Suse Weisse

Suse Weisse was born in 1962 in Wolfsburg, grew up in East Friesland and, following a one-year journey through South America, studied psychology and drama teaching in Berlin. After completing her studies, she worked from 1996 to 1999 as a member of the artistic team at the Kammertheater in Neubrandenburg. Since 2000, Weisse has been a freelance storyteller for adults and children. Her repertoire ranges from fairytales and myths from world literature to the bizarre tales for children by the Brothers Grimm. Weisse’s main speciality is telling the bleak stories of the North, which always deal with hunger, crisis, war, love and the endless sea. In her performances, the storyteller plays in a skilful manner with the ambiguous meanings in fairytales and myths, and she balances her narrative with the figures and plots by alternating carefully between variations and true renditions of the original texts. Her love of the German language is always at the core of her creative work.
Weisse’s repertoire includes, among others, »Frieder and Katherlies« (2000), »The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs« (2000) and »The Juniper Tree« (2001) as well as the narrative theatre pieces »Josefs Vater« (tr. »Joseph’s Father«, 2004), »King Lindworm« (2007) and »Iron John« (2008). Weisse not only performs as a storyteller in German, but also in Low German, English and Spanish, sometimes in an ensemble with other international storytellers and also as one half of the duo »frase&sunk« with cellist Frank Zimmermann. She travelled as a storyteller for the Goethe Institute between 2004 and 2010 through Belgium, Hungary, Ireland and Finland. Weisse is invited regularly to take part in storytelling festivals, most recently to the Cape Clear Island International Storytelling Festival (2010), to Nordic Voices – International Storytelling Festival in Turku (2011) and the Scandinavian-German storytelling festival Berlin (2011). In 2005, she was awarded the Fairytale and Saga Prize of Thuringia and, in 2008, she was nominated best storyteller at the International Storytelling Festival in Neukirchen-Vluyn.
In addition to her work as a storyteller, she is also a drama teacher, director and actress and teaches the art of storytelling at the Free University of Berlin as well as at the Berlin University of the Arts. At the present time she is working as a drama teacher and storyteller at T-Werk in Potsdam and is the head of the children’s, youth and adults’ drama groups there. In December 2011, she will organise the 1st Potsdam storytelling festival »Zimt und Zunder« (»Cinnamon and Cinders«) there. Suse Weisse lives with her husband and her two sons in Potsdam.

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