The influence of RSC associate artist and legendary director Peter Brook lives on despite his death aged 97

Legendary opera and theatre director Peter Brook CBE died on Saturday, 2nd July, aged 97.

Often referred to as “our greatest living theatre director”, Brook had a close relationship with the RSC, where he was an associate artist.

After graduating Oxford University and directing two plays, including Dr Faustus at the Torch Theatre in London, he first came to Stratford in 1947 aged 22 as an assistant director on Romeo and Juliet and Love’s Labour’s Lost.

His prolific output saw him write ground-breaking and seminal books about putting on theatre, as well as directing in theatre, film and opera. He picked up multiple Tony and Emmy awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Japanese Praemium Imperiale, and the Prix Italia.

In the early 1970s he moved to France where he founded the International Centre for Theatre Research based at the Bouffes du Nord theatre in Paris, a multinational company of performers and musicians who travelled the world often performing at places such as refugee camps to people who had not seen theatre before.

Brook and his wife Natasha Parry, who died in 2015, had two children, daughter Irina, an actor, and son, director Simon.

The RSC said it was “deeply saddened to hear of the passing of visionary director and RSC honorary associate artist, Peter Brook”.