Growing up with a famous theatre director (Peter Brook) for a father, and a noted actor (Natasha Parry) for a mother, Irina Brook got an early start in the theatre.

But she spent many years as a not-so-successful actor before she found her true calling, as a director -one who has been piling up the accolades during the past decade.

Brook, now in her 40s, recently spoke to The Gazette at Usine C. She was about to begin a Quebec tour of her En attendant le Songe (Waiting for the Dream), an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, before taking it to New York City.

Why this play? No need to ask. Brook grew up with her father’s legendary 1970 Royal Shakespeare Company production.

“I kind of tagged along with it day after day and became a complete groupie of the show,” she recalled. “I was obsessed with it. With my best friend, Anna, I used to go every single night. And the minute the curtain came down, we would jump onto the stage and recite all of the scene between Helena and Hermia, verbatim, from beginning to end. We had to be thrown off the stage before the curtains rose again. Stage brats.”

Later, Brook made her debut in Andrei Serban’s Medea in Paris. “I think I got myself in one night, as a special treat, as one of the children who get murdered. That was pretty much the only child performance my parents would allow me to do. All I wanted was to be was a child actor, and they didn’t encourage it. Unlike myself with my lovely children. My daughter Maya is the same as I was. She only wants to act, and, of course, I can’t resist letting her.”

Sometimes, Maya, 8, or Brook’s 12-year-old son, Prosper (not Prospero, but he likes to add the “o”), play the child that is the source of dispute between Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen, in En attendant.

Brook is now living in Massachusetts, where she has been directing for Shakespeare and Company, in Lenox. “We moved from France two years ago,” she said.

Because? “I’ve had the American dream all my life,” she replied. “And it seemed like the

time to give it a go. I think that we’re going to go back to the south of France next summer, and move to Avignon next. We’re just gypsies. There’s just nothing to be done about it. I can’t stay anywhere more than three years.”

Brook was born in Paris. “I grew up mainly in France,” she said. “I went to New York when I was 18 and I fell in love with it. I’ve been torn between all of those ever since. Unfortunately, I’ve now discovered Canada. Montreal seems perfect for those different parts to be all in one place.”

Her En attendant le Songe, which is performed by six male actors, began its Quebec tour on Tuesday in Sherbrooke. The adventure began with a visit to Quebec City’s Bourse RIDEAU showcase in February 2009. In Montreal, it will be performed in French only, although it will have English surtitles at La Mama in N.Y.C.

The play is an adaptation, translated by assistant director Marie-Paul Ramo. But Brook described it as 90-per-cent Shakespeare. “There are cuts and trims and few little French jokes added, but it’s the play,” she said.

Working on the surtitles for New York, she was thrilled to realize it would be possible to rely largely on Shakespeare’s original text.

The production that premiered in 2005 was to be performed five times only, “in the fields and villages of rural France,” she said. Because it garnered such a positive response, it just kept going. There have been more than 300 performances, mostly indoors, with an old white rug for a set. “We try and keep it as bare bones as it was outdoors,” she said. “It moves. It really is a living piece.”

Is her father her mentor? “Not mentor. I’d say he inhabits me,” she replied.

“It’s impossible to say he doesn’t. He’s such an amazing director and an amazing person.”

She thinks of him as “a wonderful role model,” one who influences many people besides herself.

“He’s pretty discreet with his words,” she said. “There are some things he comes to and adores. And there are some things he doesn’t. I find it very hard to take criticism from him.”

Her parents have recently been working in Shakespeare mode, too, presenting a show on the sonnets, Love Is My Sin, in New York last spring. Her father’s Paris theatre, Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, has just been handed over to new leadership. At 85, he is now rehearsing The Magic Flute, which will be his last production there, she said.

Her own Paris-based company, Compagnie Irina Brook, currently has four plays available for touring, including a bilingual bluegrass/ gospel version of Don Quixote. Which she would love to bring to Montreal.