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Miriam Goldschmidt, 2003

Miriam Goldschmidt (July 8, 1947 – August 14, 2017) was a German actress, director, and author. She became internationally known through her lifelong collaboration with director Peter Brook and his International Centre for Theatre Research (CIRT) in Paris. Her role as "Kunti" in Brook's film adaptation of the Indian epic The Mahabharata also made her known to a wider film audience.

Life and work

Miriam Goldschmidt as the only black child in the children's programme "Der Peter" of the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation, 1956

Miriam Goldschmidt was born in Frankfurt in 1947. At only a few weeks, she was abandoned in an orphanage in Birstein and never again met her biological parents. At the age of five, she was adopted by a Jewish couple, Mr. and Mrs. Goldschmidt, who had just returned to Germany after living in exile during the war. Her adoptive father Leopold Goldschmidt was editor-in-chief of the Frankfurter Neue Presse and honorary chairman of the German Coordination Council of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. From 1956, at the age of nine, Miriam Goldschmidt made her first experiences in front of the camera in the children's television programme Der Peter on Hessischer Rundfunk TV. She was the only black child on the program.

Shortly before graduating from Odenwaldschule, Goldschmidt quit school to study acting with Jacques Lecoq and modern dance with Laura Sheleen in Paris. Her first works as an actress and director fall into this time. An early work was Ophelia 69, a "mixture of dance and pantomime, acting and free movement in space.” Goldschmidt subsequently worked with the greatest German directors of the post-war period including Harry Buckwitz ("HIM", 1968) in Darmstadt, Fritz Kortner and Peter Zadek in Munich, Hans Hollmann (1969 as Lavinia in Titus, Titus) in Basel, Werner Düggelin at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz Berlin, Peter Stein (Die Neger, 1981) and Luc Bondy (Botho Strauß' Kalldewey, Farce, 1982, and in Ostrowski's Ein heisses Herz, 1986); in Bochum with George Tabori (Peep Show, 1983) and Matthias Langhoff (Titus Andronikus, 1983). For her role in Kalldewey, Farce (director: Luc Bondy) she received the renowned Kunstpreis Berlin der Akademie der Künste in 1983. During Miriam Goldschmidt's years in the Schaubühne ensemble, she staged Bruce Myers' two-person adaptation of Salomon An-Ski's The Dybbuk in 1981, which she performed together with her husband Urs Bihler on numerous stages to great acclaim for more than 30 years, most recently at the Theater Basel in 2011.

Peter Brook and Miriam Goldschmidt during a rehearsal for "The Lost One" at Teatro Sannazaro, Naples (2013)

Other productions of her own were an adaptation of Alexander Granach's Da geht ein Mensch in 1991, the premiere of Jelloun's Die Nacht der Unschuld in 1993 at the Theater Neumarkt Zurich, the Theater Tri-Bühne Stuttgart, the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, and the Stadttheater Konstanz. She worked with various theatre groups in the Basel area, such as the Prisma ensemble (Mein Frühstück mit Marc Chagall and Vincent van Gogh in St. Rémy with Matis Hönig and Pierre Cleitman). In 2001 she played the fool in Shakespeare's Was ihr wollt (Director: Georg Darvas) at the opening of the New Theatre Dornach. In 2000 Goldschmidt acted in Sweeney Agonistes by T. S. Eliot. Thorsten Lensing directed it.

Miriam and Peter during a rehearsal of "Warum Warum" at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (2011)

She found her true theater home when she went to Peter Brook in 1971, to Paris to the C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. In the decades of collaboration with Brook she played in (among others): Timon d'Athene, Kaspar, The Ik, Ubu, Mesure pour Mesure, Conference of the Birds, and The Mahabharata (stage and film). Most of her plays with Brook toured internationally. Brook was also the director of Glückliche Tage (Samuel Beckett) and Warum, Warum as well as Miriam Goldschmidt's last play The Lost One.

On August 14, 2017, Miriam Goldschmidt died at the age of 70 in Lörrach, Germany, from cancer.

Literature (selection)

• Spectrum. Das Kulturmagazin. Westdeutscher Rundfunk 1976 (Erstsendung 15. Mai 1976). Darin ein Interview mit Goldschmidt u. a. zu Erarbeitung von Stoffen nach Buchvorlagen.
• Brigitte Landes: Wer bist du? Ich. In. Die Zeit, Nr. 43, 21. Oktober 1983, Seite 53f.
• Peter Brook. Wanderjahre. Schriften zu Theater, Film & Oper 1946–1987. Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-923854-25-0. (Darin Hinweise auf zahlreiche Inszenierungen, wie z. B. König Uhu und Konferenz der Vögel.)
• Irene Bazinger: Die Masken der Verzweiflung. In: Berliner Zeitung, 5. November 1999.
• Thomas Blubacher: Miriam Goldschmidt. In: Andreas Kotte (Hrsg.): Theaterlexikon der Schweiz. Band 1, Chronos, Zürich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9, S. 733.

Radio Plays & Films

• 2011: Iris Disse O heiliger Tod, Santisima Muerte, Totentage in Mexiko. (mother) – Regie: Iris Disse (Radio play – RBB)

  

  Miram on the set of Fabiano Mixo's award winning experimental film "Woman Without Mandolin" (2015)

  2015: Fabiano Mixo, "Woman Without Mandolin", experimental film

Writings

• Die Beweglichkeit des Schauspielers vor dem Unbekannten. In: Peter Brook: Theater als Reise zum Menschen. Der Regisseur Peter Brook. Texte und Gespräche. Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89581-135-1, S. 216ff.

Press comments (selection)

Peter Brook wrote about her: “In all my experience, Miriam Goldschmidt is unlike anyone else. A totally original talent. She sees life and expresses it brilliantly both as tragedy and as comedy" The director and former artistic director of the Schaubühne Berlin, Peter Stein, said about Miriam Goldschmidt that she “makes a room blossom.”

The Süddeutsche Zeitung (22 March 2003) covered the premiere of Glückliche Tage in Basel: "The laughter of this actress is an event. She can smile softly and sadly, sometimes greedily and horny — that’s what she does when she enjoys running the pistol. She can laugh with a loud noise, she can be mean, gloating, sadistic, flippant, malicious, disgusting, raw, childish. Sometimes the joyful sound turns into a lament. If she may not delve deeper, she bites her lips."

Weblinks

• Miriam Goldschmidt bei filzfilm.de
• Miriam Goldschmidt in der Internet Movie Database
• Erlebte Geschichten bei WDR 5
• We Call Her Miriam bei Cineworx Filmproduktion (to be released in 2019)