A Potted Biography of Peter Brook
Life of One of Most Influential Living European Theatre Directors
Sep 14, 2009
Peter Stephen Paul Brook was born on March 2, 1925 in London to Latvian parents who had escaped from Belgium just before it was invaded by Germany. Brook was fascinated by theatre and films from an early age; he directed a four-hour production of Hamlet on a toy stage at the age of seven. In 1942 he began a degree in English literature and foreign languages at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he founded the Oxford University Film Society.
Early Theatre Work
He directed Marlowe’s Dr Faustus at the Torch Theatre in London in 1942. In 1946, he became the youngest-ever director for the Stratford-upon-Avon Festival. He worked for a few London companies after this, but then returned to Stratford in 1947 to direct Romeo and Juliet on a bare, orange stage with stark white lighting and drastic cuts to the text.
In 1949, Brook was appointed Director of Productions at Covent Garden. He directed Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in Titus Andronicus in 1955 and John Gielgud in The Tempest in 1957 in Stratford. In 1962, Brook completed his film of Lord of the Flies with a cast of children and returned to Stratford to direct Paul Scofield in King Lear, his first production for the newly-formed Royal Shakespeare Company.
Royal Shakespeare Company
At the RSC, Brook conducted experimental work with a small group of actors under the Artaud-influenced title Theatre of Cruelty. The group went on to create productions of Peter Weiss’s Marat-Sade in 1964 and US in 1966. US was a reaction to the Vietnam war and was put together in four months, including two weeks of exercises led by Polish director Jerzy Grotowski whom Brook had brought to England to help with the production.
Brook gave a series of lectures in 1968 that were published as The Empty Space; still essential reading for anyone studying or creating theatre. In August 1970, his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened in Stratford, which has become one of the most famous Shakespeare productions of the twentieth century. With this impressive and original production, Brook bid his farewell not only to the RSC but also to Britain.
Move To France
In 1970, Brook moved to France where he set up the International Centre for Theatre Research (CIRT). Brook put together a company of actors from different parts of the world with very different cultural backgrounds, methods of training and approaches to performance. The first production from this group was Orghast in 1971 that reworked the Prometheus myth with a script by poet Ted Hughes. In December 1972, Brook took his actors on an 8500-mile trek around Africa, experimenting with different types of stories and methods of performance to groups of people in remote areas.
In 1974, the company moved into the run-down nineteenth century theatre the Bouffes du Nord on the outskirts of Paris, opening with Timon d’Athènes with a French text adapted from Shakespeare by Jean-Claude Carrière. The company’s work included such diverse productions as The Conference of the Birds in 1979 based on a twelfth century Sufi poem and La Tragédie de Carmen in 1981. In 1985, Brook directed The Mahabharata, a nine-hour production based on the epic Sanskrit poem that forms the heart of Hindu mythology.
Recent Work
Brook and his company have continued to produce fresh new work and fresh productions of older works, particularly Shakespeare. In 1993, his company created L’Homme Qui (The Man Who), based on the real-life case studies of psychologist Oliver Sacks. In December 2000, his Hamlet with British actor Adrian Lester in the title role made a big impact on Paris and London audiences. Now in his eighties, Brook shows little sign of wanting to retire.
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