Marie-Hélène Estienne

Marie-Hélène Estienne (born 1944, France) worked with Peter Brook on the casting for Timon of Athens in 1974 and consequently joined the Centre International de Créations Théâtrales (CICT) for the creation of Ubu at the Bouffes in 1977. She was Peter Brook’s assistant on The Tragedy of Carmen and The Mahabharata and collaborated on the staging of The Tempest, Impressions de Pelléas, Woza Albert! and The Tragedy of Hamlet (2000). She also worked on the dramaturgy of Who’s There. With Peter Brook, Estienne co-authored The Man Who and I am a phenomenon, shown at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre (1998). She wrote the French adaptation of Can Themba’s play Le Costume and of Sizwe Banzi is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona. In 2003, Estienne wrote the French and English adaptations of The Grand Inquisitor, based on Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. In 2005, she authored Tierno Bokar, and in 2009 the English adaptation of Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s Eleven and Twelve. 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’s and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflöte into The Magic Flute. Estienne also shared in the creation of The Suit (2012) and The Valley of Astonishment (2014).