You were born in Volgograd but moved to Germany when you were a child. How do you navigate the complexities of these different cultural contexts in your writing? What do you make of the concept of "home" in relation to cultural identity, and how has your own personal experience shaped your understanding of this term?
Living in different cultures has always been the most normal thing for me, even before my family migrated to Germany. I grew up with the feeling of being a minority (Jewish) in a complex world of other minorities coexisting with each other (in the former Soviet Union). I was always surrounded by different languages, different cuisines, certainly very diverse opinions about how life could or should look like. It has been a very productive place to work from, artistically, spiritually.
When “Home” is understood as the “irrevocable condition” Baldwin spoke about, I don´t have much to say about it – the country I was born in doesn’t exist anymore. My mother tongue, Russian, is an imperial language that represents a bloody war right now. I never missed Moscow, where I grew up. I have horrible memories. But if “Home” is the pool of all the different aspects of oneself, all the inspirations, restrictions, relations, rituals (as Taiye Selasi puts it) I am at home in Berlin and Istanbul, I am a family member of a huge diverse chosen family spread all over the world. Where I come from is easy for me to answer: I come from theater and books. They raised me.
How did you experience the transition from playwriting to writing novels? What made you want to delve into fiction writing and how did the process (and perhaps also the reception) differ from one medium to the next? How do you distinguish which form a specific piece of writing needs to take?
To be honest I didn´t choose the transition, it chose me. I didn´t sit down and make the choice. I was a theater maker for 17 years, that was half of my life, when I came to write prose, I was 34. I understood myself as a homo teatricus. I came to Istanbul, fell in love with the city, sat down to write – and it was prose. For me writing novels is a different discipline than playwrighting. Entirely! And I wish I could decide before I sit down what it´s going to be, but that´s not how the process is for me. The themes or rather my characters decide that for me. To be honest though, right now I enjoy prose more. Describing faces, senses, the surrounding – one doesn´t do it in drama, there you “only” have direct speech. I used to love that most, now I guess I love getting lost in the beauty of words and their rhythm.
Could you please speak a bit about your work at Studio Я at the Maxim Gorki Theater where you were the artistic director from 2013 to 2015? How did this time influence your working and thinking and what were some of the main lessons you recognize from today’s perspective?
I received the offer of becoming an artistic director of the small stage of the Maxim Gorki Theater (it has two stages) and luckily didn´t know what I said yes to. The artistic directors of the big house told me: you always talk about how representation needs an actual space, where people can meet, experiment and perform. So: here it is, take it. Studio Я turned out to be one of the most influential experiences in my life so far. It was more than an experimental theater stage. It became a community space. We celebrated Nowruz, Channukah, International Roma Day. Every year we grieved together the death of Hrant Dink. Representation of trans and queer folks was unique for a German state theater. And when the refugees who seek shelter in Berlin were evicted from the houses they occupied, some of them stayed at Studio Я. Because they knew they were safe there. This place changed all of us. And in the end, it contributed to the change that is going on in state theaters in Germany till today.
Both “Beside Myself” and “Im Mensch muss alles herrlich sein” circle around themes of uprootedness, migration, identity formation and intergenerational communication and the difficulties in addressing painful and unprocessed histories. How does this story arc relate to your own family history?
“Beside Myself” is an autofiction novel. I didn´t plan to write about my family and in the end, I am not sure I did. I think it would be fair to say I used all the geographical coordinates on the family map and then connected the dots by making up stories. I didn´t intend to write a Jewish family story at all, I wanted to speak about fluidity. About how possibilities of becoming what you are change from one generation to another depending on the circumstances you´re in: If there is a war you have to flee from. If you are Jewish, if you are gay, if you are gender nonconforming etc. What you can live and express is always dependent on where you are at this particular time in human history. “Beside Myself” includes four languages (German, Russian, Turkish, English), it portrays lives in different countries. It plays with grammar, with pronouns. It is a queer book. “Glorious People” (“Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein”) is quite the opposite. It portrays a very strict regime in the last decades of the Soviet Union. It takes place in Ukraine in the 70´s, 80´s, 90´s. It is written in only one language (German). It shows the harshness of the Soviet regime in the language and the way people deal with one another (and with oneself).
My grandparents and great-grandparents are from Ukraine, but none of what I wrote in my second novel is their story. I wanted to portray women from the East of Ukraine. I did a lot of Interviews. The book is inspired by their life stories.
What do you think needs to change in the publishing industry to create a more equitable and inclusive literary landscape? How can we ensure that diverse voices are given equal opportunities to tell their stories?
I have the feeling the industry knows exactly what needs to change and I believe it is partly already happening. And if it is not happening, that change is deliberately blocked from happening. When we look at the struggles within the cultural sphere, they always have been más o menos the same. Nothing will really change if you don´t put a significant number of people with marginalized experiences in executive positions.
It´s up to every single one of us to figure out if one is ready to share their resources. For a lot of us in the industry it would mean to have less attention, less power, at the end of the day: less money. I am not very optimistic that the majority will want that.
What are your plans for your residency in New York?
Reading. Going for walks and reading. Maybe to write a little. I already started a small piece.
