Hotel Methusaleh

Hotel Methuselah is a multimedia performance work combining live action and mediated images.

My principle research focus is on the performance of fictions. The research explores the way narrative fiction works scenographically, how the stage space can be `written' - sonically, visually and physically. The work involves new experiment in the possibilities of stage narrative placed in the context of contemporary performance. It extends, through performance practice, theoretical work by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on the phenomenological psychologist Sylvan Tomkins, with particular attention to the body, feeling and emotion within a developed theory of the mind.

Hotel Methuselah is an experiment in which new form and new forms of technology opens up hidden possibilities of older theatrical forms. It continues a direction in my recent work exploring the possibilities of new media in creating new kinds of narrative structures. It seeks to explore a multimedia landscape within which emotionally engaging narratives are structured to deconstruct traditional narrative form while retaining it as the primary compositional strategy. This research reinvestigates naturalism in the context of a post-modern Scenography.

Peter Brooks

Research Interests

Contemporary Performance Design and Practice
The relationship between Design and Dramaturgy.
Post Dramatic Dramaturgies
Current Research
My current Research is practice based, and focuses on developing and understanding the dramaturgical opportunities offered by the use of new media (in particular digital film) within live performance.