Peter Brook, Tony Award-winning theater director, dead at 97

Peter Brook, the British-born director whose creative stage work across eight decades touched both sides of the Atlantic, died Saturday. He was 97.

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Brooks’ death was confirmed by his son, Simon, who did not say where he died, The New York Times reported. The BBC, reporting “sources,” said Brook, who had lived in France since 1974, died in Paris.

Brook won Tony Awards and Emmy Awards, but is best known for his directing of Broadway plays such as “Marat/Sade,” “Irma La Douce” and “The Mahabarata,” Variety reported.

“Peter is the quester,” the director Peter Hall once said. “The person out on the frontiers, continually asking what is quality in theater, where do you find truth in theater.”

Brook’s career included opera, plays, musicals, as well as film and television productions, Variety reported.

He won Tony Awards in 1966 and 1971 for “Marat/Sade” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” respectively. He won a 1984 Emmy Award for “La tragedie de Carmen” and a 1990 International Emmy for “The Mahabharata” miniseries, the website reported.

Peter Stephen Paul Brook was born in west London on March 21, 1925, the son of Jewish immigrants, the Times reported.

He did not have a theatrical background, but after studying at Oxford University -- he entered the school when he was 16 years old -- he was appointed director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre when he was 20, the BBC reported.

In 1946, Brook staged a revival of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Times reported.

“The youngest earthquake I’ve known,” Sir Barry Jackson, who directed the play, said of Brook.

One of Brook’s final works, when he was 92, was “The Prisoner,” which he wrote, Variety reported. This year, he directed “The Tempest Project” with Marie-Hélène Estienne, his longtime collaborator, according to the entertainment news website.

Brook was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 and Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur in France in 2013, in 2013, according to Variety.

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