BROOK, PETER

born March 21, 1925, London, Eng. in full Peter Stephen Paul Brook English producer-director of Shakespeare's plays whose daring productions of other dramatists contributed significantly to the development of the 20th century's avant-garde stage. Attaining at an early age the status of one of the foremost British directors, Brook introduced the plays of Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre (including Vicious Circle and Men Without Shadows) to England. After serving as director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London (194750), he returned to drama and directed, in the 1950s and early '60s, Shakespearean productions of Measure for Measure, Titus Andronicus, The Winter's Tale, and King Lear (1962; Royal Shakespeare Company). Influenced by the tenets of the Theatre of Cruelty proposed by Antonin Artaud, he produced Jean Genet's work The Screens and, ultimately, in 1964, Peter Weiss's sensational play commonly called Marat/Sade, whose unconventional style and staging shocked the theatre world and won him international fame. His 1967 direction of the film version of the play proved an additional success. In 1968 Brook produced Seneca's Oedipus and published The Empty Space, which put forth his ideas on theatre. Believing that the director is, above all, a play's chief creative force, he adopted some of the innovative techniques advocated by the experimental Polish director Jerzy Grotowski and the American director Julian Beck, founder of the Living Theatre. Later major productions include Timon of Athens (Paris, 1974), Ubu Roi (Paris, 1977), and Antony and Cleopatra (Stratford, London, 1978). Brook has also written and directed such films as The Lord of the Flies (1963), King Lear (1971), Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), and The Mahabharata (1989), based on the ancient Indian epic poem. From 1971 he worked with the International Centre of Theatre Research, which he founded. Associated with Britain's Royal Shakespeare Theatre from 1962, Brook served as a producer and codirector. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1998.