Peter Brook & Marie-Hélène Estienne 
The Prisoner (NHB Modern Plays) 

Somewhere in the world, a man sits alone outside a prison. Who is he, and why is he there? Is it a choice, or a punishment?
With The Prisoner, the internationally renowned theatre director Peter Brook and his long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne ask provocative and profound questions about justice, guilt, redemption – and what it means to be free.
The Prisoner opened at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, in March 2018, before an international tour which included performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, the National Theatre of Great Britain, and Theatre for a New Audience in New York.
'The most pioneering theatre director of the twentieth century’ Independent on Peter Brook
'Only its mystery equals the simplicity of this strange fable’ – Le Monde
'The force of the show lies precisely in its ellipses, the empty spaces it offers to our emotions, sensations and to our intelligence’ – Télérama
'During one hour and fifteen minutes, the Earth stops spinning at its maddening speed, to allow Brook to whisper in our ear one of his beautiful universal stories’ – Les Echoes
'The work of an artist for whom the human heart has no secrets and who knows the revealing and consoling force of theatre’ – Le Figaroscope

O autorze

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.