Brazilian filmmaker, theater director and former theater actress, and museum curator. She very often collaborates with her musician husband, Dany Roland, who contributes with the sound design and occasionally the soundtrack. They have two daughters, Maria and Clara.
One of her first acting credits was in an adaptation of Maria Clara Machado’s Maroquinhas Fru-Fru, made by Wolf Maya. She later founded her own theater group, Carranca, alongside Gilda Guilhon and Daniel Dantas. In 1981 she acted in Nelson Rodrigues’ O Eterno Retorno and in Antunes Filho’s adaptation of Mário de Andrade’s novel Macunaíma; she was one of Filho’s major collaborators for two years.
She would, however, abandon her acting career to become a theater director, and in 1983 she directed her first play, an adaptation of Graciliano Ramos’ novel A Terra dos Meninos Pelados. Her play was very well received and inspired her to direct further plays, her most famous outputs being adaptations of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (starring Fernanda Torres in the title role), Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities and Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
In 1999 she organized the expo Brasileiro que Nem Eu. Que nem Quem? at the FAAP in São Paulo, to critical acclaim. She also designed the Brazilian pavilion at the Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany, and organized the Grande Sertão: Veredas expo in 2006, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the publication of João Guimarães Rosa’s eponymous novel, at the newly inaugurated Museu da Língua Portuguesa. In 2016, Lessa designed a pavilion for the Summer Olympics that took place in Rio de Janeiro.
Link to Wikipedia biography