Introduction Post War West End Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop The Explosion of New Writing  The Royal Court Theatre 20th Century Shakespeare  The Royal Shakespeare Company Peter Brook and Peter Hall The National Theatre Alternative Theatre Physical and Visual Theatre ‘In Yer Face’ Theatre

Waste

Peter Brook and Peter Hall were two of the directors whose innovative productions of Shakespeare gained the Royal Shakespeare Company critical and popular acclaim in the 1960s and 70s.

Peter Brook

In the early 1960s Brook’s reading of Antonin Artaud’s ‘Theatre and its Double’ led to his explorations of the Theatre of Cruelty and controversial productions of King Lear (1961), Marat / Sade (1964) and US (1966). With Charles Marowitz and a dedicated group of actors, he discovered a powerful theatre as reliant on physical expression and gesture as the spoken word.

Set Model for Marat/Sade

Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the RSC in 1970 was one of the most discussed productions of the period, its minimal set putting the stress on the words and the spectator's imagination. Designed by Sally Jacobs the production was set in a three-sided white box. Props were simple: trapezes and stilts were used to suggest the magical elements of the performance.

Ring Around the Moon

Ring Around the Moon

Brook left the UK to settle in France and now works from his base at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris where he has formed an international and multi-lingual ensemble.

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot

Peter Hall

Hall began directing as an undergraduate at Cambridge University where he met Peter Brook and Trevor Nunn. Like Brook he began directing shows at the Arts Theatre, a small club theatre in London where more controversial plays could escape the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain. Amongst these productions was Waiting for Godot in 1955.

La Calisto

Peter Hall took over as director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford in 1960 and was the first director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, founded in 1960. Under Hall the RSC developed bases in Stratford and London at the Aldwych Theatre becoming the first national Shakespeare company. Under his lead the RSC also produced work by new writers including several of Harold Pinter’s plays and modern European plays.

No Man's Land rehearsal

No Man's Land with Gielgud and Richardson

After leaving the RSC he took up a post as director at the Royal Opera House in 1968 and later as director of the National Theatre in 1973, overseeing the move from the Old Vic to the National Theatre complex on London’s South Bank.

Hall founded his own company on leaving the National in 1988.