Marie-José Malis

Marie-José Malis had always loved the theatre, but she first followed a path in academia that led her to the École Normale Supérieure, then to the Agrégation of modern literature. An avid reader and theatregoer, fascinated in particular by directors such as Tadeusz Kantor, Klaus Michael Grüber, or Antoine Vitez, it is through the teaching of acting and dramaturgy that she first found a way to express her desire for theatre. In 1994, she founded her company, La Llevantina, and put on her first shows: drawing from both the classics and from modern texts, but also from more abstract writings or from movie screenplays, her theatre is “political” in the sense that it questions both ideas and their representation. Through the texts of Jean-Luc Godard, Elio Vittorini, Piere Paolo Pasolini, Robert Walser, Luigi Pirandello, or Heinrich von Kleist, she offers her vision of the theatre as a place of sharing, inviting her audience to listen to rich, powerful texts about the world and its “tears.” With Hyperion, adapted from Friedrich Hölderlin's novel, whose Oedipus (based on Sophocles) she already directed, she inaugurates her new role as director of the Théâtre de la Commune of Aubervilliers, which she started running on January 1, 2014. JFP, April 2014

Portrait of Marie-José Malis © portrait photo Willy Vainqueur