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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. -
Novels
In addition to her plays, Reza has also written screenplays for films shown exclusively in Europe, and she is also the author of three novels. -
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. -
Family
Not much is revealed about the family of Yasmina Reza, but it is known that she is married to Didier Martiny and together they have two children, Alta Reza and Nathan Reza -
L"Homme de hasard
Another hit, L’Homme du hasard (1995; The Unexpected Man), was a two-character play set on a train traveling from Paris to Frankfurt. Following long monologues by a self-absorbed male author and his female seatmate and fan, the play ends with a brief dialogue between the two that centres on people’s need for one another. -
Art
But, despite her many varied accomplishments, it is still her third play that has garnered the most acclaim. Since its Paris debut in 1995, ‘Art', it is estimated that the play has earned more than $300 million worldwide, and it has won numerous awards, including the Moliere Awards for Best Author, Best Play, and Best Production; the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 1997; and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1998. -
More plays
Reza’s next play, Trois versions de la vie, showed an awkward situation—a couple arriving a day early for a dinner party—working itself out in three different outcomes. After premiering in Vienna in October 2000, it opened the following month in Paris, with the author in the cast, and in December in London under the title Life × 3. -
Personal insight on her work
Reza sees no real distinction between her acting and her writing. To her, they are parts of her that seem to naturally mesh. “I don’t feel writing is my profession,” she has said. “I don’t know what my profession is. I loved the theatre, and I loved words, so it was logical to write for theatre.” That mutual passion for both talents has revealed an ability to write for actors in a way that makes it seem to each actor that the part he is playing was written specifically for him. -
Awards
Reza has won many awards, including: BroadwayWorld Awards - 2009 - Best Play,
Olivier Awards - 2009 - Best New Comedy,
Tony Awards - 2009 - Best Pllay,
Olivier Awards - 2001 - BBC Award for Best New Play,
Drama Desk Awards - 2000 - Outstanding Play,
Olivier Awards - 1999 - BBC award for the Play of the Year, Drama Desk Awards - 1998 - Outstanding Play, Drama Desk Awards - 1998 - Outstanding Play,
New York Drama Critics Circle Awards - 1998 - Best Play, Tony Awards - 1998 - Best Play -
Family guy (??!)
Yasmina Reza's character is shown on an episode of Family guy. Yasmina is one of the playwrights introduced to Brian at a party in New York while Stewie prepares for the opening of his Broadway play in "Brian's Play". Brian confuses her for Alan Bennett's nurse at first until she straightens him out. When Brian tries to tout his own play, they pronounce it the worst piece of dreck they had ever seen and laugh at it. -
Reza's thought process behind plays
Fabienne Pascaud, a writer for the French arts magazine Telerama, once wrote that famous actors dream of parts in Reza’s plays because of her masterful use of silence. They give actors too many words,” she has said. “In a play, words are parentheses to the silences. They’re useful for the actors, but . . . they aren’t the whole story.”