Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota was born on June 19, 1970, the son of Portuguese performer Teresa Mota and French director and playwright Richard Demarcy. He founded the Compagnie des Millefontaines in 1988 and was director of La Comédie de Reims, Centre Dramatique National (CDN) from 2002 to 2008. He has directed Théâtre de la Ville since 2008, and has served as general director of the Festival d’Automne in Paris since 2011.

Among the many works Demarcy-Mota has directed for the stage are Love’s Labour’s Lost by Shakespeare (Blanc Mesnil and Théâtre de la Ville, 1998-1999); Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello (2001); Rhinoceros by Ionesco (Théâtre de la Ville, 2004-2006, restaging in 2011); Man Is Man by Brecht (Théâtre de la Ville, 2007); Casimir and Caroline by Horváth and Wanted Petula (Théâtre de la Ville, 2009) Bouli année zero (Théâtre de la Ville, 2010), both by Fabrice Melquiot; Victor or Power to the Children by Roger Vitrac (Théâtre de la Ville, 2012); Le Faiseur (Mercadet) by Balzac (Théâtre de la Ville-Abbesses, 2014); Alice and Other Wonders (Théâtre de la Ville, 2015) and Alice Crosses The Mirror (Théâtre de la Ville-Espace Cardin, premiere in December 2019), both by Fabrice Melquiot and respectively after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Caroll ; and The Crucible by Arthur Miller (Théâtre de la Ville-Espace Cardin, 2019).