Peter Brook

Peter Brook (1925- ), English stage and film director, recognized for his innovative contributions to the development of 20th-century theatre. He was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford. Brook's success as a director began at a young age with stagings in London in his late teens. He directed the English actor Alec Guinness in Vicious Circle (1945) and the English actors Paul Scofield and John Gielgud in Venice Preserv'd (1953). He became a director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962. Brook successfully utilized the experimental theories of the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, the Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold, and the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, among others, in addition to the Theatre of Cruelty concept of the French writer and actor Antonin Artaud. His noted productions include Marat/Sade (1964; film 1967), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970), and the film Lord of the Flies (1963).

In 1970 Brook founded the International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris to explore the fundamentals of historical and worldwide drama. His international company presented experimental productions of Ubu Roi, The Ik, and The Conference of Birds (a Persian fable) in the 1970s, and in 1983 La Tragédie de Carmen, a version of the opera as theatre. In 2000 he aroused controversy by cutting and rearranging the text of Hamlet in a production at the Bouffes Du Nord Theatre, Paris; and in 2001 he brought Le Costume ('The Suit'), based on a short story by the South African writer Can Themba, to London’s Young Vic. He has written a number of books detailing his productions and theories, including the influential volume The Empty Space (1968). In 1998, the year in which he published his memoir, Threads of Time, he was made a Companion of Honour.