Munich: The actress Lucy Wilke – Munich

The thing is bloody. Even if that’s not really an issue in the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood”: Anyone who has been swallowed by a wolf and got stuck in its bowels is more likely to no longer wear a clean little dress. At least Lucy Wilke doesn’t do that. She is almost naked, covered in blood, and she has to be carefully lifted from her stomach. Lotta Ökmen pulls her out of it, carries her to an upholstered table, washes Wilke, has sex with her, dresses her and then allows herself to be humiliated and commanded by her. It is a very weird, also evil Little Red Riding Hood variant that the two tell under the direction of Sahar Rahimi. “Wolf”, says Wilke, is one of her most personal works. And it is one in which Wilke consistently pursues one goal: breaking through viewing habits.

In November, Lucy Wilke was awarded the Bavarian Culture Prize by the Ministry of Art and Bayernwerk AG for her art as an actress, director, author, dancer and musician. One reason for this – according to the announcement – is: “With her artistic work, she makes a major contribution to more diversity in art.” Diversity, says Wilke himself, is her most important topic. The 38-year-old has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and uses a wheelchair. This physical requirement is part of her art, not its content. Wilke brings a lot of physical presence and desire into the game and achieves exactly what she wants when dealing with diversity: “From my side, it’s easy to relax.”

“I grew up in a very artistic environment.”

The artist was born in 1984 and grew up in a trailer park on the edge of the Olympic Park. “In a very artistic environment,” says Wilke; her father worked in stage construction at the Deutsches Theater, and she says of his technical skills: “He’s a magician.” The campsite attracted artists, musicians and international guests. She made music with her mother back then and still does today. They perform as the duo Blind & Lame – a clear indication of how much one can relax at Wilke’s. The name plays with both of their disabilities, with Wilkes’ SMA and with the fact that her mother Franziska is blind. “Lucy is a big fan of black humor and irony,” says a short vita. This is also evident here.

“It was clear from the start that I wanted to do something artistic,” says Wilke. She tells it without frills, pleasantly unpathetic, clearly looking at her counterpart. Wilke exudes a high degree of attention. It’s no different in the theater either. She seems to demand clarity at every moment, to push away everything that has been printed out and thus creates a great stage presence.

At the age of 18 she did stage training at the International Munich Art Lab, she wanted to be a director and completed various assistantships. Eventually, she decided to pursue acting. Here she succeeded as a performer in the independent scene. One project that “opened a lot of doors” for her was 2017’s “Fucking Disabled” by director David von Westphalen.

A door opener: In 2020 Lucy Wilke and Paweł Duduś could be seen in the performance “Fucking Disabled” on the subject of sex and disability at the Pathos Theater.

(Photo: Robert Haas)

It was about sex and disability, implemented with four performers – and anything but bashful. Wilke was seen here with the performer Paweł Duduś, kissing, naked, on a mattress in the dim light. Westphalen really wanted Wilke there because of her sex appeal. The concept worked. Wilke says: “That was my start.” And she also says: “There is still something political about approaching the topic in this subtle way.” Diversity is best brought to the stage by not making it an issue. “It is precisely in the casualness that the healing lies.”

She did a fantastic job of executing that idea with Ökmen and Rahimi in “Wolf,” a 2022 production. Likewise in the somewhat older work “Scores that shaped our friendship” from 2020 with Paweł Duduś, which she also values ​​as very personal. It’s a play about being together in seven chapters. “What we show is the joy of playing,” says Wilke. The images are very different, one time Duduś is a puma, Wilke his victim, another time they count the moves needed to dress them. Or Wilke says that she is currently on a dating portal a lot. She often hears: “You have such a pretty face. But…” Duduś then pulls a nylon stocking over her head and paints it, counteracting the hurtful division into head and body. For “Scores” they received the 2020 Faust Theater Prize in the category Dance, and they were invited to the Theatertreffen 2021.

Portrait: The next premiere with Lucy Wilke in the Kammerspiele: "Happy 2022" by Michiel Vandevelde.

The next premiere with Lucy Wilke in the Kammerspiele: “Joy 2022” by Michiel Vandevelde.

(Photo: Judith Buss)

2020 was also the year in which the Munich Kammerspiele brought Wilke into the ensemble. In contrast to the independent scene, the artist does not work on her own projects here, she is part of various productions. Just like when shooting for television and film. This year she was in the ARD series “All in”, in the summer there will probably be filming for the cinema. In the Kammerspiele, which deliberately rely on an inclusive ensemble, Wilke is cast in roles involving strong, independent women. There is, for example, her singer Susanna Widerklee in “Effingers”, Jan Bosse’s adaptation of Gabriele Tergit’s epochal novel. Jessica Glause’s production of “Bavarian Suffragettes” is anyway about the strong women of the early 20th century, in which Wilke plays the writer Carry Brachvogel.

She was last seen in Anna Smolar’s farce “Hungry Ghosts”, in which the performers brought in their own biographical elements. Here Wilke rants that she is always looked at with pity because of her disability. She has completely different problems. Also great is her performance in it as a director who crushes her pathetic ensemble. However, the actress says she would never do that in real life.

One believes her immediately, since she herself is a seeker in various artistic fields. This Friday, January 9, she can be seen again in the world premiere of “Joy 2022” about sexpositivity by choreographer Michiel Vandevelde. And because Lucy Wilke isn’t someone who makes a lot of fuss about something, she simply says: “I think it’s an entertaining piece.” And that has to be enough. You don’t break viewing habits when you talk about them.

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