Ariane Mnouchkine is the daughter of Russian film producer Alexandre Mnouchkine and June Hannen. Mnouchkine's paternal grandparents, Alexandre and Bronislawa Mnouchkine, were both deported from Drancy to Auschwitz on 17 December 1943, where they were both murdered. Ariane is the namesake of the production company "Ariane Films" that was founded by her father. Mnouchkine attended Oxford University in England and studied psychology before returning to her roots in theatre. She continued theatre studies at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq where in 1964 she founded Théâtre du Soleil with her fellow students. The theatre collective still continues to create social and political critiques of local and world cultures. Théâtre du Soleil's productions are often performed in found spaces like barns or gymnasiums because Mnouchkine does not like being confined to a typical stage. Similarly, she feels theatre cannot be restricted with the "fourth wall". When audiences enter a Mnouchkine production, they will often find the actors preparing right before their eyes. In 1971, Mnouchkine signed the Manifesto of the 343, publicly announcing she had an illegal abortion. Mnouchkine has developed her own works, like the political-themed 1789, as well as numerous classical texts like Molière's Don Juan or Tartuffe. Between 1981 and 1984, she translated and directed a series of William Shakespeare plays: Richard II, Twelfth Night, and Henry IV, Part 1. While she developed the shows one at a time, when she finished Henry IV, she toured the three together as a cycle of plays. Similarly, she developed Iphigenia by Euripides and the Oresteia between 1990-92. While mainly a stage director, she has been involved in some films. She shared an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay for L'Homme de Rio , which dealt with the French Revolution, brought her international fame in 1974. In 1978 she wrote and directed Molière, a biography of the famous French playwright, which earned her a Palme d'Or nomination at Cannes. She collaborated with Hélène Cixous on a number of projects including La Nuit miraculeuse and Tambours sur la digue, two made-for-television movies in 1989 and 2003 respectively. In 1987 she was the first recipient of the Europe Theatre Prize. In 1992 Mnouchkine criticized the EuroDisney as cultural Chernobyl and was very against about the decision to open the European branch of the theme park in Paris. On 26 May 2009, it was pronounced at an arrangement at the Ibsen Museum in Oslo by the leader of the committee, actress Liv Ullmann, that Ariane Mnouchkine was that year's winner of the International Ibsen Award. The prize was awarded to her at a ceremony at the National Theatre in Oslo on 10 September 2009. Mnouchkine received the Goethe Medal in 2011.
