Just days before the opening of the Avignon Theater Festival (7-26 July), the announcement of the death of British theater teacher Peter Brook, one of the most influential directors of the 20th century, generates moving tributes in France. Brook died on Saturday (3) at the age of 97 in Paris, where he had lived for 50 years.
Just days before the opening of the Avignon Theater Festival (7-26 July), the announcement of the death of British theater teacher Peter Brook, one of the most influential directors of the 20th century, generates moving tributes in France. Brook died on Saturday (3) at the age of 97 in Paris, where he had lived for 50 years.
The British-born theater teacher, who spent much of his career in France directing the Parisian theater Les Bouffes du Nord, reinvented the art of theatrical direction by privileging a sober aesthetic on stage over traditional sets.
“Brook is much more than a theater director, he is a true legend,” said Oliver Py, director of the Avignon festival, the world’s biggest theatrical event, with emotion in his voice. “He applied Shakespeare’s formula to his life – the stage is a world and the world is a stage”, recalled the French playwright. “Long before diversity came into fashion, Brook, who was a citizen of the world, had people of all nationalities in his roster,” Py recalled.
The press reflects the death of Brook remembering important moments of his career. The newspaper release speaks of a director “with an immense work, marked by Shakespeare, theorist of a scenic writing without artifices, reduced to the quintessence of the text and almost without a setting”.
For the Le Monde“Brook takes with him one of the most important theatrical adventures of the second half of the 20th century, which made the theater a fabulous instrument for exploring the human being in all its dimensions, through legendary shows”.
On social media, admirers of the Briton post quotes from the director: “If we want to talk about the human being, we cannot reduce him to the white and bourgeois being of our societies”.
Born in London on March 21, 1925, to Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, Brook signed his first production at age 17. During his career, he directed important institutions such as the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, or the French Les Bouffes du Nord and the International Center for Theater Creations (CICT). He saved the Bouffes du Nord, which was destined for demolition, and left the site intact, with the walls peeling, incorporating the memory of those who passed through the room into his creations.
An artist with a background in opera, film and theater criticism, he settled in Paris in 1971. Often compared to Stanislavski (1863-1938) who revolutionized acting, Peter Brook is the theorist of “empty space”, a kind of bible for the world of theatre, first published in 1968.
“I can take any empty space and call it a stage. Someone crosses that empty space while another watches, and that’s enough to start the theatrical act”: these famous first lines became a “manifesto” for alternative and experimental theater .
“The actor is a creator”
His best-known work is “The Mahabharata”, a nine-hour epic of Hindu mythology created in 1985 and first performed in Avignon. The show was adapted for film in 1989.
In the theater he directed actors such as Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles.
“The actor who is a true creator (…) explored aspects of his character (…) despite being constantly forced, by the honesty of his research, to divest himself of what he has and start all over again”, he said. the british. “In theatre, until the audience is present, the object is not finished,” he recalled.
After an adventure spanning more than 35 years at the Bouffes du Nord, Peter Brook left the direction of the theater in 2010, aged 85, continuing to sign productions.
“The word that runs through all my experience is touch. Nobody can define what it means, not even scientists, but you know when you are touched by something”, said the Briton, in a long interview with France Inter radio, in April. last year.
The charismatic director took a big hit in 2015 with the death of his wife, actress Natasha Parry. “We try to negotiate with fate by saying, ‘Bring her back for just 30 seconds…'”
In 2019, Peter Brook was honored in Spain with the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, as a “master of generations”. “Considered the best theater director of the 20th century”, Brook “opened new horizons in contemporary dramaturgy, by contributing decisively to the exchange of knowledge between cultures as different as those of Europe, Africa and Asia”, said the jury, justifying its decision. .