This Saturday the British director Peter Brook passed away, adopted by France, considered the renovator of Shakespeare and one of the most influential directors of the 20th century.
His monumental version of the Mahabharata It is probably his most emblematic creation. The Hindu epic poem was adapted by Brook in 1985 and transformed into a nine-hour montage about the violence that swept the world for four years.
Symbolically, his latest creation was the adaptation of Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest. In an adventure typical of these times, Peter Brook dared to direct his Tempest project, remotely, with Marie-Hélène Estienne, for a Chilean cast.
In Chile
Chilean actress and director Amalá Saint-Pierre served as the link. The staging, starring Pablo Schwarz, Diana Sanz, Noelia Coñuenao and Álex Quevedo, premiered as part of the Teatro a Mil 2022 festival and had a second season this June at the Chilean National Theater. “His indications are quite simple, but actingly they generate big changes,” commented Saint-Pierre, assistant director of Tempest project, in June to La Tercera.
“Peter Brook is the history of theater. He highlights his infinite humanity, understanding, curiosity and availability. When we started working on the Tempest project, he was very interested in Zoom communications, for using this technology in tandem with Marie-Hélène, who was our traveling companion to carry out the work in Chile”, says Carmen Romero, director of Teatro a Mil Foundation.
Peter Brook’s first landing in Chile was in January 2007. That year, the Teatro a Mil festival presented his works Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Grand Inquisitor at the UC Theater, with Peter Brook himself behind the scenes. The staging of English and the performance of Bruce Myers, who worked with Brook for years, conquered the public and critics.
In October 2011, during the extension of the Buenos Aires International Theater Festival (FIBA) brought to Chile by Fundación Teatro a Mil, A Magic Flute was presented at the Municipal Theater of Las Condes. The minimalist adaptation of Brook was presented on a board turned, with an empty stage, bamboo canes and no orchestra, with a piano accompanying the singers and actors.
A decade later, Peter Brook would appear again in Chile in the midst of a pandemic, as part of the Conversations with Tim Robbins created for Teatroamil.tv thanks to the collaboration of Fundación Teatro a Mil with The Actor’s Gang and the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. There, the two theater directors talk virtually from their confinement about confinement, empty spaces as spaces of freedom and creation, and the importance of collective work. The conversation can be seen for free on Teatroamil.tv.
In 2020, the creative duo Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne worked on an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest with actors at the Parisian Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. “Carmen (Romero) asked us to do something for her festival and we thought, why not do Tempest? And an unbelievably beautiful adventure began,” Brook said in June.
Consulted by cultural rights in Chile, on the occasion of the new Constitution, in the same interview the director dedicated a few words to the current political process: “Every dictatorship affirms a path and closes all others. Bravo to the Chilean people for having elected the President they now have and opening the way to freedom, which of course includes opening the cultural field to all”.
