Peter Brook

In 1985, Brook's staging of Mahabharata as a spectacular nine-hour drama in French at a limestone quarry had stunned the world. With its epic proportions and sweep it had made theatre history. 

It had an international cast from across 16 countries, which included 

1. a Senegalese Bheema, 
2. a Malian Bhishma, 
3. an Italian Arjuna, 
4. a German Yudhishthira and 
5. a Japanese Drona. 
6. Dancer Mallika Sarabhai played a radical Draupadi. 

According to Guardian, the play had cost an estimated £3,50,000 to stage in the UK. Estienne recalls that every time it had to be staged, another play Carmen had to be performed to raise the money to fund the epic production. After travelling for four years, the play was whittled down to a four-hour film. Staging the original play is near impossible today. But that hasn't put Brook off Mahabharata. 

"There are a thousand different things in Mahabharata relevant to our world today. Here we felt was the chance to explore not the battle but the moments after it had been won. There was the key answer where the lake questions Yudhisthira as Carriere wrote it. What is victory? The yaksha asks. And the prince replies: 'Defeat'." 

Minimalistic music of avant garde Japanese free jazz percussionist Toshi Tsuchitori. 

There is another reason why Brook picked Mahabharata - it talks at length about the qualities of a ruler, on how 

1. experienced, 
2. wise and 
3. erudite he had to be. 

"Look around you today, how many leaders are there who are 

1. trained, 
2. learned or 
3. qualified to lead? And if they are, like Kennedy, they don't last long," he says. 

In the late 60s, Brook recalls being dissatisfied with the body of works theatre was playing around with - 

1. Shakespeare, 
2. Chekhov, 
3. Ibsen, and so on. 

Around the time he was doing his research, an Indian writer brought him a small script of Arjuna questioning Krishna before the start of the war. "At once it struck me this was revolutionary - a warrior about to start on destruction and he stops to seek answers. Asks why should we fight? Would America or any other nation have the courage to do that?" he says. 
The director then stumbled on a kathakali performance of an episode from the epic and remembers being deeply moved. He found a Sanskrit scholar in Paris, Phillipe Lavastine, and started exploring Mahabharata. Why did Arjuna hesitate? What happened just before the war? Who were the Pandavas, their cousins? "The further I went the deeper I was pulled," he says. 

Brook remembers being appalled at how little the average Westerner knew of the epic. 

Actor-dancer Mallika Sarabhai, who played an exceptionally strong Draupadi rather than a hapless victim, says that in Brook's hands, the Mahabharata became everyone's story. 

"If one strips it bare, it is a universal story that plays out every day. 

1. Fratricide, 
2. greed, 
3. jealousy, 
4. revenge, and 
5. lust," she says.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Mahabharata_(1985_stage_play)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Le+Mahabharata

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