Isabella Sedlak
Quote.
Not long ago we started to write and rehearse this in our living rooms — still wild that now it’s touring the world.
Vita.
Isabella Sedlak is a director and author based in Berlin and Vienna. Her plays and productions have been presented at renowned theatres in Germany, Austria, and Sweden, invited to festivals such as the Berliner Herbstsalon, and honoured with scholarships, grants, and awards. In Vienna, she founded the collective Bauer+Baum, with which she realised independent projects while simultaneously working at municipal theatres.
Her work is shaped by collective processes, developing from devised creations or based on new drama by authors such as Anna Gschnitzer, Dino Pešut, Miroslava Svolikova, or Anaïs Clerc. Her approach is characterized by close collaboration with stage and video artists including Shahrzad Rahmani (Guerilla Architects), the video collective Hand mit Auge, Nicole Marianna Wytyczak, and Raissa Kankelfitz.
She enjoys experimenting with spaces that require new modes of performance, language, audience interaction, and perspective. Music and sound are central to all her works. Several of her productions explore the intersection of installation, performance, and traditional theatre. Her direction is known for a strong dedication to the precise development of characters, which is why her style has often been associated with 'post-post-dramatic theatre.'
Parallel to completing two master’s degrees in Theatre, Film and Media Studies and in International Social and Economic Sciences in Vienna (AT) and Southampton (UK), Isabella Sedlak pursued various trainings in pedagogy. As a trainer for group dynamics and social competence, she worked with disadvantaged youth and co-founded a feminist organization for girls* in Vienna, where she led the creative and media department. As a musician and singer, she composed her own music and regularly performed on stage and in recording studios, both with bands and solo projects. After working in film and television in Austria (e.g. Golden Girls FilmproduktionsGesmbH) and England, and longer stays in London, Colombia, and Mexico, she moved to Berlin in 2013, where she has since focused mainly on theatre – a field that allows her to merge her diverse experiences and interests.
She worked as an assistant director at the Deutsches Theater and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, collaborating closely with directors such as Yael Ronen, Lola Arias, and Sebastian Nübling. With Ersan Mondtag, she served multiple times as co-director and also appeared as a performer on stage. Working in highly international environments, she gained extensive experience in devised and autofictional writing as well as in multilingual performance and rehearsal practices. Since 2019, she has been working as an independent director.
Links.
Crew.
Shows.
A Knock on the Roof
The Last Days of Mankind?
Between the River and the Sea
Franz Kafka: MILENA!
