-
Peter Stephen Paul Brook was born in London in March 1925, the son of Simon Brook and his wife Ida (Jansen), two Jewish immigrants.
-
He directed Dr Faustus, his first production, in 1943 at the Torch Theatre in London
-
Directet at the Chanticleer Theatre in 1945 with a revival of The Infernal Machine
-
-
-
An anti-Vietnam protest play with The Royal Shakespeare Company, documented in the film Benefit of the Doubt
-
-
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.[1] 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.[2]
-
Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1971
-
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. 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 epic
-
TV
-
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.
