If filmmaker Baz Luhrmann ("Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge") can direct for the stage, then why can't an American documentarist do it? The world's oldest repertory company, La Comédie-Française, with the help of Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts will now make that happen. The Last Letter, a new play adapted and directed by Frederick Wiseman, will tour Canada and the United States May 16-June 23.

Taken from Russian writer Vasily Grossman’s novel "Life and Fate," Last Letter shares a letter written in 1941 by a Russian Jewish doctor to her son. At the time of the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine, she explains things that are going on around her and inside her. French star Catherine Samie stars in the production that will be performed in French with English subtitles.

Last Letter, which ran last year at Paris' Studio-Theatre of La Comédie Française, will play at Canada's Theatre de Ille a Hull in Ottawa (May 16-19) and at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto (May 25&26) before coming to the States. Once on American soil, the tour will run in New York City at the Florence Gould Hall (June 1&2), at the Market Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts (June 6-14), and at City Stage in Springfield, MA (June 16-17) before finishing in Illinois at The Shakespeare Theater in Chicago (June 22-23).

For further information and tickets to Last Letter, call the specific venue's phone number below:

Theatre de Ille a Hull in Ottawa, Canada - (819) 595-7455
Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto, Canada - (416) 922-2014
Florence Gould Hall in NYC - (212) 355-4160
Market Theater in Cambridge, MA - (617) 576-0808
City Stage in Springfield, MA - (413) 788-7033
The Shakespeare Theater in Chicago, IL - (312) 595-5600 — by Ernio Hernandez