Irina Brook's LA VIE MATERIELLE will end its run at La MaMa on March 21st.
Parisian director Irina Brook creates this premiere work for the "In the Words of Duras" series for French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) March 5 & 6, 2010 which moves directly to La MaMa featuring a diverse ensemble of women performers including
Joan Juliet Buck,
Nicole Ansari, Winsome Brown, and Sadie Jemmett. Set design by Katheryn Monthei and associate set designer Maggie Pilat.
Marguerite Duras writes, "I repeat this. This must be repeated a lot.
A woman's work, from the moment she rises ‘till the moment she goes to bed,
is as hard as a day at war..."
Inspired by Duras's collection of essays on daily life, La Vie Matérielle and Virgina Woolf's A Room of One's Own, this special evening promises to be a gathering of talents; an experience of sharing these authors' extraordinary words whilst cooking, laughing, crying, singing and dancing together in an imaginary and theatrical kitchen.
The production features a diverse ensemble of female performers including
Nicole Ansari (HBO's Deadwood, West End & Broadway productions of
Tom Stoppard's "Rock and Roll," Théâtre du Soleil), Obie-award winning actress, director, and writer Winsome Brown, novelist and former editor of French Vogue
Joan Juliet Buck who was last seen in the film "Julie and Julia," famed British folk-rock diva Sadie Jemmett, and concert violin soloist Yibin Li. Set design by Katheryn Monthei and associate set designer Maggie Pilat.
IRINA BROOK was born in Paris; from the start she was brought up in theaters by her father, director
Peter Brook, and her mother,
Natasha Parry, an actress. She spent her childhood wishing she was
Shirley Temple, or
Jodie Foster and could hardly wait to grow up and become an actress. At the age of 18 she went to New York and performed in various Off-Off Broadway productions. She also waitressed, studied with
Stella Adler, went a lot to the Russian tearooms and fell utterly in love with NYC. She returned to Paris where she acted for a few years and then London, where she performed in numerous plays, and a few unmemorable movies. After many years of being a struggling actress, she discovered a play at the Louisville festival, Beast on the Moon, which she decided to direct; and from it's premiere in London to it's six month run in Paris (where it won six prestigious Moliere awards) it opened the door to ten years of nonstop directing, in Paris, Lausanne, Tokyo, Belgium, Holland, Italy, etc. (Plays include: The Glass Menagerie, Romeo & Juliette, The Good Person Of Szechuan, Dancing At Lughnasa, All's Well That Ends Well, Midsummer Night's Dream, Homer's Odyssey, Morphic Resonance, The Island Of Slaves...and several opera productions.) She has just completed a one year directorial residency at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox Massachusetts where she created various new works including, The Canterville Ghost, Toad of Toad Hall and the acclaimed Cindy Bella. Her Paris-based theater company, La Compagnie Irina Brook, established in 2003 is currently touring Europe with four different productions. In January she re-mounted the fourth reprise of her much acclaimed Cenerentola of Rossini at the Theatre des Champs Elysees, Paris. She also opened a new version of the Tempest with la Compagnie Irina Brook. The French government awarded her the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. And she has two smallish children...
