Zouc

The actress Isabelle von Allmen (Zouc) was born in 1950 in Switzerland. By the age of 14 she was performing every night in front of a crossing for her friends.

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

In 1969 she moved to Paris where she took courses at the theater of Tania Balachova for a few months and staged her first solo play at the theatre “La Vielle Grille”.

The painter Roger Montandon invited her to pose for him, which found an intense collaboration between the two artists, lasting for many years. Between 1970 and 1980 Zouc played 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 her increasing contacts, Zouc performed 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 played the counterpart to Pierre Dux in "Monsieur Abel".

In 1984 she brought 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.

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

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

Publications about Zouc

*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)

External links

* [http://www.zouc.ch Zouc]