Directors: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate

As a man of the theater, Peter Brook is more of a general than a visionary. A brainy and restless director, he rules his actors like a task-force commander, dispatching them on missions of dramatic exploration—most notably in his production of Marat / Sade. In a new book, The Empty Space, Brook displays himself as a man in the ironic position of being grafted to the theater while finding most of it lifeless. Based on a series of four lectures that he delivered to English university students, the book is divided into four sections: "The Deadly Theater," "The Holy...