Peter Stephen Paul Brook

 

Born: 21 March 1925 in the Turnham Green area of Chiswick, London.

Died: Unknown.

 

 

Peter Stephen Paul Brook, CH, CBE, is an English theatre and film director who has been based in France since the early 1970s. He has won multiple Tony and Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Prix Italia. He has been called "our greatest living theatre director".

 

With the Royal Shakespeare Company, Brook directed the first English language production of Marat/Sade in 1964. It transferred to Broadway in 1965 and won the Tony Award for Best Play, and Brook was named Best Director.

 

Early life:

Brook was born in the Turnham Green area of Chiswick, London, the second son of Simon Brook and his wife Ida (Jansen), both Jewish immigrants from Latvia. The family home was at 27 Fairfax Road, Turnham Green. His elder brother was the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Alexis Brook (1920-2007). His first cousin was Valentin Pluchek, chief director of the Moscow Satire Theatre. Brook was educated at Westminster School, Gresham's School, and Magdalen College, Oxford.

 

Career:

He directed Dr. Faustus, his first production, in 1943 at the Torch Theatre in London, followed at the Chanticleer Theatre in 1945 with a revival of The Infernal Machine. In 1947, he went to Stratford-upon-Avon as assistant director on Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's Lost. From 1947 to 1950, he was Director of Productions at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. His work there included a highly controversial staging of Strauss' Salome with sets by Salvador Dalí, and an effective re-staging of Puccini's La Boheme using sets dating from 1899. A proliferation of stage and screen work as producer and director followed. Dark of the Moon by Howard Richardson (1948–49), at the Ambassadors Theatre, London, was a much early admired production.

 

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 has been based in Paris at the Bouffes du Nord theatre since 1974. 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.

 

In the autumn of 1942 Brook directed a production of Marlow’s Doctor Faustus at the Torch Theatre in Oxford. He states in his memoir Threads of Time that he had earlier come across a copy of Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice in a Charing Cross bookshop, and had become fascinated with its descriptions of the potential powers which might be developed by practitioners of the occult arts. Brook contacted Crowley and asked him to serve as the technical advisor for the production. Crowley agreed, and Brook spent several weeks working with Crowley. Brook records an account of Crowley watching the rehearsal from the back of the stalls, and reacting when Faustus began his invocation: “No! No, no! You need a bowl of bull’s blood. That’ll bring real spirits, I promise you! Even at a matinee!”

 

Brook took great delight in recalling how, when he was an undergraduate, he persuaded the notorious Crowley (then known as "the Wickedest Man in the World") to hide in his bedroom so that he could create a sensation by suddenly producing him at the height of a college party.

 

Aleister Crowley, & Peter Brook, A Program For Peter Brook’s Production Of Marlowe’s “The Tragedie of Doctor Faustus” (1942) annotated by Aleister Crowley who served as ‘magical advisor’ to the play. A single sheet, folded to make four pages, with the performance details on the first page, a list of characters and players on the second and third, and on the fourth three paragraphs on the-then state of the world, and on the history etc. of the play performed. “The Tragedie of Doctor Faustus” (1942) the first play directed by Peter Brook, was performed at the Torch Theatre, London, October 1-3, 1942. Crowley was brought in as ‘magical advisor’ and in addition to meeting with Brook attended dress rehearsals and of course the opening night. He wrote his opinion of the individual players next to each of their names in the program—this ranged from “Good Man” and “Good” to “Kill him!” and “Poison Him.” Included with the program is a photocopy of two typescript pages of Crowley’s unpublished diary for the period, in which he writes of his attendance at the play, meetings with Brook etc. A remarkable piece of theatrical history. Fine condition. (31700) $850.00

From — Weiser Antiquarian Books Catalog # 9.  Aleister Crowley: ‘The Old Devil.’

 

Influences:

Brook has been influenced by the work of Antonin Artaud and his ideas for his Theatre of Cruelty.

 

In England, Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz undertook The Theatre of Cruelty Season (1964) at the Royal Shakespeare Company, aiming to explore ways in which Artaud's ideas could be used to find new forms of expression and retrain the performer. The result was a showing of 'works in progress' made up of improvisations and sketches, one of which was the premier of Artaud's The Spurt of Blood.

 

His greatest influence, however, was Joan Littlewood. Brook described her as "the most galvanising director in mid-20th century Britain". Brook's work is also inspired by the theories of experimental theatre of Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht, Chris Covics and Vsevolod Meyerhold and by the works of G. I. Gurdjieff, Edward Gordon Craig, and Matila Ghyka.

 

Collaborators:

Brook has collaborated with a range of directors, writers and actors during his career, notable examples include actors Paul Scofield and Glenda Jackson; designer Georges Wakhévitch, and writers Ted Hughes and William Golding. Brook first encountered Wakhévitch in London when he saw the production of Jean Cocteau's ballet Le Jeune Homme et la Mort which Wakhévitch designed. Brook declared, he "was convinced that this was the designer for whom I had been waiting."