Biography
Born in Chiswick, West London on the 21st of March 1925, Peter Brook enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing. The second son of Simon and Ida Brook, Peter performed his first version of Shakespeare's Hamlet for his parents at the age of seven, uncut and with himself in all of the roles. This was only the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the stage.
Throughout his schooling at such auspicious institutions as Westminster, Gresham's School and Magdalen College, Oxford, the young Brook took part in many theatrical productions. In 1947 he moved to Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon to take up the position of Assistant Director on productions of Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's Lost. His impressive work on these productions led to his appointment as Director of Productions at the Royal Opera House in Covent Gardens, a position he held for three years from 1947-1950.
Brook directed his first film, The Beggar's Opera, in 1953. The film was based on an eighteenth-century operetta by John Gay and starred Lawrence Olivier. Brook's second film was Moderato Cantabile (1960), a drama based on the play by Margherite Duras and starring Jeanne Moreau. The film was critically acclaimed, with Moreau winning Best Actress at Cannes, where the film was also nominated for the Palme d'Or. The follow-up to this success story was the allegorical Lord of the Flies (1963), an adaptation of William Golding's novel of the same name. Brook used non-professional child actors and amateur cinematographers in the film and, like Moderate Cantabile, this film was well-received at Cannes being similarly nominated for the Palme d’Or.
Brook's theatrical career was going from strength to strength, with productions of Marat-Sade and King Lear receiving such acclaim that Brook was able to receive funding for film versions. Marat-Sade was released in 1967 and had much the same cast as the London stage play. King Lear (1971) was arguably his finest contribution to British Cinema: his stage production heavily influenced by Bertolt Brecht and the dark, political writings of Shakespeare scholar Jan Kott, Brook was cinematically influenced by the art-cinema techniques of the French nouvelle vague.
Brook continues to execute his influence on production in the UK with a television version of The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002) as well as numerous publications and theatrical productions to date
