About Me
Elly Jarvis is an American-German theatre-maker, performer, and director based in Berlin. Her work combines documentary research, choreography, live music, and devised theatre to create performances in which bodies rehearse identities they have not yet learned to inhabit.
Rather than treating theatre as a place of representation, she approaches it as a space of rehearsal: a place where individuals and communities can physically test new ways of being together before they become possible elsewhere. Her projects often begin with ethnographic research, archival material, or personal histories, but their destination is always embodied. Historical images become choreographic scores, interviews become image, and social questions become live situations shared between performers and audiences.
Across her work, Jarvis returns to moments of transformation: children inventing democratic societies, families renegotiating queer kinship across generations, communities learning protest, or performers attempting forms of femininity, vulnerability, or visibility they have been taught to avoid. Humour, play, and rigorous research coexist with an interest in ritual, participation, and the politics of the body.
Originally from Minnesota, Jarvis studied Acting at the University of Michigan before completing an MFA in Theatre Education at the Berlin University of the Arts and further training in Dance in Theatre and Education. She works across theatre, dance, opera, documentary film, and participatory performance. Her recent work has been presented at the Berliner Ensemble, Deutsche Oper Berlin, English Theatre Berlin, FELD Theater, Hin & Weg Festival, and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.
Photo coypright: Moritz Haase