SAO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS) — Peter Brook, one of the most influential theater directors of the 20th century, died this Saturday (2), at the age of 97.
An artist with experience in opera, film and theater criticism, he has led institutions such as the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and the Royal Shakespeare Theater in the United Kingdom.
Brooke also took his work to the countries of the African continent and the Middle East, where he produced a variety of improvised pieces, original and marked by a challenging approach.
His concept of “empty space” consolidated into the title of his 1968 book influenced later generations by advocating for theatrical staging and greater approximation among the public, which was understood by the stage to the directors. The idea was to remove the montage of everything to highlight what was being staged.
For example, his version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was famous, in which actors walked on stilts and were hung from trapeze. One of his most famous staging was “Mahabharata”, a nine-hour epic of Hindu mythology created in 1985 and adapted for film in 1989.
The artist lived in Paris for 50 years. There he founded and directed the International Center for Theater Research.
Born in London in 1925 to Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, he signed his first production at the age of 17 and spent much of his career directing plays at the Paris Théâtre Les Bouffes du Nord, which had been organized by the French government since the 1990s. Considered a historical monument. ,
Brooke left directing the institution in 2010 at the age of 85, but continued to sign productions. In 2019, she was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts in Spain, as the “master of the generation”.
