A quick update, the joy of Directors Lab West, Scottish Ballet and Peter Brook

Last week was the culmination of the months of planning and scheduling that go into making the Directors Lab West the success that it is. My modest part in this was as associate producer, and sometime photographer, recording what I could of the various sessions that took place over the course of the week.

An alum of the DLW myself it was a joy to see this group come together and bond. How rare it is to have 40 to 50 stage directors and choreographers in the same room at the same time sharing ideas and methodologies. The week included workshops, round tables, panel discussions, a host of invited guests and presenters, as well as a packed schedule of performances to attend in the evening.

Among them Scottish Ballet's A Streetcar Named Desire was one of the most exquisite performances I have ever seen.

  

We also so Peter Brook's production of Battlefield based on his Mahabharata. It was beautifully told. I had never seen a Brook production before so it was long overdue. The composition of the actors on the stage, the lighting and storytelling were simple and clear and yet I wished for a different kind of drama where characters were directly locked in conflict to produce a more immediate form of drama. This is where Brook has been for some time - in this storytelling mode - and while it was a story told well, I can't help lament the passing of his earlier engagement with classics of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage.  None the less, as one might expect with a Brook production, it will live long in the book of memory.