Peter+Brook

Peter Brook By: Maryam Carnahan

Peter Brook was born in Chiswick, west London, the second son of Simon and Ida Brook, and educated at Westminster School, Gresham’s school, Holt, and Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Gresham's he directed The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, and while at Oxford He also direct The Infernal Machine. In 1945 to 1950, he worked at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on productions of Man and superman, King John, and The lady from the sea. In 1946, his first London production the Vicious Circle. In 1947, he went to Stratford as an assistant director on Romeo and Juliet, and Love’s Labour’s lost. From 1947 to 1950, he was Director of Productions at the Convent Garden and also the Royal Opera House. Later on, in 1951, Peter Brook married an actress named Natasha Parry and together they had one son and one daughter. In 1964, in England, Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz took The Theatre of Cruelty Season, at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1970, with Micheline Rozan, , Brook founded the International Centre for Theatre Research, where multinational companies of actors, dancers, musicians and others which travelled widely in Africa and the Middle East., In the early 1970s. It is now based in Paris at the Bouffes du Nord theatre. In 2008 he made a decision to resign as artistic director of Bouffes du Nord, handing over to Olivier Mantei and Olivier Poubelle in 2011. Peter Brook's book “The Empty Space “was a highly influential piece of work. It consists of 4 parts, each describing a version of nature of theatre. The opening couple of sentences of his book are extremely widely quoted:”I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.”In 2005 Brook directed Tierno Bokar, based on the life of the Malian Sufi. The book and play detail Bokar's life and message of Religious tolerance. In 2008 he made a decision to resign as artistic director of Bouffes du Nord, handing over to Olivier Mantei and Olivier Poubelle in 2011.