Wajdi Mouawad is a writer, director and actor. Born in Lebanon in 1968, he fled the war-torn country with his family, lived in Paris for a few years, then settled in Montreal. Over the past 15 years Wajdi Mouawad has established himself, both in Canada and in Europe, as a uniquely original player on the contemporary theatre scene, acclaimed for his direct and uncompromising narratives and his compelling theatre aesthetic. He has built an international reputation for deeply humanist theatre that examines the human experience with keenness and compassion.

A graduate from the National Theatre School of Canada, he directed the company Theater Ô Parleur with Isabelle Leblanc from 1990 to 1999. From 2000 to 2004 he was the artistic director of Montreal’s Théâtre de Quat’Sous, where he set himself the mission of creating theatre that takes its rightful place as a voice in the stream of civic dialogue.

In 2005, he founded two companies (one on each side of the Atlantic) specializing in the development of new work: Abé carré cé carré in Montreal (in collaboration with Emmanuel Schwartz), and Au carré de l’hypoténuse in Paris. Wajdi Mouawad directs his own texts, as well as those of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Sophocles, Pirandello, Tchekhov… and modern authors such as Irvine Welsh or Louise Bombardier.

Wajdi Mouawad became director of French Theater at the National Center of the Arts in Ottawa in 2007. He will be associate artist at the Festival of Avignon in 2009.

Ciel(s), the fourth part of Wajdi Mouawad’s tetralogy on the theme of memory, will premiere in 2009.

Quaternaire represents Incendies, Ciels and Littoral around the world, except in Canada.