Peter Brook was born in London in 1925. Throughout his career he has distinguished himself in different genres: theatre, opera, cinema and writing.
He has staged many plays, mostly by Shakespeare for the Royal Shakespeare Company, such as Love Labour's Lost (1946), Measure for Measure (1950), Titus Andronicus (1955), King Lear (1962), Marat/Sade (1964), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970) and Antony and Cleopatra (1978).
In 1971, Peter Brook founded the International Centre for Theatrical Research (CIRT) in Paris, which, with the opening of the Bouffes du Nord became the International Centre for Theatrical Creation (CICT). His productions stand out by their iconoclastic aspects and their international stature: Timon of Athens (1974), The Iks (1975), The Bone (1979), The Mahabharata (1985), The Cherry Orchard (1989), Woza Albert! (1989), The Tempest (1990), The Man who (1993), Who’s there? (1995), Oh! Les Beaux Jours (1995), I am a Phenomenon (1998), Le Costume (1999), The Tragedy of Hamlet (2000), Far Away (2002), Krishna’s Death (2002), Your Hand in Mine (2003), Tierno Bokar (2004), The Grand Inquisitor (2005), Sizwe Banzi is dead (2006), Fragments by Samuel Beckett (2007), Eleven and Twelve after Amadou Hampaté Ba (2009) and The Suit (the English and musical version of Le Costume, 2012). He has directed several operas: La Bohème (1948), Boris Godunov (1948), Les Olympes (1949), Salomé (1949) and The Marriage of Figaro (1949) at the London Covent Garden (United Kingdom), Faust (1953), Eugene Onegin (1957) at the New York Metropolitan (United States), The Tragedy of Carmen (1981) and Impressions of Pelleas (1992) at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, and Don Giovanni (1998) for the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. With Marie-Hélène Estienne and Franck Krawczyk, he produced A Magic Flute after Mozart and Schikaneder as part of the Festival d’Automne in Paris (2010), The Valley of Astonishment (2013) and Battlefield (2015), all at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord theatre.
His major books are The Empty Space (1968), Points de Suspension (1987), Boredom is the Devil (1991), With Shakespeare (1998), To forget the Time (2003), With Grotowski (2009) and The Quality of Forgiving (2014). Peter Brook also directed films Moderato Cantabile (1959), His Majesty of the Flies (1963), Marat/Sade (1967) and The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002).
AT THE FESTIVAL
MEETINGS WITH THE PUBLIC
Conversation with PETER BROOK and MARIE-HÉLÈNE ESTIENNE
November 24th, 5.30PM
Teatro Nacional D. Maria II
(to be confirmed)