Wajdi Mouawad's career

Born in Lebanon in 1968, Wajdi Mouawad fled the country for France from the age of 10 to 15 years old, before living in Quebec up to the 2000s. He adapts and stages contemporary plays, classics and his own texts published by Leméac/Actes-Sud. He also writes stories for children and the novels Visage retrouvé in 2002 and Anima, ten years later, awarded, amongst other prizes, by the Société des Gens de Lettres, the Phénix de la Littérature in Lebanon, the second novel prize in Laval and Lire en poche de la littérature française. Translated into twenty languages, his work is published or staged on the five continents. As well as awards for some of his plays and stagings, Wajdi Mouawad has been several times honored for his work as a whole, including Chevalier de l’Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2002, in Canada in 2009 and in Quebec the following year, the prix de la Francophonie of the SACD in 2004, a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines in Lyon and the Grand Prix du Théâtre de l’Académie Française in 2009.

Wajdi Mouawad graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1991, he co-created with Isabelle Leblanc his first company, Théâtre Ô Parleur, which he created Littoral [Tideline] with in 1997, and which he adapted for cinema in 2005.

As an actor, he plays in his own plays but also under the direction of other artists such as Brigitte Haentjens, Dominic Champagne or Stanislas Nordey in France in 2010 in The Just Assassins by Camus or in Le Pays Rêvé by Jihane Chouaib and more recently in the first long film by Chloé Mazlo Sous le ciel d’Alice as well as Anatomie d’une chute by Justine Triet.

As a stage director, he explores other writers such as Shakespeare, Euripides, Wedekind, Chekhov but also Naji Mouawad, Irvine Welsh, Edna Mazia, Louise Bombardier. While directing the Quat’Sous theatre in Montreal from 2000 to 2004, he created the play Incendies [Scorched], then adapted to cinema by Denis Villeneuve in 2010. Meanwhile, his work was staged for the first time in France at the Festival des francophonies de Limoges and at the Théâtre 71 in Malakoff, before going on tour in Europe, with shows such as Forêts [Forests] in 2006. Then director of the National Arts Center’s French Theatre in Ottawa, he was associated artist of the 2009 Avignon festival where he created the quartet Le Sang des promesses. Along with his theatre companies Abé Carré Cé Carré-Québec and Au Carré de l’Hypoténuse-France, he then became associated with the Nantes theatre Le Grand T, in 2011. While creating the play Temps at the Schaubühne, he embarked upon the journey of stage adaptations of Sophocles’ seven tragedies in thematic groups : Des Femmes, Des Héros, Des Mourants, which he then reunited in a complete production entitled Le Dernier Jour de sa vie, presented at Mons 2015, European capital of culture, as well as Avoir 20 ans 2015 [Being 20 in 2015] a project deployed over 5 years with 50 teenagers.

Tous des oiseaux [Birds of a Kind], his first production as the director of La Colline – national theatre, of which he was appointed in April 2016, was played over 150 times in France and abroad. It was awarded the Grand Prix as well as the prize for Best creation of scenic elements by the Association professionnelle de la critique du Théâtre, de Musique et de Danse. The play was followed by the creation of Notre Innocence, in the spring of 2018, Fauves the following spring, Mort prématurée d’un chanteur populaire dans la force de l’âge, featuring singer Arthur H at the end of 2019 followed by Littoral [Tideline] in a new version in 2020 and still on tour. Simultaneously, several of his earlier shows carry on touring, such as the solo Inflammation du verbe vivre from the project Des Mourants ; as well as the three first productions of his cycle Domestique : Seuls, staged over 200 times since 2008, Soeurs which celebrated its 100th staging in 2020 at La Colline and Mère, presented in autumn 2021. In parallel to the other creations foreseen for the next years at La Colline, he is also focused on establishing the hospitality of the theatre in the city through multiple initiatives such as vegetalisation of the theatre, cooking and theatre workshops or À la vie, à la mort, as well as the realisation of ambitious youth projects such as the Agora Jeunesse, the Jeune Troupe or the author’s grant. His external collaborations include: Krzystof Warlikowski for A Streetcar Named Desire, African Tales and Phaedra(s) in 2016, the stagings of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio presented in the operas of Lyon and Toronto in 2016, followed by Enescu’s Oedipe at the Opéra de Paris in 2021, alongside the installations Créatures at the Château des Ducs de Bretagne in Nantes in 2015. Invited by the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image in Angoulême, he conceived La Page manquante, an exhibition presented in 2022.

English Bibliography

Heavens (Ciels), trad. Linda Gaboriau, Playwrights Canada Press, 2014
A bomb in the heart (Un obus dans le cœur), trad. Linda Gaboriau, Playwrights Canada Press, 2013
Tideline (revised version) (Littoral), trad. Shelley Tepperman, Playwrights Canada Press, 2011
Forests (Forêts), trad. Linda Gaboriau, Playwrights Canada Press, 2010
Scorched (revised version) (Incendies), trad. Linda Gaboriau, Playwrights Canada, 2010
Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons' (Journée de noces chez les Cromagnons), trad. Shelley Tepperman, Oberon Modern Plays, 2008
Dreams (Rêves), Linda Gaboriau, Playwrights Canada Press, 2007
Scorched (Incendies), trad. Linda Gaboriau, Playwrights Canada Press, 2005
Tideline (Littoral), trad. Shelley Tepperman, Playwrights Canada Press, 2002
Alphonse (Alphonse), trad. Shelley Tepperman, Playwrights Canada Press, 2002
Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons' (Journée de noces chez les Cromagnons), trad. Shelley Tepperman, Playwrights Canada Press, 2001