Alain Maratrat

Alain Maratrat (born 1950) is French actor, theater and opera director known for his innovative interpretations and staging. He has shared his longtime exploration of the body as an instrument of theatrical expression through workshops and classes for actors, dancers, and singers, throughout the world. He was a winner of a Golden Mask award in 2006, as director of the opera Il Viaggio a Reims.

Alain Maratrat was born in Paris into a family far from the world of art; his father was a train conductor and his mother had stopped working as a dressmaker to raise her children. He attended the Institute National des Arts du Spectacle in Brussels, Belgium from 1969 to 1973 and, thirty years later, joined 3 fellow students from the class of ‘73 to play their younger selves in Trente Ans a Peine, a play by Jean-Claude Carrière, which was based on their acting aspirations and experiences at INSAS.

In 1974 Maratrat was invited to join Peter Brook’ s company, the International Centre for Theatre Research, and he remained an active member of the company for nearly 20 years, participating in most of the company's successful productions. He acted, experimented and traveled the world with Brook's multi-cultural assembly of actors, dancers, musicians and other performers.

They participated in theatrical encounters with audiences in native villages, asylums schools and a prison, as well as traditional theaters throughout the world. Working with Brook fed and developed Maratrat's interest in creating theater that would touch and enliven ordinary people, regardless of their culture. Since leaving Brook's company, Maratrat has managed active careers as an actor (film, theater and television), theater and opera director, and acting teacher.

He has performed in films by directors Claude Berri, Amos Gitai, Michel Deville and Alain Berberian and plays directed by Bruno Bayen, Philippe Mantha, Gabriel Garran, Peter Brook, Dominique Mühler, Bernard Sobel and Gaston Jung. Maratrat has directed theatrical productions of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (1991), Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (1993) and Gaston Salvatore's Staline (1994).

Braz's Rencontres (1995) was staged after a year-long collective workshop. He directed Goldoni's The Impresario from Smyrna and The Dance Lesson (1996). In 1998 he directed The Conference of Birds with the Teatro Kismet and a group of international actors in Bari, Italy, and in 1999 he traveled to South Africa to direct Romeo was a Shoeshiner with social centers in the townships of Pretoria.

More recent productions include Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night ́s Dream (2003), Chekhov's The Three Sisters (2004), Ibsen's Peer Gynt (2004), Marivaux's The Dispute (2005), Shakespeare's The Twelfth Night (2006) and Schiller's Marie Stuart (2011). ... Source: Article "Alain Maratrat" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.