Marie-Hélène Estienne

joined the Centre International de Créations Théâtrales (CICT) as PR officer for the creation of Ubu aux Bouffes in 1977. She then becomes Peter Brook’s assistant on La Conférence des Oiseaux, La Tragédie de Carmen and The Mahabharata, for which she cosigned the scenario of the movie version. She collaborated to the staging of The Tempest, Impressions de Pelléas, Woza Albert! and La Tragédie d’Hamlet (2000). She coauthored L’homme qui from Qui est là and Je suis un phénomène, both performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. She wrote the French adaptation of the Can Themba’s play Le costume, and Sizwe Bansi est mort, by authors Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. In 2003, she wrote the French and English adaptations of Le Grand Inquisiteur/The Grand Inquisitor

for theatre, based on Dostoievsky’s Brothers Karamazov. She is the author of Tierno Bokar

and of the English adaptation of 11 and 12 by Amadou Hampaté Ba in 2005 and 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 into Une Flûte Enchantée. She also shares in the creation The Suit adapted by Can Themba, Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon. You find her also on The Valley of Astonishment, The Prisoner and very recently on Why for which she worked on the text and dramaturgy with Peter Brook. Tempest Project, their free adaptation of The Tempest by Shakespeare, was premiered in 2022.