Peter Brook

United Kingdom (Great Britain)

Brook was born in London in March 1925, the son of Simon Brook and his wife Ida (Jansen), two Jewish immigrants. He was educated at Gresham's School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He directed Dr Faustus, his first production, in 1943 at the Torch Theatre in London, followed at the Chanticleer Theatre in 1945 with a revival of The Infernal Machine. 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. His work there included a highly controversial staging of Strauss’ Salome with sets by Salvador Dalí and also an effective re-staging of Puccini’s La Boheme using sets dating from 1899. A proliferation of stage and screen work as producer and director followed. In 1951, Brook married the actress Natasha Parry; the couple have a 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. In 2008 he made the decision to resign as artistic director of Bouffes du Nord, handing over to Olivier Mantei and Olivier Poubelle in 2008. His work is inspired by the theories of experimental theatre of Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht, Chris Covics, Meyerhold, G. I. Gurdjieff and the works of Edward Gordon Craig and Stuart Davis,[citation needed] as well as Matila Ghyka Brook was influenced by the work of Antonin Artaud and his ideas for his Theatre of Cruelty. His major influence however was Joan Littlewood. In the mid 1970s, Brook, with writer Jean-Claude Carrière, began work on adapting the Indian epic poem the Mahābhārata 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. 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 as A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokar). 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.