Peter Brook, the illusionist of journeys

In 1977, journalist and theatre critic John Heilpern wrote his magnum opus Conference of Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa, recounting the director’s 1972 journey through six countries, across 8,500 miles. Accompanying him were the actors Helen Mirren, Yoshi Oida and other members of his team from the International Centre for Theatre Research, Paris—which Brook had founded in 1970, with a generous grant of close to one million dollars from international funders, including the Ford Foundation. Even in his years at the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, Brook had dreamt of a total subsidy for the theatre, which would break the constraints of commercial British theatre of the time and allow space for radical experimentation, including the possibility of complete financial failure. Impossible dreams of this nature, which he somehow managed to actualise, frequently defined Brook’s magnificent career.