Although Brook has the aura of a sage, he rejects the kind of theater in which artists condescend to their audience by assuming superior knowledge. Such “pretension” offends him. It’s the problem he has with Brecht, whose “tremendous scenic talent” has been eclipsed by his theoretical writings. As for the influence of Artaud, Brook classified him with the modernist English theater artist Edward Gordon Craig “as visionaries who gave their life to try to say what meaningful theater could be,” even if they weren’t able to achieve it themselves in performance.