Funding Peter Brook had previously been sponsored for limited periods by
Jean-Louis Barrault or the
RSC (at the
Roundhouse). Brook and Rozan acquired sufficient funding to sustain Brook's work for three years, working with a core company and several visiting collaborators. A budget of $1 million was established: $100,000 to set up the organization, and $300,000 for each year from 1971-1973. Money was raised from the French government and various international foundations (the
Ford Foundation, the
Gulbenkian Foundation and the
Anderson Foundation). Money also came from the government of
Iran in the form of a commission for a work at the
Shiraz/
Persepolis festival in 1971. Work was begun even though the full three-year budget was not secured at the outset.
1971 to 1974 This multinational assembly of actors, dancers, musicians and other performers travelled widely in the Middle East and Africa in the early 1970s. This was as a three-year 'pilgrimage' to answer the question "What were the common stories, the recognizable shorthands, the instant abstractions, the shared outlines of story and character with which an international group could work?" On this three-year sojourn, they produced two major works:
Orghast I & II, performed in 1971 at the
Shiraz Arts Festival in Iran in the
Achaemenid ruins of
Persepolis and
Naqsh-e Rostam, and
The Conference of the Birds, developed in
West Africa and completed in 1974 at
BAM in Brooklyn, New York.
Similar organisations • American Educational Theatre Association (1949), publishers of
Educational Theatre Journal, edited by
Barnard Hewitt • American Society for Theatre Research (1956), publishers of
Theatre Survey 1960 ==See also==