Peter Brook, one of the finest theater directors of the 20th century, passed away on Saturday. His ambitious, risk-taking and constantly inventive stage work spanned seven decades on both sides of the Atlantic. He was 97.
His son Simon acknowledged his passing but did not provide any other information.
The director Peter Hall once referred to Peter as the “quester,” or the one who is constantly exploring new territory and seeking out the truth in the theater. “He is the greatest innovator of his generation,” he continued.
Other names for Mr. Brook included maverick, romantic, and classicist. But he refused to be boxed in.
His extremely innovative Broadway productions of Peter Weiss’ “Marat/Sade” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” won him Tony Awards in 1966 and 1971.
He is British by nationality but has been based in Paris since 1970. He produced entertaining productions like “Irma La Douce” and “A View From the Bridge” by Arthur Miller.
Shakespeare, Shaw, Beckett, Cocteau, Sartre, and Chekhov all went well under his direction.
Additionally, he brought out the best in actors like Glenda Jackson, Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud, Paul Scofield, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne.
But he was also a risk-taker and an experimenter. In 1987, he brought a breathtaking nine-hour production of the Sanskrit epic “The Mahabharata” to New York from France.
With “The Man Who,” a stark staging of Oliver Sacks’s neurological case studies, he took a similar approach in 1995.
When he was 86 years old in 2011, he performed Mozart’s “Magic Flute” in a very identically scaled-down performance at the Lincoln Center Festival.
Over the course of his lengthy and well-regarded career, Mr. Brook staged approximately 100 productions. He was restless and unpredictable.
How did Peter Brook Die?
Petre Brooks died at the age of 97. His death was confirmed by his son. He did not state his cause of death.
