He had fled with his Jewish parents the Nazi regime and had taken refuge in Oxford. It was there that he had really discovered Shakespeare, the theatre, the art of directing and that he had somehow prepared his return to a Germany finally pacified.
Back at home, he soon established himself as one of the most daring directors of his time, and therefore the most discussed. Yet Peter Zadek was not only the director who made a woman play Hamlet. He did not cultivate the art of transgression as others devote a somewhat vain cult to art for art.
He was a researcher. He liked to visit the margins, where others do not always dare to venture, to find new spaces where to live and relive the great classics, Shakespeare or Chekov. He also knew how to renew what is called the boulevard theatre, in any case, to free himself from rhetoric and a certain letter that kills the spirit.
Paris, 31 July 2009