The British death, Peter Brook, the legend of theater and one of the most prominent stage directors of the twentieth century, was absent, as he died Saturday at the age of 97, according to what people close to him told AFP.
This great playwright, who was born in Britain and spent a large part of his artistic career in France, where he founded the theater “Les Buffs du Nord”, was distinguished as a renewal in the art of theater directing, freeing it from traditional decorations.
He also gained fame thanks to his 1963 film version of “Lord of the Flies,” about students stranded on an uninhabited island and trying to govern themselves, but the results are disastrous.
Brooke is best known in Britain for being a young director who directed radical and sometimes gory works based on classics, including works by Shakespeare, while working with actors who would later become legends.
Brooke’s most famous plays is the Mahabharata, a nine-hour epic of Hindu mythology (1985), which premiered at the Avignon Festival and was adapted for cinema in 1989.
However, his methods underwent a gradual transformation after he moved to France in the early seventies, where he established the “International Center for Theater Research” in the “Théatre de Boeuf de Nord” and was influenced by oriental traditions.
After a career that lasted more than 35 years, Peter Brook left the theater “Boeuf du Nord” in 2010 when he was 85 years old, while he continued to perform there until recently.
“Peter Brooke gave us the most beautiful silence in the theatre, but this last silence is very sad,” French Culture Minister Rima Abdel-Malik said on Twitter.
She added that he bequeathed us a lot, noting that he will remain “forever the spirit” of the Boeuf de Nord theater in northern Paris, where his works were shown.
Influenced by Brock’s tactics, London Theater founder and artistic director Simon McBurney praised the late director on Twitter as “a visionary, provocateur, prophet, deceiver and friend”.