Theater: Peter Brook, legend of the theater, has died

Pietro Ruscelloone of the most creative and controversial stage managers in postwar Britain, died at the age of 97.

Born in London, the son of Jewish immigrants, his theatrical productions, performed by some of the theater’s most illustrious actors, fascinated and shocked audiences.

His career has spanned Shakespearean comedies, Broadway musicals and films, including an adaptation of Lord of the Flies.

Brook, who had lived in France since 1974, died Saturday in Paris, relatives reported.

break conventions

He did not have a theatrical background, but after studying at Oxford University his talent was soon discovered. Already at the age of 20 he had a reputation for being the great “terrible old boy” of the British scene.

In the decades that followed, Brook made his mark on theater, breaking many established conventions.

He spent most of his career in France at the helm of the Parisian theater Les Bouffes du Nord and reinvented the art of directing, favoring sober forms over traditional sets.

In 2019 Brook received the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts in Spain, for his status as “master of generations” and for being “one of the great innovators of the performing arts, with productions of high aesthetic and social commitment”.

Brook caught up with youn legendary status in the theaterat the height of creators such as the Russian Konstantin Stanislavsky, and continued in the tables beyond his 90s and despite the vision problems he suffered in his later years.

His best known piece is “The Mahabharata”, nine epic hours of hindu mythologycreated in 1985 and adapted to the cinema in 1989.

In his words, he inherited from his parents the passion for experimentation and in this way “exhausted the possibilities of conventional theater”, evolving to create radical and sometimes bloody versions of classical works.

This desire to innovate leads him to settle in Paris in the 70s and during his career, in addition to theater, he engages in opera, cinema and theater criticism.

His first film was the film adaptation of William Golding’s novel “Lord of the Flies” in 1963.

During his career he went on to lead important institutions such as the British Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and the Royal Shakespeare Theater, or the French Les Bouffes du Nord and the International Center for Theatrical Creations (CICT).

In the theater he directed actors such as the English Laurence Olivier and the American Orson Welles and the French actress Jeanne Moreau.

His motto was the search for authenticity and during his career he traveled to Africa, Iran and the United States, among other places, to develop his experimental works on the “deconditioning” of the actor and his relationship with the viewer.

At the age of 92, he wrote and starred in the creation “The Prisoner”, which tells the true story of his spiritual journey to Afghanistan, shortly before the Soviet invasion to shoot the film “Encounters with Extraordinary Men” in 1978.

By awarding him the Princess of Asturias Award for the arts, the jury wrote that Brook “has opened new horizons for contemporary theater, making a decisive contribution to the exchange of knowledge between cultures as diverse as those of Europe, Africa and Asia. “.

French Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, paid tribute to him after his death on Twitter, saying that in his career he has “purified the scene to its most vivid intensity”.

“Peter Brook has given us some of the most beautiful silences in the theater, but this last silence is infinitely sad,” he said.

With information from AFP and ANSA

POS / DD