What is holy theatre and deadly theatre?

Answer 1

The holy theatre and deadly theatre are titles of two of the four essays on theatrical performance in Peter Brook's "The Empty Space". The first is the "deadly theatre" that refers to theatre productions which have lost their "liveliness" due to a variety of causes: repetition without reinvention's, lack of imaginative process, ineffective performance techniques, and so forth. The Holy theatre refers to two types of theatre performance. The first is a performance that is closely associated with ritual of a semi-religious nature in which the audience joins the performers in an attempt to achieve a personal trans formative emotional and intellectual experience. The second refers to theatre professionals like Julian and Malina Beck who dedicate their lives to creating a theatre that strives to achieve the same trans formative experiences that once existed in religious rituals now extinct. The subject matter dealt with in these productions usually focuses on contemporary life and personal issues, not archetypal structure such as one finds in Greek Drama for example. Additionally, these theatre practitioners usually eschew the commercial venues and production values of the establishment such as Broadway, the regional and academic theatres.