Every once in a while, you get a chance to talk to a living legend.

For people who love Shakespeare, one of those conversations is coming up.

From the Folger's Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

In the world of mid-20th century Shakespeare performance, it is hard to think of anyone

as influential as Peter Brook.

He started at the Royal Shakespeare Company with a production of Love's Labor's Lost in

1946. And for much of the's Labor's Lost in 1946.

And for much of the next 70 years, his thinking and his productions have changed the way English-speaking directors in the West approach and stage Shakespeare.

He directed John Gilgood in Measure for Measure in 1950, the Winters Tale Tale in 1952, and The Tempest in 1957,

Lawrence Olivier in Titus Andronicus in 1958, and Paul Schofield in King Lear in 1962.

And he's perhaps best known for his production of a Midsummer Night's Dream in 1970 with John

Kane, Francis de Latour, Ben Kingsley, and Patrick Stewart.

That production not only changed Shakespeare, but if you went to the theater in the 1970s,

you saw its impact outside the Shakespeare World too.

Shows like Pippin, Candide, Godspell, and

others all drew from Brooke's revolutionary staging and design. When we first broadcast the interview

you're about to hear, in 2019, Peter Brooke was 94 years old. If you thought he was slowing down

at that age, you would be wrong.

At the time of our interview, he had written and directed the play Battlefield, which premiered

at the Young Vic in 2015, and he had written two books, Tip of the Tongue in 2017, and

playing by ear, reflections on sound and music in 2019.

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