Irina Brook

Born in Paris, Irina Brook grew up immersed in the arts, as the daughter of director Peter Brook and actress Natasha Parry. She moved to New York at 18 to study acting with Stella Adler, making her stage debut in Off-Broadway productions, followed by theatre and film in Paris in London, before transitioning to directing. Her breakthrough as a director came in London in 1996 with her first production, Beast on the Moon, at the Battersea Arts Centre, followed by Mrs Klein and All’s Well that Ends Well. Irina then moved back to France, where her adaptation of Beast on the Moon, “Une Bête sur la Lune”, received critical acclaim and won five Molière Awards, including Best Director and Best Play. 

After several successful large-scale productions with the Theatre de Vidy, Lausanne, Bobigny and the Theatre de l’Atelier, Paris,  including Brecht’s The Good Person of Sezuan,  Marivaux’s l’Île des Esclaves,  and Juliette et Romeo, she founded her own French theatre company, Irina’s Dream Theatre, with which she toured pared-down productions of Shakespeare plays and other classics, including 500 performances of En Attendant le Songe, ( an adaptation for 6 actors of A Midsummer Night’s Dream)   Her work at major festivals includes the Salzburg Festival, the Barbican Centre, the Spoleto Festival, with Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and The Island Trilogy, which toured internationally.  

 Irina Brook is also an internationally acclaimed opera director, known for her truthful, clear and innovative productions. After a successful debut with Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte for the Nederlands Reisopera, her work garnered attention in some of the world's most prestigious venues. She was invited to Aix en Provence to direct a much-loved Eugene Onegin. She then directed Verdi’s La traviata at the Opera de Lille and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, also  Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Deutsche Oper. Her acclaimed production of Cenerentola at the Theatre des Champs Elysees was consequently remounted in Stockholm, Bologna and Wroclaw. She continued her partnership at the Theatre de Champs Elysees with Giulio Cesare, followed by Vienna Staatsoper’s production of Don Pasquale and Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her most recent productions have been for the Teatro alla Scala: Il Matrimonio Segreto, La Rondine and a filmed version of Brecht-Weill's Seven Deadly sins/Mahagonny. She made her Japanese opera debut this January, with Carmen at the Tokyo Nikikai Opera. Irina returns this May 2025 to the Teatro alla Scala, with the world premiere of a Brecht-Weill triple bill, conducted by Riccardo Chailly. 

 From 2014 to 2019, Brook was the first woman director of the Théâtre National de Nice, where she continued to push artistic boundaries, being one of the first artists, inspired by the COP21 in 2015, to open her theatre to ecological causes.

 In 2020, she was invited to the Teatro Biondo, Palermo to premiere her experimental research piece, House of Us, an interdisciplinary installation based on her mother and a life in theatre. She continued developing this work in 2021 in Venice, produced by the Goldoni theatre in the unique setting of the Tre Oci Museum, on the Giudecca.  She then returned to Palermo to direct her adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull: Seagull Dreams.

She was named Artist-in-Residence at the Château d’Hardelot’s Elizabethan Globe Theatre, Boulogne, in 2022, where she created a new version of King Lear, LEAR? with her French theatre company.

Brook’s contributions to theatre and opera have earned her numerous accolades, including the prestigious “Chevalier et Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”, and most recently, in 2023, the “Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”. Prizes include the Molière Award in 1998 for best director and best play. In 2000 the Molière for most promising female talent. In 2002 she was awarded the Prix Mitrani  (FIPA) for her film adaptation of Beast on the Moon. Most recently, in 2023, she was awarded the highest national honor from the french government of “Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”.