Zouc

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007)

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (September 2007)

The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject.
Please help improve the article with a good introductory style.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (September 2007)

The actress Isabelle von Allmen was born in 1950 in Switzerland. Already at the age of 14 she performed every night in front of a crossing for her friends.

Following the suggestion of Coghuf (original name: Ernst Stocker, painter from Basel), she takes lessons in classical singing and music theory in Neuchatel, Switzerland. In the local coffeehouses she meets numerous students, who restrain her temperament. She becomes part of a team of authors with whom she develops the piece allégria and appears on stage for the first time.

In 1969 she moves to Paris where she takes courses at the theater of Tania Balachova for a few months and stages her first solo play at the theatre “La Vielle Grille”. The painter Roger Montandon invites her to pose for him, which founds an intense collaboration between the two artists, lasting for many years. From 1970 to 1980 Zouc plays her piece several hundred times, amongst other theatres at the Cieux Colombier, at the Théatre de la Ville, at Le Palace, at Bobino and in many other scenes abroad.

Meanwhile, using the arising contacts, Zouc performs in Jeux de massacre by Eugène Ionesco, put on stage by Jorge Lavelli, as well as in The Birds by Aristophanes with music by Antoine Duhamel at the Opera of Lyon. She is starring in many movies and therefore works with Michel Drach, William Klein, Serguei Bordrov and Jacques Dillon. In 1983 she plays the counterpart to Pierre Dux in Monsieur Abel.

In 1984 she brings her play Zouc à l’école des femmes in collaboration with Roger Montandon to stage. 1987 her new show, which was developed together with Tara Depré, is presented at Le Bataclan. Zouc doesn’t like to talk about the many prizes her work was awarded with.

In 1997 Zouc suffers from a heavy hospital-acquired infection with multi-resistant staphylococcus aureus bacteria at the hospital Marie Lannelongue in Pléssis-Robinson (near Paris). At Croix-Saint-Simon, a hospital in Paris, her life is barely saved, but she remaines seriously handicapped. This stroke of fate ended her career on stage far ahead of time.

Interviews with Claude Massot for the Show TV Dim-Dam-Dom (1972) and Daniel Jeannet for the radio station Radio Suisse Romande (1986)

Publications about Zouc by Marguerite Duras in the french Newspaper Le Monde (1987) and Hervé Guibert: Zouc par Zouc, Edition L’Arbalète-Gallimard, relised as a play by Nathalie Baye (2006)