Ariane Mnouchkine (born 3 March 1939) is a French stage director. She founded the Parisian avant-garde stage ensemble Théâtre du Soleil in 1964. She has written and directed 1789 (1974) and Molière (1978), and in 1989, she directed La Nuit Miraculeuse. She holds a Chair of Artistic Creation at the Collège de France,[1] an Honorary Degree in Performing Arts from the University of Rome III, awarded in 2005 [1] and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Oxford University, awarded 18 June 2008.