Acts of Belonging: Giulietta Tisminetzky

“I’ve spent my whole life making sense of ‘home'” says Giulietta Tisminetzky — a writer,

actor, director, and theatre-maker whose work explores identity, sexuality, and consent.

We meet in her East London kitchen — part studio, part refuge. The table is scattered

with scripts, books, and half-burnt candles. She doesn’t apologise for the disorder.

“There’s order in my disorder,” she smiles.

What does 'home' mean to you personally?

Tisminetzky’s idea of home has never been fixed. “I’m half Argentinian, half Italian”, she

explains. “But the story goes further back. My father’s family left Eastern Europe during

the pogroms. My mother’s side fled Sicily in the 1920s. Fracture and displacement are

my inheritance.”

She says this with a calm that feels learned. “That’s the history I carry - not one of

belonging, but of movement. My work is about exploring the power of that. I’m not

trying to return to a place, although over the years I have found corners, fragments

where I feel like I belong. In the botanical gardens in Buenos Aires, at a restaurant by the

pear on the Adriatic coast, at the cinema. I find home in rituals, in a cup of my

Casablanca tea, in the laughter of the people I love.”

You grew up between Italy and Argentina - Trieste and Buenos Aires. How did those

places shape your sense of belonging?

"In Trieste, built by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and folded by the strong wind La

Bora, people are famously their own breed, not quite Italian. Its food, its language, its

aesthetic all defy the idea of nationality. There is an eastern pull there; Slovenia is just a

stone’s throw away. When I was growing up, we would cross the border for cigarettes or

petrol because it was cheaper. We would go to party there too, Slovenia had an

incredible rave culture. I would tell my mother whatever lie I could to run off to

Ambasada Gavioli, hidden in my friend’s trunk. I was maybe fourteen. There was nothing

legal about my escapades. This was the early 2000s: fairy wings, neon tops, eccentric

sunglasses. The club’s décor was reminiscent of hell, with devil horns erupting from its

immense columns. It was an inferno, a carnival, fuelled by heart-shaped pills called

Kamikaze.”

“It was also the years of Berlusconi’s third government. We were occupying schools,

protesting cuts to education. We spent two weeks living inside our barricaded high

school, running lessons ourselves. We were idealistic, hungry for justice.”

“Buenos Aires carried an even stronger charge, amplified by its poverty. There, poverty

and violence are raw, but the city is also culturally explosive. My sister was part of the

anarchist movement. Through her, I saw pirate radio stations helping Indigenous groups

organise against the government’s seizure of their lands, women helping women

terminate unwanted pregnancies (abortion was only legalised in 2020) , theatre

performed in garages, concerts in abandoned parking lots. The city resists through

culture, through everything the dictatorships and the failed governments tried to erase.

It teaches you what art can do. That is the energy that fuels me still. All my work is

political because of those early years. My sense of home comes from that, the urgency

of making, of belonging through creation.”

Wearing Yves Saint Laurent Dress

Your recent play, How to Kill a Chicken, also explores these themes. Can you tell me

about it?

Her theatre often circles that search. How to Kill a Chicken, her recent play, examines

the intersections of female identity and consent - how the body becomes both a site of

conflict and of reclamation.

“The play began with an image,” she says. “A woman standing in her kitchen, holding

something fragile. I wanted to write about control - how power moves, through

language, through touch. It was never just about violence. It was about the quiet

aftermath of it - what remains, what can still be tended to. Theatre can take something

broken and make it luminous again,” she says.

Do you have any rituals when you begin writing or directing?

“I always light something before I start - a candle, incense, even a match,” she says. “It’s

my threshold. My way of saying: now we begin.”

Every rehearsal becomes a kind of temporary home. “You build something with people,

a family. You love it, then you let go of it. It’s beautiful and it hurts.”

She writes mostly in kitchens. “They’re full of noise, tension, intimacy. They hold

memory. I like that domestic spaces are both ordinary and sacred - that they can hold

everything, and everyone.”

You often describe clothing as part of your storytelling. How does fashion enter your

world?

“This summer I co-directed my first short for the Straight 8 competition. It was

fascinating to collaborate with makeup artist and stylist Serena Polh, watching her bring

the characters to life through the minutiae of their costumes —a hemline, a shade of

lipstick, an earring. Our friend and jewellery maker Margherita Chinchio lent us some of

her surrealist pieces; they plunged my main character, a mermaid, into another

dimension — pun unintended. It reminded me that story goes far beyond the script; it

lives in the smallest, most tactile details.”

“Clothing is scenography for the body,” she says. “When I direct, I’m interested in how

fabric catches light, how it breathes. Clothes tell stories before we speak because they

can make us feel something through colour and texture. And it happens in theatre and

film as much as in life - fashion is our footprint, shaped by our heritage, our

surroundings, our state of mind. It’s a fascinating web of stories told and stories unseen

- a language of belonging and self-expression.”

Her relationship to her body has shifted over time. “It took me many years (and maybe

I’m still trying) to learn to live in my body. To listen to it, to indulge in it. To see it as an

instrument rather than an object. To be empowered by it, with volition and without

shame. When I was younger, I wanted to provoke. Now, I want to listen. Ultimately, this

is my home.”

What does London mean to you now?

“It’s a city of arrivals,” she says. “Everyone here is searching for something - a voice, a

vision, a version of home. London can be brutal, but it’s also magical. It gives you

anonymity and possibility in equal measure.”

“The theatre culture here is extraordinary, woven within the fabric of the city. I yearn

for it, I’m inspired by it, I live off it.” She draws inspiration from its contradictions- the

hum of traffic, the foxes scavenging at night. “It’s a living stage,” she says.

Wearing Vivienne Westwood Jacket

When was the last time you felt completely at home?

She thinks for a while before answering. “During my last show,” she says. “After closing

night, I stood in the empty theatre. The lights were still warm. The air was thick with

what had just happened. I felt it then - that sense of belonging. Like I had built

something solid, even if it wouldn’t last.”

She looks out the window. “I come from people who had to leave,” she says. “But I’ve

inherited their courage — the will to build again. Theatre gives me that. It’s where life

feels imaginable. Inside that possibility, I feel safe. I feel free. And that freedom - that’s

home.”

Talent: Giulietta Vainer 

Art direction by Giulietta Vainer 

Photos by Domino Leaha