Yousef Sweid & Isabella Sedlak's River and Seas

Join us for an evening of live theatre with the Berlin Gorki Theater’s 60-minute performance Rivers and Seas, featuring Palestinian-Israeli actor Yousef Sweid, exploring life between different cultures and narratives. Combining personal anecdotes with political reflection, he recalls his childhood as an Arab Christian child in a Jewish kindergarten and offers humorous perspectives on everyday family life in Berlin. How are Sweid’s Jewish-Arab children supposed to find their way in a world where their “in-betweenness” seems to be not a bridge but an invalid position? The performance makes a case for listening to neglected stories and accepting complexity and contradictions. This is no neat narrative, but a plea for nuance, for listening, and for stories that rarely get told. Uncomfortable, unforgettable, unfiltered. Complex, touching and funny. Co-written and directed by Isabella Sedlak. The play will have a run in London at the Royal Court Theater in 2026.

Followed by a panel discussion with actors Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak. Moderated by Frank Hentschker.

Yousef Sweid (1976, Haifa, Israel) is an actor and theater-maker. He is a founding member of the Arab-Hebrew Jaffa Theatre and has been working with directors such as Yael Ronen since 2006. In addition to appearances at theaters such as the Schaubühne, Berlin, and the Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, Sweid has also appeared in film and television productions such as Walk on Water, The Bubble, Homeland, Game of Thrones, Unorthodox, and Totenfrau. In his own projects, he explores the intersections between personal biography and political identity. Sweid lives in Berlin.

Isabella Sedlak (1981, Wiener Neustadt, Austria) is a director and writer working at the intersection of theater, film, and performance. Her work reflects on social structures and questions power relations, gender issues, and historical narratives. Her productions have been shown at the Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin; Schauspiel Dortmund; ITZ, Tübingen; Theater Drachengasse, Vienna; and Werk X-Petersplatz, Vienna, among others. She also writes screenplays and essays from a feminist and intersectional perspective. Sedlak lives in Berlin and Vienna.

Special thanks to Gorki Theater Berlin and Antje Oegel from CO International, Berlin.