Biography

Born in 1959 in Paris, of a Hungarian violinist based in Paris since the establishment of the "Iron Curtain", and a Jewish buisness man of Russian origen, Yasmina Reza evolves, from childhood in an atmosphere as artistic and it is cosmopolitan.

An actress and then screen director, nourished by the theater of Nathalie Sarraute, Yasmina Reza wrote her first play in 1987, Conversation après un enterrement, followed by in 1989 of La Traversée de l'hiver. In 1994, she becomes a playwright of international renown thanks to Art a play translated into twenty languages, which received numerous awards including a "Tony Award" for best writer in the United States.

In 1997 she published a collection of autobiographical short stories in which melancholy is coupled with a caustic verve: Hammerklavier. Bursts of rage against the modern world, broken down into 45 chapters which, when assembled, form a curious melody, of anger and passion.

Her first novel, Une désolation (1999), confronts two philosophies of life. With bitter irony, she portrays the characters haunted by time, her favorite theme. Indeed, her work seems to be an attempt to trap the passage of time: "All my characters are in the middle of their lives with the impression of moving towards death. It's something I've always felt. Even at 20 years old. This feeling of running out of time and moving towards death".

In 1999, she wrote the screenplay for the Pique -Nique from Lulu Kreutz, the film by her companion Didier Martiny, before returning to the theater with Trois Versions d'une vie (2000) where she plays herself an alcoholic wife, blundering, comical and hysterical. This fifth comedy, tangy variation on our powerlessness and our pettiness, was created simultaneously in autumn 2000 in Vienna, Paris and Athens.

Adam Haberberg (2003), is a novel about the fragility and loneliness of human beings, and of human weakness. "My characters are people who get out of hand, who are bogged down, who have big impulses, who eventually melt all the conveniences and generally have a pessimistic vision of the world."

Also in 2003, she wrote for the director Luc Bondy Une piéce espagnole. Play of different parts where the characters are first actors supposing to rehearse the play in question.
In 2005, Yasmina Reza published two books: Nulle part an autobiographical text that echoes Hammerklavier, and Dans la luge de Schopenhauer, which mocks philosophy as a way of life.

In the first book, she gathers her memories and wonders about her origins. "With an infinite lightness, great modesty, Yasmina a stateless person probes the mystery of identity, astonished, wonders. She whose past looks like an unfound land, a rocky field where we would try in vain to dig a grave. (...) Like an echo of this little gem, Dans la luge de Schopenhauer responds to the same obsessions. It tells the story in many voices that of an ill thinker a disciple of Althusser that philosophy has not saved. That of Yasmina resides in a kind of carpe diem, assumed frivolity, reasoned lightness. Comme une pansement posé sur l'oubli" (Olivier Le Nair, the Express, 29 August 2005)

In his new creation, Le dieu du carnage (Albin Michel, 2007) she mixes to a banal everyday uniqueness of our humanity. From the trivial, she makes it fierce. Initially, a fight between two teenagers. To settle the dispute, two couples lock themselves into a closed space that turns into a carnage. "Le Dieu du carnage is a bit Courteline in the era of Nathalie Sarraute. That is to say we fight with backgrounds that explore the unconscious and words that often express the opposite of deep thought." (Gilles Costaz, Echoes) The writer did the screen direction herself. The play is currently playing - until May 31 - in Paris at the Théâtre Antoine-Simone Berriau.

To write the L'Aube le soir ou la nuit (Flammarion, 2007), Yasmina Reza followed Nicolas Sarkozy for months to give the literary portrait of a man out to conquer power. "Unlike political journalists who tend to focus on the strategies, key moments of a campaign, Yasmina Reza is only concerned about the man in conquest." (Carl Meeus, Le Figaro Magazine, 08/25/2007)

"L'Aube le soir ou la nuit is a curious work. (...) In this disorder which ends up giving an idea of chaos on the side lines of the election campaign, there is a curious mixture of thoughts, bits of dialogue, scenes and remarks often of great finesse and humor." (JS Stehli, L'Express, 30/08/2007)