Two Artists in Search of Freedom: A Conversations with Judith

This episode is about two parallel lives in two cities: my friend Judith’s in Berlin and mine in New York.

Featuring Judith Evers.

The music credits for this episode go to AlexiAction, AudioCoffee, SoulProdMusic, ComaStudio, and Coma Media generously published on Pixabay.com/music 

Directing and editing assistance by Mario Golden. Written and produced by Andreas Robertz.

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Transcript

Update from the Edge

Episode 6: 

Two Artists in Search of Freedom: A Conversations with Judith

by Andreas Robertz

This episode is about two parallel lives in two cities: my friend Judith’s in Berlin and mine in New York. I have known Judith for over 20 years. Both she and I are theater artists. Although we went in different directions, we got closer over time. We’ve always given each other a lot of support, and it’s been very important for us to understand and value our personal journeys. There is also something similar about the energy in New York and Berlin. Often they are called sister cities because of the unique spaces they provide for diversity and creativity. One could say they have a touch of magic. Just like our friendship.

 I met Judith in Cologne in 2001. She was a student at an acting school there, and I was a resident director at a small off-scene theater, a hybrid between theater and dance club with a very edgy style. I was staging a site-specific theater installation called “Mangamania” for the New Year Eve's party. 12 actresses and actors dressed as schoolboys and girls in Manga-inspired costumes, make-up, and hairstyles would lure audiences from under the stairs and behind iron bars flourishing bloody hands and crazy smiles. Some of them would be sitting in cages chained, looking at people with sad pleading eyes; or they would walk around as drag creatures wearing huge high heels, masks, and headpieces like strange aliens in search of victims. Every hour they would change their position, hypnotized by a gothic hymn. Shortly before midnight they would all march to the main stage and count down the seconds before the New Year began. I remember Judith was wearing a really sexy outfit. She had a blast. 

 It was the beginning of many collaborations — with her and her acting school friends. Despite having limited resources, we were wildly creative, willing to do things that normally weren’t done at traditional theaters. 

 Before the summer of 2004 I met my husband Mario in New York. From then on we spent more time together, and in 2005 I relocated to the Big Apple to be with him. Later that same year Judith moved to Berlin.  

 In 2021 Mario and I recorded a conversation with Judith. I asked her why she moved to Berlin.

Judith: I had to. I was very fascinated years before when I visited a friend and then I had things to do in Cologne, finishing the acting school, everything, and then I thought, okay, I have to go to Berlin. I think Berlin it's a little bit rough, but very honest. And that's what I needed to have because I came from Cologne where everybody is “Schunkeling” and dancing and having fun all the time. I felt a little bit lost in this atmosphere. And here in Berlin, people are very clear.  This city is divided. It was divided, still in a sort of getting together. The process is thirty years and ongoing. And for me, and my inner life, I felt the same. I felt divided into two pieces I had to combine. I felt at home here in Berlin because of it.

It is joyful and painful for me to remember my time in Cologne. After many years fully employed as an actor, director, and artistic director in other cities, I moved there to free myself as an artist…. and maybe find love in Germany’s gay capital. Two friends I knew had a small theater. The three of us were hungry for a different way of working: less hierarchical, more daring, bolder on stage. We formed a team and produced six exciting plays. Among them, Brad Fraser’s “Unidentified Human Remains” and Martin McDonagh’s “Pillowman” became very successful. So we started to get notoriety. 

 But my financial situation was dire. The theater wasn’t paying me a salary. My unemployment money was running out, and at that time in order to get additional aid from the government I would have had to sell my life insurance. I didn’t want to. Suddenly I was in free fall. In the city of endless parties I was alone with no money. I was 39 years old. When a director from New York offered me to visit him, I went. I wanted to change my life in an unforeseen direction. 

Judith: Before I moved to Berlin, I often felt in very extreme mood. One side was, I had fun, I am outside, I meet people, I am loud, I'm in life. And the other side was like a depressing part of myself. I was quiet and I felt really very lonesome or alone. And it was difficult to get these two sides in a balance. And then when I moved to Berlin I felt immediately that in the city there is something like that. They are two sides, or even more, but two main sites who wants to get into one. And that was for me an encouragement to come.

The idea that moving to a new city can help bridge parts of oneself resonates with me.In New York I was with Mario. I was no longer alone. I also felt I had much to offer as a German theater director. 

 Of course living in New York is challenging to say the least, definitely as an artist. Often you don’t know how next month’s rent will be paid. But in contrast to Cologne, the city offers a lot of possibilities to reinvent oneself. In my case, a good friend who works as a top editor at the German Public Radio suggested I could write reports about New York’s theater scene. It was then, that a new door opened for me. I could earn money whenever I was not producing or directing and still remain in my profession. Similarly Berlin offered Judith exciting possibilities in her field. 

