Isabella Sedlak (AT/GER)
Authors / Theater / Directors / Theater
Isabella is a director and author. She was born in Wiener Neustadt, where she grew up with her single mother. She studied theatre, film and media studies as well as international economics and social sciences in Vienna and Southampton, followed by further training in education and work experience, and later assistantships at the Deutsches Theater and Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.
Her productions have been shown at the Maxim Gorki Theater, ITZ Tübingen, Schauspiel Dortmund, Malmö Stadsteater and the Nationaltheater Mannheim. In 2019, her direction of Dino Pešut’s play Lebensmenschen was awarded a prize for young talent. In the same year, she founded the collective Bauer + Baum, with which she has realised several projects in Vienna. She works with texts by contemporary authors such as Anna Gschnitzer, Anaïs Clerc and Elisabeth Pape, as well as with her own plays and text developments. In addition to her stage work, she writes screenplays, essays and zines.
Together with Palestinian-Israeli actor Yousef Sweid, she developed the play Between the River and the Sea in 2025, which premiered at the Maxim Gorki Theater and subsequently toured to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, among other venues.
Isabella lives and works in Berlin and Vienna.
Awards/Scholarships:
2025 – Nomination for ‘Best Play’ (Theater Heute) for Between the River and the Sea
2025 – Resident Artist at the Tieranatomisches Theater (TAT) of Humboldt University Berlin
2024 – Scholarship from the Goethe-Institut
Works (Selection)
BETWEEN THE RIVER AND THE SEA written by Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak
2025
Berlin
Palestinian-Israeli actor Yousef Sweid dives into the chaos of identity, truth, and family life. Raised as a Christian Arab kid in Haifa, now raising two Jewish-Arab kids in Berlin, he unpacks his in-between-ness where contradictions clash and slogans fail. With biting humor and raw honesty, Sweid weaves personal stories, political reflection, and absurd everyday moments into a sharp, unflinching solo performance. This is no neat narrative- but a plea for nuance, for listening, and for stories that rarely get told.
“A radical performance — in its humanity, its humor, its nuances. It was desperately needed.” rbb24
“It’s a work that hydrates the heart and conscience” The Berliner
“People want to hear more about the nuances, about biographies such as Sweid’s” FAZ
“Rarely has anyone more astutely summed up the absurd power of external attributions on self-definition.” – Tagesspiegel
“Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Arab-Christian — and even Berlin. Stand-up theater full of ease and open wounds.” – Nachtkritik
„Entertaining on the surface, but shocking underneath. And above all: worth seeing.“ – Der Freitag
“It’s an evocative, nuanced and, at times, darkly humorous performance”
⭐⭐⭐⭐ – The Edinburgh Reporter
“This play is an extraordinary act of empathy, that neither thinks nor behaves in the way you expect or might want it to.” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – LondonTheatre1