Peter Brook: Mystical giant who changed theater forever

Peter Brook, who has died aged 97, was among the most influential theater directors of the 20th century, reinventing the art by paring it back to drama's most basic and powerful elements.

An almost mystical figure often mentioned in the same breath as Konstantin Stanislavsky, the Russian who revolutionized acting, Brook continued to work and challenge audiences well into his 90s.

Best-known for his 1985 masterpiece "The Mahabharata," a nine-hour version of the Hindu epic, he lived in Paris from the early 1970s, where he set up the International Center for Theater Research in an old music hall called the Bouffes du Nord.

The Royal Shakespeare Company, where Brook was most recently an honorary associate artist, called him "a giant of European theater, who breathed exhilarating new life into the art form," in a statement.

A prodigy who made his professional directorial debut at just 17, Brook was a singular talent right from the start.

He mesmerized audiences in London and New York with his era-defining "Marat/Sade" in 1964, which won a Tony award, and wrote "The Empty Space," one of the most influential texts on theater ever, three years later.

Its opening lines became a manifesto for a generation of young performers who would forge the fringe and alternative theater scenes.

"I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage," he wrote.

"A man walks across an empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theater..."

For many, Brook's startling 1970 Royal Shakespeare Company production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in a white-cube gymnasium was a turning point in world theater.

It inspired actress Helen Mirren to abandon her burgeoning mainstream...