Yasmina Reza(1959 — ?)
Yasmina Reza
France
8 min read
French playwright, novelist, and actress born in 1959, Yasmina Reza made her mark with *Art* (1994), a philosophical comedy about friendship and the value of art. Her plays, translated into more than 35 languages, sharply examine the cracks in human relationships and social hypocrisies.
Key Facts
- Born on 1 May 1959 in Paris, to an Iranian father and a Hungarian pianist mother
- 1987: first acclaimed play, *Conversations After a Burial*, Molière Award
- 1994: *Art* triumphs in Paris then worldwide, translated into 35 languages
- 2006: *The God of Carnage* wins the Molière Award for Best Author, later adapted for film by Polanski (2011)
- Her plays have been performed on Broadway, where she won the Tony Award
Works & Achievements
Reza's first notable play, awarded the Molière Prize for Best Author. It lays the foundations of her theatre: a family gathering under tension, grief revealing hidden fractures between those closest to one another.
Her most celebrated play, translated into more than 35 languages and performed in over 50 countries. An expensive white canvas triggers an existential crisis among three friends, exposing their disagreements about value, art, and friendship.
An experimental play offering three different outcomes from the same opening scene. Reza explores the accidents of fate and the masks worn in bourgeois married life.
Two sets of parents meet after a fight between their children. Within ninety minutes, every veneer of civilisation shatters. A worldwide success, adapted for the screen by Roman Polanski in 2011.
A literary account drawn from several months spent alongside Nicolas Sarkozy during his presidential campaign. A hybrid text blending political portrait, journalism, and literature, widely debated upon its release.
A short novel with a cutting tone, narrated by a father who observes his son with an affection tinged with cruelty. Reza's first novelistic success, praised for its dark humour and psychological precision.
A novel awarded the Prix Renaudot, recounting a murder in a Parisian apartment building and the disintegration of neighbourly bonds. Reza confirms her talent as a novelist shaped by her playwright's eye.
Anecdotes
Yasmina Reza claims to have written *Art* in just a few weeks, almost in a single breath. Premiered at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées in 1994 with Pierre Vaneck, Fabrice Luchini and Pierre Arditi, the play won the Molière Award for Best Author in 1995 and ran for several consecutive years — a record in the French theatrical landscape of the time.
Born to an engineer father of Iranian and Jewish descent and a violinist mother of Hungarian and Jewish origin, Yasmina Reza grew up in a cultivated, cosmopolitan Parisian milieu. This cultural blend deeply nourishes her work, where characters with conflicting values confront one another without ever finding common ground.
In 1998, *Art* won the Tony Award for Best Play on Broadway with Alan Alda, Victor Garber and Alfred Molina — an exceptionally rare distinction for a play originally written in French. Reza thus became one of the most performed living playwrights in the English-speaking world, with her work translated into more than 35 languages.
To write *L'Aube le soir ou la nuit* (2007), Yasmina Reza followed Nicolas Sarkozy for several months during his presidential campaign, attending his private meetings and public rallies. This half-literary, half-journalistic account sparked fierce controversy in France: some saw it as a hagiography, others as a clinical dissection of power.
Roman Polanski adapted *Le Dieu du carnage* for the screen in 2011 under the title *Carnage*, with Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. Reza co-wrote the screenplay herself, and the film was selected for the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, cementing the international reach of her work.
Primary Sources
MARC: Look at this painting. What do you see? SERGE: A white background with white diagonal lines. MARC: And that's worth two hundred thousand francs? SERGE: Yes.
Véronique: We think we're civilized people. Michel: That's the problem. We think we're civilized and underneath we're savages exactly like everyone else.
He is ahead of himself. He chases something he has not yet reached. Victory is never great enough, never conquered quickly enough.
Death brings people together, but for how long? It forces them to reunite, to look at each other, sometimes to hate each other with a frankness they would never have dared otherwise.
I don't write to prove anything. I write to observe. What interests me is the way people talk to each other without really talking, how they hurt each other without meaning to — or meaning to very well.
Key Places
Yasmina Reza was born and raised in Paris in a cultivated, upper-middle-class environment. The French capital lies at the heart of her work: her plays stage Parisian couples and friends from the upper-middle classes, set against the tensions of Haussmann-era apartments.
It was on this prestigious stage that *Art* had its world premiere in 1994, with Pierre Vaneck, Fabrice Luchini, and Pierre Arditi. The venue remains associated with Reza's first major theatrical success.
The London production of *Art* (1996) and later *God of Carnage* (2008) made this West End theatre an iconic symbol of Reza's international reach in the English-speaking world.
It was on this Broadway stage that *God of Carnage* triumphed in 2009, winning the Tony Award for Best Play. Reza thereby became one of the very few European playwrights to have won two Tony Awards.
Yasmina Reza studied sociology here before turning to theatre and writing. This intellectual training lastingly shaped her way of observing social behaviour with an analytical, detached eye.