C.I.C.T. - Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
Based on the Mahabharata and the play written by Jean-Claude Carrière
Adapted and directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne
Part of Tandem Paris-New York
Thirty years after his legendary sunset-to-sunrise production of The Mahabharata consecrated the BAM Harvey stage, director Peter Brook returns with Battlefield, a breathtaking distillation of the central story in the ancient Sanskrit poem. In the wake of an apocalyptic civil war, a remorseful King Yudishtira—his hands still bloodied from the carnage—desperately seeks some just way to rule over murderers and murdered alike. Silk scarves become rivers and shrouds; four actors are reincarnated as worms and eagles, victims and perpetrators; and a single instrumentalist (a veteran of Brook’s original production) scores the bleak peace of oblivion, giving haunting new life to this staggering Indian epic.
Music by Toshi Tsuchitori
Lighting design by Philippe Vialatte
Costume design by Oria Puppo
A C.I.C.T./Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord production
Co-produced by The Grotowski Institute, the PARCO Co. Ltd / Tokyo, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, the Young Vic Theatre / London, the Singapore Repertory Theatre, Le Théâtre de Liège, the C.I.R.T., the Attiki cultural Society / Athens and the Cercle des partenaires des Bouffes du Nord
The BAM Hamm Archives gives viewers a window into the pivotal role that Peter Brook and the 1987 production of The Mahabharata played in the transformation of the Majestic Theater into today’s Harvey Theater.
Readers of all ages participate in this public reading of the Indian epic, in conjunction with Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne’s revisiting of its central section in this season’s Battlefield.
In this intimate gathering, Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne discuss what it means to be a director with emerging practitioners interested in their craft.
On the occasion of the US premiere of Battlefield—Peter Brook’s return to the BAM Next Wave Festival—BAMcinématek surveys the visionary director’s equally adventurous, iconoclastic film work.
Composer Donnacha Dennehy’s opera about the Great Famine of 1845-52 brings together new music and old Irish songs, featuring Alarm Will Sound, folk singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, and soprano Katherine Manley.
French physical theater maverick Aurélien Bory takes Japanese dancer Kaori Ito, entangled in a dense field of 5,000 black nylon wires, as both muse and instrument.
Director Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl take up Shakespeare’s most fundamental questions in this fiercely contemporary staging of the Bard’s late masterpiece of wit and wisdom.
Mark Morris Dance Group’s beloved reimagining of The Nutcracker—a lavish, gender-bent love letter that playfully preserves the warm spirit of an essential holiday tradition—returns to BAM for the holidays.