Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak

Country: Germany

Biography

Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak are a magnetic theatre partnership whose work turns lived complexity into something audiences lean toward rather than turn away from. Palestinian-Israeli actor Sweid, born in Haifa and now based in Berlin, brings a rare in-between voice shaped by Christian-Arab roots, Israeli stages, international screens, and fatherhood across cultures. Austrian director and writer Sedlak, working between Berlin and Vienna, is known for collective, music-rich, politically alert productions that treat personal story as public encounter. Together they created the sold-out solo Between the River and the Sea, co-written and directed by Sedlak and performed by Sweid with humour, tenderness, and unflinching honesty. The piece braids childhood memories, family life, divorce, and the weight of competing narratives into an invitation to listen rather than choose a side. Their collaboration has travelled from Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin to the Edinburgh Fringe, London’s Royal Court, and stages across Europe and beyond. Critics praise the work as entertaining on the surface and harrowing underneath—a plea for unheard stories and for holding contradiction without flattening it. On a website, they arrive as artists who make room: for laughter, for grief, and for the possibility that a life lived between worlds can still be a bridge.

Between the river and the sea

Between the River and the Sea is the solo by Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak that turns a life lived in the in-between into an evening of humour, tenderness, and political clarity. Born in Haifa, Sweid grew up between languages, loyalties, and versions of the truth—and on stage he refuses to flatten that complexity into a single side. Personal stories meet public history: a Christian-Arab childhood in a Jewish kindergarten, two Jewish-Arab children in Berlin, divorce, fatherhood, and the pressure to choose. Sedlak, as director and co-author, shapes hours of conversation into a lean, spellbinding performance where Sweid slips between father, son, lawyer, lover, and himself. The title plays with a slogan that divides rooms, then asks what it means to actually live between the river and the sea. What emerges is not a verdict but a plea: tell the unheard stories, sit with contradiction, and keep listening. Critics have called it beautiful, clever, funny, and needed—entertaining on the surface, harrowing underneath. It premiered at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theatre in April 2025 and has since travelled as an invitation to hold more than one truth at once.