01. 11. 2010.

PORTRAIT 4 - Lydia Ziemke

Lydia Ziemke was born in 1978 in Potsdam, East Germany. Her early childhood, spent under regime of GDR, is still very important to her. Her parents, who were both doctors, were never bothered by the regime because of their profession. Since then, what she keeps from this period of her life is that “it instilled in [her] that kind of sense that we’re working together on something, you have a responsibility towards the persons you are living with”. There she also experienced a strict school where she learnt Latin, Greek and humanistic ideas, which, according to her, also had much influence on the stage director she became.

 She began work in theatre in the Youth Theatre of Potsdam, at the age of 12. At that time, she had already gone into engaged theatre. The main subject she and her colleagues tackled was consumerism. “We were kind of punk, we made shows against selling, you know, all the clichés you can possibly imagine.” She even had the opportunity to be employed as an extra. She enjoys remembering a Faust play in which she played a witch and all the beautiful dresses she had the opportunity to wear.

 She finally decided to leave for Scotland to pursue her studies. A difficult family situation and the urge to discover other places, other languages, and other literatures led her to leave Germany. In Edinburgh, she continued studying Latin and Greek, particularly the dramaturgy of origins of theatre which, she says, still have a big impact on her work.

 One year after her arrival in Scotland, she had the opportunity to take over a theatre company. Together with a friend, she led this semi-professional troupe for four years. And still, criticism of the society was their motto. Even if, according to her, it had hardly any impact on the Scottish audience. “I found it really painful that nobody reacted”.  During this period, she managed, with a very small amount of money, to organise the “premières” of Thomas Ostermeier, a German stage director whose performances had a great influence on her.

 She then left Scotland and spent her life between London and Berlin, where she recently decided to settle down.

 She staged two performances by herself, with “Land Without Words”, according to her, as the most serious. Social topics seem to be recurrent in her works that are essentially about the issue of migration. “In the work I did the last two years, and this, and the next project, I realized they are all about conflict and migration. That’s it. It happened. I found it interesting. All that happens in the extreme situations of life.” 

 At first sight, the question of migration is not linked to her personal life. However, in conversation, she remembers how outstanding the story of her grandaunt has been to her. After she died, Ziemke discovered letters written by her grandaunt and her grandmother, sent during the war, at a time when they were both preparing to get married. “What is interesting in those letters is the life that they plan and the life that they will finally have. Because of the conflict.” Indeed, the fiancé of her grandaunt died on the front, and she was separated from her sister for years by the wall.

 Ziemke is also continuously engaged outside of Europe - in Palestine for instance, where she spent two and a half months working with theatre artists. She was working at that time on Dea Loher’s “Land Without Words”, a play that talks about the possibility for an artist to talk about war and conflict. That mixed experience made her believe that you can talk about things only from your own experience and feeling.

 Art is a way to talk about the complexity of the society. Lydia is not interested in showing reality. “For a while, I thought you have to make theatre in order to distract people, to make them feel energized and be stronger (…). Now, I like create difficulties for the audience. Not in a way that will block them. Just to describe the complexity.”

 For Lydia Ziemke, theatre is unfortunately not a kind of resistance: “There is no enemy. Even in our critical shows, criticising our society, people clap, people buy it and clap.” But, by staging extreme situations, theatre can fight against normality, showing people they are not forced to follow what everybody does. Theatre has a role of showing the complexity of the world we are living in, and revealing it to the audience.