Brook, Peter definition of Brook, Peter in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Brook, Peter, 1925–, English theatrical director, b. London. An innovative, unconventional, and controversial figure, Brook mounts energetic productions in which the entire stage is utilized and realistic sets are banished in favor of bold, abstract, and austere settings. His approach is extremely physical, and he often has his actors sing, play musical instruments, and perform acrobatics. His production of Love's Labour's Lost (1946) began his long association with what became in 1961 the Royal Shakespeare Company Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), a British repertory theater. The company, established in 1960, was based on the earlier Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. It is a national theater supported by government funds.
..... Click the link for more information. . Subsequent Shakespearean productions included Measure for Measure (1950), Titus Andronicus (1955), King Lear (1962), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970), which was set in a kind of adult playground with trapezes, stilts, and spinning plates. Other Brook productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company included his famous staging of Peter Weiss Weiss, Peter (pā`tər vīs), 1916–82, German-Swedish dramatist, novelist, film director, and painter.
..... Click the link for more information. 's Marat/Sade (1964), a play within a play set in the insane asylum housing the Marquis de Sade that examines both revolution and madness, and US (1966), an attack on U.S. involvement in Vietnam. During the 1960s, Brook's productions were influenced both by the shock tactics of Antonin Artaud Artaud, Antonin (äNtônăN` ärtō`), 1896–1948, French poet, actor, and director.
..... Click the link for more information. and the analytical detachment of Bertolt Brecht Brecht, Bertolt (bĕr`tôlt brĕkht), 1898–1956, German dramatist and poet, b. Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht.
..... Click the link for more information. .

Brook has also directed films, such as Moderato Cantabile (1960), Lord of the Flies (1963), and King Lear (1971); and operas, such as Faust and Eugene Onegin. In the 1970s, he founded the International Center of Theatre Research in Paris, an assembly of actors, dancers, musicians, and other performers of many nationalities. Their most recognized achievement was a nine-hour presentation of the Indian epic The Mahabharata (1985). Since then Brook has created a variety of other theatrical works, such as a version of Oliver Sacks Sacks, Oliver Wolf, 1933–, American neurologist and author, b. London. Educated at Queens College, Oxford. In 1960 he emigrated to the United States where he continued his medical training.
..... Click the link for more information. 's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1994), a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni (1998), a streamlined Hamlet (2000), and Tierno Bokar (2005), a theater piece based on the life of a West African Sufi in the 1930s. His books on the theater include Empty Space (1969), The Shifting Point (1987), and The Open Door (1995).

Bibliography

See his autobiographical Threads of Time (1998); Gregory Boyd, ed., Between Two Silences: Talking with Peter Brook (1999); biographies by J. C. Trewin (1971), A. Hunt and G. Reeves (1995), and M. Kustow (2005).