Briton Peter Brook, theater legend and one of the most influential directors of the 20th century, died on Saturday July 2 at the age of 97, we learned on Sunday from his entourage.
Peter Brook, who died on Saturday at the age of 97, was with Constantin Stanislavski the most influential director of the 20th century and to whom we owe the theater as we know it today. The steely blue-eyed master, born in Great Britain, whose nationality he had despite spending much of his career in France, reinvented the art of the stage by going beyond traditional forms and returning fundamentals: an actor in front of his audience.
Often compared to Stanislavski (1863-1938) who had revolutionized acting, Peter Brook is the theorist of “empty space”, a kind of bible for the world of the theater, published for the first time in 1968. I can take any empty space and call it a stage, he writes. Someone walks through this empty space while someone else watches, and that’s enough to get the theatrical act started. “: these famous first lines will become a “manifesto” for an alternative and experimental theater.
His most famous piece is The Mahabharataa nine-hour epic from Hindu mythology (1985), adapted for the cinema in 1989. He created it in France, where he settled in the early 1970s and where he founded the International Center for Theatrical Research, in an Italian-style theater about to be demolished, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.
It unleashes passions
Born in London on March 21, 1925, this son of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants made his first production at the age of 17. If he dreams of cinema, he quickly heads for the theater. At 20, an Oxford graduate, he was already a professional director and, two years later, his productions in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, unleashed passions. At 30, he is already directing big hits on Broadway. For the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), he staged numerous texts from Bardwhich is for him ” the filter through which the experience of life passes “.
His Marat/Sade fascinated London and New York and earned him a Tony Award in 1966. But at the end of the 1960s, after forty theatrical successes in which he directed the greatest, from Laurence Olivier to Orson Welles, Brook claimed to have ” exhausted the possibilities of conventional theater and enters an experimental period. For many, his astonishing production of Dream of a summer night (1970) for the RSC in a white cube-shaped gymnasium was a turning point.
An increasingly stripped down style
In a constant quest for authenticity, he traveled to Africa, Iran or the United States and carried out experimental work there focusing on the ” deconditioning of the actor and the relationship to the viewer. He brings back from his travels anthology shows such as The Iks (1975), The Bird Conference (1979) or The Mahabharata. Throughout the creations, (Timon of Athens (1974), Measure for Measure (1978), The Cherry Orchard (nineteen eighty one), Storm (1990), The man who (1993), Hamlet (2000) or 11 and 12 (2009), he forges an increasingly pure and spare style.
In 1997, when he triumphed in the United Kingdom with Oh good days by Samuel Beckett, critics hail him as “ the best director London doesn’t have “. After an adventure of more than 35 years at the Bouffes du Nord, Peter Brook left the management of the theater in 2010, at the age of 85, while continuing to stage productions there. ” All my life, the only thing that has counted, and that’s why I work in the theater, is what lives directly in the present “, he then told AFP.
Operas and films
The charismatic director was shaken in 2015 by the death of his wife, actress Natasha Parry. “ We try to negotiate with fate by saying to it: “Just bring her back for 30 seconds”…”. In addition to plays, he has staged several operas such as The Magic Flute and directed a dozen films including Moderato Cantabile (1960) and His Majesty of the Flies (1963), both adapted from novels. Besides his faithful collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, he leaves behind two children, director Simon Brook and theater director Irina Brook.
(with AFP)
►Also read : With “The Prisoner” by Peter Brook, “I have never had so much freedom!” (March 15, 2018)