2025

Villa Decius is a place where art and reflection meet in dialogue. For years, it has hosted artists from around the world who create works that transcend language and form. One of this year’s October screenwriting residents within the Forum of Cultures Dialogue programme is Jäckie Rydz (@rydzritz) – a Polish-German performance artist. In their work, Jäckie explores the relationships between body, memory, and space, using movement, text, and performance as tools of storytelling. The residency at Villa Decius offers them space and time to deepen their work on the new project LAVA.

In their artistic practice, Jäckie creates body-based performances that challenge social rituals and renegotiate queer bodies in relation to space and language. During their residency at Villa Decius, Jäckie is working on a new text titled “LAVA”, a project that explores how trauma is inherited not only through stories and silences but also through land, institutions, and the body.

They approach writing as a physical act — with the body serving as both archive and instrument — enabling research on queer erasure and historical violence within the Polish-German context.

Ewe Benbenek was born in Kamienna Góra/Poland in 1985 and studied cultural and political sciences and literature at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and at University College London, as well as literature at the University of Erfurt.

From 2014 to 2019, she was a research assistant at the Department of Modern German Literature/Theatre Studies at the University of Hamburg. In 2019, she was nominated for the Retzhofer Drama Prize. Her play Tragödienbastard was supported by the uniT Graz and Schauspielhaus Wien and premiered at the Schauspielhaus Wien in October 2020.

In 2021, she won the Mülheim Drama Prize for Tragödienbastard and she received the Schiller Memorial Prize for young writers in 2022.

Her play Juices premiered in June 2023 at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, directed by Kamila Políková, and was also nominated for the Mülheim Drama Prize.

Her formally experimental texts deal thematically with debates about classism, labor migration, and the critical questioning of a German-language literary canon.

On this residency, she focused on the similarities between Polish and German languages, questioning the view of “Eastern and Western Europe” influenced by previous socialization. She used poetological methods to experiment with the phonetic, rhythmic, and literal levels of German and Polish, beyond the levels of meaning and grammar, to explore unexpected similarities between the two languages.

Lena Lyagushonkova is a Ukrainian playwright, screenwriter, and writer. She belongs to the “new drama” movement. She is a laureate of the European Prize for Young Playwrights. She was a resident in Warsaw and Helsinki. In 2023, she participated in the IV Drama Laboratory of the National Union of Theatre Workers of Ukraine with the topic “How to Write About War in Dramatic Texts”.

She loves the history of Ancient Rome, but writes about the “here and now”. In 2025, she published her debut prose work, the novel “My Flag Was Written by a Cat”, published by the Urbino publishing house. In January 2024, the play “Mother Gorky” (“Moren av Gorkij”) was published in Norwegian by Solum Bokvennen.

Her text was also published in the English collection “Ukrainian New Drama after the Euromaidan Revolution”. In January 2024, the play “Mother Gorky” was presented in a stage reading format at the National Theatre of Norway (“Nationaltheatret”) in Oslo as part of the project “Historier fra Ukraina” (Ukrainian: “Stories from Ukraine”).

As a resident of the Villa Decius’ residency program, Lena wrote “Lisa in Heaven with a Smoky Quartz in Her Hands”, which was presented in Juliusz Słowacki Theatre’s House of Machines in Kraków.

Fatima Çalışkan is a theatre producer, author, and moderator. She completed a Master’s degree in social sciences at Ruhr University Bochum and worked as a cultural journalist, consultant, and curator.

Her stage works are referential, satirical, and observant. She combines intellectual depth with emotional accessibility and a powerful linguistic and visual aesthetic. Theatre der Zeit describes her as a “smart feminist.”

In 2023, she made her acting debut at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in the production “Die Maskeraden des D. Oregan” by Glossy Pain and Yade Yasemin Önder. In 2024, her monologue “Faserland-Boys und Ich — Labern über Männerliteratur” premiered at Ballhaus Ost; she wrote, directed, and performed the piece herself.

Previously, Fatima Çalışkan collaborated with various independent scene projects, focusing on spatial development processes and scenographic-musical settings, including durational performances in vacant clubs.

At the Villa Decius, Fatima worked on “Smoking for Kraków”, which was also performed at Juliusz Słowacki Theatre’s House of Machines in Kraków.