Julie van den Berghe

Biography

Julie Van den Berghe (1981) graduated from the directing course at the Amsterdamse Theaterschool  with De Coup/e (based on The Cut by Mark Ravenhill) in 2010, for which she was granted the Ton Lutz Prize for beste directing at the ITs Festival.

In October 2009, Van den Berghe directed the text 2012 by Marjolijn van Heemstra, commissioned by the Goethe Institute, for Frascati (Frascati Productions 2009). The fall of the Berlin Wall signalled the end of an era. The battlefields of the modern age are shifting towards the timeless and directionless space of media and telecommunications: a fertile breeding ground for a new generation of walls shifting out of plain view. In this injury time after the end of history, Van Heemstra and Van den Berghe sketch out an absurd laboratory for an imaginary future that never arrives – a reality with no losers, but also no winners. 

During her studies, Van den Berghe created the productions India Song (Duras), Othello (Shakespeare) and Julie (Bataille). Her production F. (Duras) was selected for the 2009 German theatre festival Körber Studio Junge Regie at the Thalia Theater, Hamburg, and is expected to be revived in 2011 by NTGent in cooperation with Frascati Productions.

During the seasons ahead, Julie van den Berghe will further develop her work with Frascati Productions and NT Gent, in cooperation with the Münchener Kammerspiele. Her new production for Frascati, Het meisje dat te veel van lucifers hield [The Girl who Loved Matches Too Much] – based on the novel of the same name by Gaétan Soucy – is expected in the spring of 2011. This is a theatre text eye to eye with fear; at once naive, intelligent and horribly poetic. Julie van den Berghe's work seeks out extremes: playful and baroque, jubilant and dark all at the same time.