Peter Brook
1925 – 2022
RIP
There is little that I could write about the towering figure of post-war British theatre that was Peter Brook that could not – and will not – be far better addressed elsewhere. His influence on the theatre was immense, even once he had retreated to Paris and was less frequently seen in the UK. Sadly I was too young to catch the productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company that cemented his reputation (the which famously included ground-breaking productions of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream‘ and ‘Marat/Sade‘) and I only saw the filmed version of ‘The Mahabharata‘.
Brook was – of course – not only a theatre practitioner, but also a teacher, a thinker and a writer on the subject of the noble arts. Theatre students today would do just as well to seek out his many books. A quick hunt around my shelves reveals copies of ‘The Shifting Point‘, ‘There are no Secrets‘, ‘The Tip of the Tongue‘ and – of course – ‘The Empty Space‘ – without which I would not be.
A sad loss to the theatre and to the world.
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