sound and costume. What remains is the actor, rigorously trained in body and voice, in a direct, charged relationship with the audience, often reconfiguring the space so the audience is close and implicated. The poverty is a discipline: by removing the inessential, the theatre concentrates its power on the human encounter.
What is q1?Show answer
State Brook's principle of the empty space. [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
What does Grotowski's poor theatre reject, and what does it concentrate on instead? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
As a director, explain how you would apply the empty space and the poor theatre to a devised extract. [10 marks]
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