Ariane Mnouchkine

Ariane Mnouchkine is a French stage director. She founded the Parisian avant-garde stage ensemble Théâtre du Soleil in 1964. She has written and directed 1789 and Molière , and in 1989, she directed La Nuit Miraculeuse.

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• I do not know if it was born from an idea, but rather from a need. At the beginning, people came from far away, they travelled through mud, and it was important to allow them to eat. And with good food, we wanted to make people happy. 1789 required a fairground. We asked for a basketball court, because we knew that there were basketball courts everywhere! It is thus the project which gave rise to this configuration at piece-rates; it is also the part which required actor-spectators. For the same reason, it is because there were no dressing rooms inside the Cartoucherie that the actors put their make-up on in public. We kept the idea. But I believe that our public is initially that of the Théâtre du Soleil.

• My engagements were always idealistic.

• I am in the present and only the present matters to me.

• The director has already achieved the greatest degree of power he has ever had in history. And our aim is to move beoynd that situation by creating a form of theatre where it will be possible for everyone to collaborate without there being directors, technicians, and so on, in the old sense.