Battlefield (NHB Modern Plays)

The devastation of war is tearing the Bharata family apart. The new king must unravel a mystery: how can he live with himself in the face of the devastation and massacres that he has caused. In Battlefield, the internationally renowned team of Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne and Jean-Claude Carrière revisit the great Indian epic The Mahabharata, thirty years after Brook's legendary production took world theatre by storm. An immense canvas in miniature, this central section of the ancient text is timeless and contemporary, asking how we can find inner peace in a world riven with conflict. It was first performed at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, in 2015, before an international tour including a run at the Young Vic Theatre, London, in 2016. 'Peter Brook's return to The Mahabharata is breathtaking - a dazzling piece of theatre' - Guardian 'An hour of magic realism... it has a gentle power that lingers' - The Times 'Delivered with remarkable grace and deceptive lightness of touch' - Financial Times 'Luminous and potent' - Independent 'Combines the immediacy of story-telling with the purity of Greek tragedy' - Sunday Express 'Something profound is felt on the pulse here... Peter Brook achieves rare magic, and with the slenderest art' - Telegraph

Marie-Hélène Estienne joined the Centre International de Créations Théâtrales (C.I.C.T.) in 1977. She was Peter Brook's assistant on La Tragédie de Carmen, Le Mahabharata, and collaborated on the staging of The Tempest, Impressions de Pelléas, Woza Albert! and La Tragédie d'Hamlet (2000). She co-authored L'homme qui and Je suis un phénomène performed at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. She wrote the French adaptation of Can Themba's play Le Costume, and Sizwe Banzi est mort by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona. In 2003, she wrote the French and English adaptations of Le Grand Inquisiteur (The Grand Inquisitor) based on Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov. She was the author of Tierno Bokar in 2005, and of the English adaptation of Eleven and Twelve by Amadou Hampâté Bâ in 2009. With Peter Brook, she co-directed Fragments, five short pieces by Beckett, and again with Peter Brook and composer Franck Krawczyk, she freely adapted Mozart and Schikaneder's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) into Une flûte enchantée. She co-created The Suit in 2012 and The Valley of Astonishment in 2013, both performed at the Young Vic, London.