Marie-Hélène Estienne

Marie-Hélène Estienne joined the Centre International de Créations Théâtrales (C.I.C.T.) in 1977. She was Peter Brook’s assistant on La Tragédie de Carmen, Le Mahabharata, and collaborated on the staging of The Tempest, Impressions de Pelléas, Woza Albert! and La Tragédie d’Hamlet (2000). She co-authored L’homme qui and Je suis un phénomène performed at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. She wrote the French adaptation of Can Themba’s play Le Costume, and Sizwe Banzi est mort by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona. In 2003, she wrote the French and English adaptations of Le Grand Inquisiteur (The Grand Inquisitor) based on Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. She was the author of Tierno Bokar in 2005, and of the English adaptation of Eleven and Twelve by Amadou Hampâté Bâ in 2009. With Peter Brook, she co-directed Fragments, five short pieces by Beckett, and again with Peter Brook and composer Franck Krawczyk, she freely adapted Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) into Une flûte enchantée. She co-created The Suit in 2012 and The Valley of Astonishment in 2013, both performed at the Young Vic, London.