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Birth
Yasmina Reza (born May 1, 1959, Paris, France.. making her a Taurus) is a French dramatist, novelist, director, and actress best known for her brief satiric plays that speak to contemporary middle-class anxieties. -
Childhood
Yasmina was the daughter of a Hungarian violinist (her mother) and a successful businessman of Russian-Iranian descent (her father). Yasmina has said “I grew up with wonderful parents in cultured and comfortable circumstances" informing the public that her life growing up was easygoing and peaceful. -
Education
She studied theatre at University Paris X in Nanterre, and later pursued intensive actor’s training at Paris’s internationally renowned Jacques Lecoq Drama School. As a working actress in France, Reza won roles in contemporary and classic productions alike, and, in between rehearsals and performances, she began to write her own plays. She completed her first play, Conversations after a Burial in 1987 and was awarded the Moliere Award for Best Author, the French equivalent of the Tony. -
Pending success
Reza followed that success an ambitious endeavor: translating an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis for Roman Polanski. That work was rewarded in 1988 with a nomination for the Moliere Award for Best Translation. -
Back to back!
Soon after, Reza wrote her second play, Winter Crossing, premiered in 1990 and was awarded the Moliere Award for Best Fringe Production; her fourth play, The Unexpected Man, premiered in 1995 and was nominated for the BBC Award for Best New Play at the Laurence Olivier Theater Awards. More recently, Reza has written the critically acclaimed Life X 3 (2000) and A Spanish Play (2004), both of which have been produced in theatres throughout Europe, North America, and Australia.