Reza's father was a Russian-born
Persian Jew engineer, businessman, and pianist and her mother was a Jewish Hungarian violinist from Budapest. During the Nazi occupation, her father was deported from
Nice to
Drancy internment camp. At the beginning of her career, Reza acted in several new plays as well as in plays by
Molière and
Pierre de Marivaux. In 1987, she wrote
Conversations after a Burial, which won the
Molière Award, the French equivalent of the
Tony Award, for Best Author. The North American production premiered in February 2013 at Players by the Sea in Jacksonville Beach Florida. Holly Gutshall and Joe Schwarz directed; with Set Design by Anne Roberts. The cast for this US debut was Kevin Bodge, Paul Carelli, Karen Overstreet, Dave Gowan, Holly Gutshall and Olivia Gowan Snell. Reza translated
Roman Polanski's stage version of Kafka's
Metamorphosis in the late 1980s. Her second play,
Winter Crossing, won the 1990 Molière Award for Best Fringe Production, and her next play,
The Unexpected Man, enjoyed successful productions in England, France, Scandinavia, Germany and New York. In 1994, ''
'Art''' premiered in Paris and went on to win the Molière Award for Best Author. Since then it has been produced internationally and translated and performed in over 30 languages. On 24 November 2007, her play
Le Dieu du Carnage (
God of Carnage), directed by
Jürgen Gosch and performed first in
Zürich, received the Viennese
Nestroy Theatre Prize for the best German-language performance of the season. It was produced once again by
David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers. The London production won the
Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, which Hampton accepted on her behalf. Hampton told the audience that Reza would be thrilled by the win. The play premiered on Broadway with an opening night cast of
James Gandolfini,
Jeff Daniels,
Marcia Gay Harden, and
Hope Davis.
God of Carnage won Best Play at the 2009 Tony Awards. In collaboration with Polanski, Reza wrote the screenplay adaptation of her own play
God of Carnage for the 2011 Polanski film
Carnage. She was nominated at the
European Film Awards and won a
César Award for her screenwriting and the film won a Little Gold Lion at the
68th Venice International Film Festival. Her 2016 novel,
Babylone, received the
Prix Renaudot. The English version, translated by Linda Asher, was published by
Seven Stories Press in 2018. ==Awards and honours==