Peter Brook

(1925-) Internationally renowned English theatre and film director and theorist. Born Peter Stephen Paul Brook on 21 March 1925 in Chiswick, London.

His experimental work with classic and new plays, his environmental and site specific experimentations in various parts of the world with his International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris vastly influenced theatre work in the 1970s and later. He also founded the company Thêátre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.

he wrote a number of books on theatre, and his little book of speeches (The Open Space, 1962) is one of the most influential theatre publications of the twentieth century.

Brook and South African Theatre
Brook visited South Africa a few times in the late 1980s and 1990s to cast his company and to work with the Market Theatre Laboratory. The Open Space, was an enormously influential work here too, and inter alia led to the working ethos and name of the Space Theatre in Cape Town.

In Europe he did some South African work:

1989 : He directed a version of Woza Albert!

1999: Can Themba's The Suit, in French, under the title Le Costume, based on Barney Simon's Market Theatre production.

2006: Sizwe Banzi est mort ( Sizwe Bansi is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, at the Festival d'Avignon, 2006.

2011: Le Costume repeated in 2011, and then redone in English in London as The Suit.

2013: The Suit revived once more, co-directed Marie-Helene Estienne and Frank Krawczyk, for the Thêátre des Bouffes du Nord, They opened in the USA on 17 January 2013

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