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Peter Brook
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Everything about Peter Brook totally explainedPeter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE (born 21 March 1925) is a British theatre and film director and innovator.
Life
Born in Chiswick, west London, in 1925, the second son of Simon and Ida Brook, Peter Brook was educated at Westminster School, Gresham's School, Holt, and Magdalen College, Oxford.
While at Gresham's he took part in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, and while at Oxford The Infernal Machine. In 1945–1946, he worked at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on productions of Man and Superman, King John, and The Lady from the Sea. In 1946, his first London production was Vicious Circle. In 1947, he went to Stratford-upon-Avon as assistant director on Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's Lost. From 1947 to 1950, he was Director of Productions at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. A proliferation of stage and screen work as producer and director followed.
In 1951, Brook married the actress Natasha Parry, and they've one son and one daughter.
In 1970, with Micheline Rozan, Brook founded the International Centre for Theatre Research, a multinational company of actors, dancers, musicians and others which travelled widely in the Middle East and Africa in the early 1970s. It is now based in Paris at the Bouffes du Nord theatre. You can hear a recording of his voice on TheatreVoice.
Influences
His work is inspired by the theories of experimental theatre of Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht, Meyerhold, G. I. Gurdjieff and the works of Edward Gordon Craig and Stuart Davis.
Brook was influenced by the work of Antonin Artaud and his ideas for a Theatre of Cruelty.
In England, at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz undertook The Theatre of Cruelty Season in 1964, aiming to explore ways in which Artaud's ideas could be used to find new forms of expression and retrain the performer. The result was a showing of 'works in progress' made up of improvisations and sketches, one of which was the premier of Artaud's The Spurt of Blood
The Empty Space
Peter Brook's book The Empty Space was a highly influential piece of work. It consists of 4 parts, each describing a version of the notion and nature of theatre. Each section is an adaptation of a speech he gave at various Universities. For this reason this book has an accessible, fluid tone.
The opening couple of sentences are extremely widely quoted:
I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
This quote has become something of a mantra for practitioners of site-specific theatre, and also for those working with devising.
The Empty Space strips theatre down to the bare bones of what performance is, rejecting the necessity for traditional theatre spaces, elements or forms in themselves, and placed a huge emphasis on the direct relationship between actor and audience. These ideas are shared with Jerzy Grotowski.
The Mahabharata
In the mid 1970s, Brook, with writer Jean-Claude Carrière, began work on adapting the Indian epic poem the Mahabharata into a stage play which was first performed in 1985 and then later into a televised mini series. The production using an international cast caused heated intercultural debate. Negative criticism came from Indian scholar Pradip Bhattacharya who felt that Brook's interpretation "was not a portrayal of a titanic clash between the forces of good and evil, which is the stuff of the epic... [but] the story of the warring progeny of some rustic landlord".
Tierno Bokar
In 2005 Brook directed Tierno Bokar, based on the life of the Malian sufi of the same name. The play was adapted for the stage by Marie-Helene Estienne from a book by Amadou Hampate Ba (translated into English under ). The book and play detail Bokar's life and message of religious tolerance. Columbia University produced 44 related events, lectures, and workshops that were attended by over 3,200 people throughout the run of Tierno Bokar. Panel discussions focused on topics of religious tolerance and Muslim tradition in West Africa.
Major productions for the RSC
Other major productions
Hamlet with Paul Scofield
The Visit with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne
Marat/Sade
Oedipus with John Gielgud and Irene Worth
The Conference of the Birds
The Ik
The Mahabharata
Films
1953, The Beggar's Opera
1960, Moderato cantabile (UK title Seven Days... Seven Nights)
1963, Lord of the Flies
1967, Ride of the Valkyrie
1967, Marat/Sade
1968, Tell Me Lies
1971, King Lear
1979, Meetings with Remarkable Men
1979, Mesure pour mesure
1982, La Cerisaie
1983, La Tragédie de Carmen
1989, The Mahabharata
2002, The Tragedy of Hamlet (TV)
Awards
Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Marat/Sade, 1966
Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1971
Freiherr von Stein Foundation Shakespeare Award, 1973
Grand Prix Dominique, 1975
Brigadier Prize, 1975, for Timon of Athens)
Society of West End Theatre Award, 1983
Emmy Award, 1984, for La tragédie Carmen)
Prix Italia, 1984
International Emmy Award, 1990, for The Mahabharata
Dan David prize, 2005
Honours
Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 1965
Honorary DLitt, University of Birmingham, 1990
Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1991
Honorary DLitt, University of Strathclyde, 1990
Honorary DLitt, University of Oxford, 1994
Légion d'honneur (France), 1995
Companion of Honour, 1998
Books
Further Information
Get more info on 'Peter Brook'.
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