Brooke redefined the way we think about theater with his productions at Stratford’s Royal Shakespeare Company. at Bouffes du Nord, the dilapidated Parisian musical that has made its home base for more than 30 years. in African villages, where his actors improvised performances. and in the scenes, both grand and modest, visited by his globetrotting ensemble. Many of his productions were noted for stripping the theater of the superfluous and distilling the drama to its essentials, presented with a clear eye and elegant touch. Brook’s landmark 1970 RSC version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, influenced by both Jerome Robbins’ ballet and Peking circus, was performed on a white cube set and featured tables, stilts and a forest of steel wire. In other revealing Shakespeare productions, he directed John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, Adrian Lester and Natasha Parry, to whom Brook was married. His productions were noted for their diversity, with Brooke pioneering what he called “rich in color,” as opposed to “colorblind” casting. He also directed musicals, staged a protest play against the Vietnam War, created an experimental version of the Prometheus myth with Ted Hughes and, in a French quarry in 1985, staged a famous nine-hour version of the Mahabharata. He returned to the Sanskrit epic with the 2016 production Battlefield, staged with his longtime collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne. One of theater’s most visionary and influential thinkers, he wrote several publications, including The Empty Space (1968), the opening of which outlined his vision: “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks through this empty space, while someone else watches him, and that’s all it takes for a play to deal with it.” Kenneth Tynan said Brook’s work was for the “theatrical gourmet” because he “cooks with cream, blood and spices”. Brook also worked in film, including an adaptation of Lord of the Flies in 1963, and in opera, directing radically outdated productions of Carmen and The Magic Flute. Revolutionary … Peter Brook’s RSC production of King Lear starring Paul Scofield, with Diana Rigg as Cordelia. Photo: Angus McBean/Ullstein Bild via Getty Images He was born in London on March 21, 1925 and, at the age of seven, performed a four-hour version of Hamlet by himself for his parents. After studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, he soon found himself at the Royal Opera House, directing Richard Strauss’ Salome with designs by Salvador Dalí. He directed Olivier as Titus Andronicus at Stratford for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1955 and when Peter Hall became artistic director of the RSC in 1958 he asked Brook to assist him there. Brooke’s RSC productions included a 1962 staging of King Lear – the play he considered “the supreme achievement of world theatre” – starring Paul Schofield. Several of his plays received Broadway adaptations, including the groundbreaking Marat/Sade, which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1964. The idea for the show was that the Marquis de Sade was staging a drama about the French revolutionary Jean- Paul Marat played the inmates of a mental hospital. In 1970, Brook moved to Paris where he founded the International Center for Theater Research. The company visited Africa where its actors gave performances that “didn’t use anything that corresponded to the theater of the time – we wanted to play to an audience that didn’t depend on anything. We wouldn’t do, even experimentally, a play with a text or a theme or a name.” In 1974, he transformed a neglected music hall located behind the Gare du Nord station into a must-see destination for theater lovers: the Bouffes du Nord. The ruined building had only undergone minimal renovation, so its walls remained as charred as when Brook found them. He opened the theater with a production of Timon of Athens and the applause brought pieces from the ceiling. Peter Brook directs Mahabharata at the Theater des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. Photo: Julio Donoso/Sygma via Getty Images The Man Who, which premiered in Paris in 1993, was inspired by neurologist Oliver Sacks’ book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which reexamined the disorders of Sacks’ patients. Brooke’s own neurological research led to his piece The Valley of Astonishment, about synaesthesia, co-created with Estienne and performed at the Young Vic in London with Kathryn Hunter among the cast. Brooke directed Scofield and Lester as Hamlet for the screen as well as the stage, and his Mahabharata was also made into an epic television series. He was made a CBE in 1965 and an Honorary Companion in 1998. The Prisoner was produced in Paris and at the Edinburgh Festival and at the National Theater in London in 2018. This spring, he returned to work on the Tempest Project, adapted and directed by Estienne. In a 2017 interview with Michael Billington, Brook spoke of how important it is to “swim against the tide and achieve as much as we can in our chosen field. Fate dictated that mine was in the theater and, within that, I have a responsibility to be as positive and creative as I can. Giving way to despair is the ultimate cop out.” Brooke married the actress Natasha Parry in 1951 and they had two children, Irina and Simon, who both became theater directors. Paris died in 2015.
