In his seminal 1968 work "The Empty Space," Peter Brook wrote: "Certainly, we still wish to capture in our arts the invisible currents that rule our lives, but our vision is now locked to the dark end of the spectrum. Today the theatre of doubting, of unease, of trouble, of alarm, seems truer than the theatre with a noble aim."
This vision of what theater should be has permeated Brook's work for decades, and is on full display in his production of "The Suit," which opens in Tokyo on Nov. 6.
"The Suit" takes audiences to the Johannesburg township of Sophiatown, which in the late 1940s and 1950s was a vibrant mix of ethnicities, political ideas, music and literature. In its shebeens, artists, thinkers and activists gathered for lively debates away from the racist eyes of South Africa's police.