Judith: Slowly slowly I found my way of being an artist in the city combining theater therapy, educational work with theater writing and also directing, inventing new performances, working with older people, working with young people, with children, with adults, everybody, and doing performances in the open space and in theaters. I had the feeling, it's like a huge playground. You can find your style. I remember that in the first years I often thought, oh, am I happy to live here, because I feel so free. I can do whatever I want. I can wear whatever I want. I can be together with whom I want. 

I really relate to that feeling. Like Judith in Berlin, I loved finding my own way in New York, especially living in a place like Elmhurst where I felt I was the only German. At that point in my life I wanted to immerse myself in a different culture. I always knew I was a traveler, but here I could lay down my roots and literally find people from the whole world. I felt freer than anywhere else. 

 As it turned out Mario and I collaborated frequently, and several of our theater projects brought me back to Germany. One in particular was very meaningful. Starting in 2008 we conducted two series of intensive workshops to examine the impact of the Holocaust on descendants of perpetrators and victims. We did one workshop series with five German actresses in Germany, and another one with five Jewish actresses in New York. We wanted to see how the events of the past shaped their most personal and intimate relations in the present. Over the course of three years we developed two plays based on their personal histories, and in the summer of 2010 we did a staged reading of one and produced the other, both in Berlin. Judith took part in the whole process.

Judith: I remember that we once were in the room, that theater house, and we did a ritual for the Jewish people, all the people who died, and that was a long ritual with a lot of crying and then we had flowers and I remember that I went together with Heidrun, we went to a Jewish place at the canal and we throw away the flowers. It was really very special, very deep. I had the feeling of a constant research because when I went out just in a bar I suddenly was in a conversation with somebody concerning these histories. I did interviews with people, with my grandma, with my parents, with other people. It was really interesting and very healing.

 Andreas: In what way? 

 Judith: I think to get to know so many things from my parents for example, or my grandma, she was around 90, and she told me things when she was a young woman, that was before the war. And what happened in that time and how she experienced that as a young woman with her husband, who went to the SS whatever “Stammtisch”. Suddenly it was like a bridge between me here and now and her and all the people in that time. And also my father, he still talks about the war and everything, and what they thought as a child. He was very “verstört” - distort - because he was in a class and one classmate, he was Jewish and the other one wasn't. The father of the other one started destroying the shop of the Jewish father and also my father observed it and he didn't know what is happening? Why are they doing this? I am part of the history and here you can feel it even more than I then in other cities in Germany.

Judith lives in Kreuzberg, one of the most diverse areas of Berlin. Every “Kiez,” as the people in Berlin call their neighborhoods, has its own flavor. Traditionally Kreuzberg was a working class district, very much like Elmhurst in New York. It was also the home of the alternative/left scene in West-Berlin before the wall fell in 1989 and 1990. It is famous for its Turkish restaurants, gay bars, and second-hand shops. 

 “Görlitzer Park” is right across the street from the apartment building where Judith lives. She loves going there to sit on a hill and watch the sunset. 

 Thinking about Judith in Kreuzberg — so full of energy and always involved in many projects — makes me reflect about something else, something I’ve been grappling with the past few years since my opportunities to direct plays in New York started to wean. What would have happened if I had stayed in Germany? Would I be living in Berlin as well? Would I have found more chances to work as an artist, or to be part of an ensemble? I’ve found out the effort it takes to mount a production here in New York often feels overwhelming to me. 

 It’s a striking sour note about missed opportunities that is actually connected to my childhood. My mother felt overwhelmed raising three children. She wanted nothing more than to go back to her career as a nurse. And she did — but not before I internalized her disappointment. It feels good to acknowledge these difficult feelings as I grow older and remind myself of the adventurous and loving spirit that guided me to the life I am living now, and the place I am at with the man I love. I do want to continue directing in the future, and I trust life will bring me more chances to do so.

 I’m reminiscing about Judith’s first visit in New York. 

Judith: Remember, we went for a coffee and then you, yeah, come on, we go here and we go there and suddenly, it was in Brooklyn, I saw the skyline and that was wow. And then we went to over the Brooklyn Bridge.  I changed because of this other perspective and also the American way of how to deal with life, how to be positive and optimistic. I thought, okay, it is a decision to go forward, to see the things in an optimistic way and to act like that - the difference between the German way of looking back, being very serious and discussing things lots of times instead of just doing them.

Yes, she is reminding me. I love that about Judith: her fierce curiosity, her open heartedness, her immense humor. In the twenty-three years we’ve known each other she became a professional actress, director, writer, performer, producer, educator, coach, and healer. One of her favorite German words is “mit Schmackes”, which means “with full thrust”. Once you are on your way there is no room for ambivalence or hesitation. You go all the way. 

That’s how important life decisions work. You might think about them a lot but as soon as you make them, their energy will carry you all the way. 

Judith’s carried her to Berlin and mine to New York.

The music credits for this episode go to AlexiAction, AudioCoffee, SoulProdMusic, ComaStudio, and Coma Media generously published on Pixabay.com/music