Mélanie Leray is a French actress and theater director. After the school of the National Theater of Brittany where from 1991 to 1994 she took lessons from B. Bayen and H. P. Cloos, Mélanie Leray entered the Théâtre des Lucioles where she was an actress until 1997 with directors such as Christophe Lemaître. , Jean Deloche, Gilles Dao and François Rancillac. The same year, she also began a career in the cinema, under the aegis of Western by Manuel Poirier, a film crowned with the Jury Prize at Cannes. Her business card is also marked by high standards since she has worked under the direction of some of the most talented directors of contemporary French cinema: Xavier Beauvois (Selon Matthieu, Le Petit Lieutenant), Marion Vernoux (Reines d' one day) and Benoît Jacquot (No Scandal). In the early 2000s, she began to flourish in theater directing, continuing work with the Rennes penitentiary center that she had started when she was a member of the Théâtre des Lucioles (I was in the house and I was waiting for the rain to come, 2001). After a punk operetta (Erma et moi) and adaptations of texts by Lars Norén (La Veillée), she returned to the Théâtre National de Bretagne in 2009 with Lucy Caldwell's play Leaves (leaves).
In 2012, she created her own company, La Compagnie 2052. She began directing at the Women's Penitentiary Center in Rennes in 2000. She co-directed two plays by Lars Norén: Autumn and Winter then La Veillée with Pierre Maillet at the Theater de la Bastille. It features two young French authors: Erma et moi by Mario Batista at the Festival Corps de Texte in Rouen then La Chaise by musician Florian Parra at the Théâtre du Rond-Point. In association with the TNB, she created 3 British texts: Leaves by Lucy Caldwell 2009, Contractions by Mike Bartlett 2012-2013 (Théâtre de la Ville and Théâtre National de Bretagne) and La Mégère taming (How to tame the rebellious) by William Shakespeare then Tribus by Nina Raine in 2017. She directs promotion 9 of the school of the National Theater of Brittany around an adaptation of Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In 2019, Girls and Boys by Dennis Kelly at the Théâtre du Petit St Martin won the Molière for best solo on stage, the Laurent Terzieff prize from the Syndicat de la Critique and the J-C Brialy prize at the Anjou festival. In 2020, she created Viviane, a theatrical and cinematographic adaptation of Julia Deck's novel. The show is repeated at the Monfort Théâtre. In 2022, she creates at the Comédie de Caen Le Mérite a play that she co-wrote with Maëlle Puéchoultres. Mélanie has been an associate artist there since 2021. In January 2024, Mélanie Leray will create Together by Denis Kelly, at the Théâtre de l'Atelier.
