The Ibsen Award, worth about $500,000, has just been given to director Ariane Mnouchkine. The prize was created in 2007, and the first one went to Peter Brook. The selection committee was chaired by Liv Ullmann.

From the official statement: “It is said that theatre originated in ritual. If so, Ariane Mnouchkine’s theatre is proof that the sources of ritual have not dried up. She gathers people around her in order to tell them stories of the great crises of civilisation, of long-ago battles and the persecution and desperation of refugees in our own time. Yet out of these tales of crisis and tragedy grows a strong, many would say utopian, community of experience between actors and audience.”

Mnouckine’s large-scale productions are expensive to move around and so she hasn’t been seen much in the US. BAM had to stage “Les Atrides” at the Park Slope Armory in 1992. Then it took 13 years until her next NYC appearance, when Lincoln Center Festival presented the six-hour-long “Le Dernier Caravansérail” in 2005. This year, LCF will show “Les Ephémères” in two parts at the Park Avenue Armory on July 7-19.