Sasha Marianna Salzmann
2025–26 CAST Visiting Artist
Exploring migration, identity, and belonging through German theater
About the Residency
Sasha Marianna Salzmann brings their acclaimed interdisciplinary practice to MIT to explore the intersection of queer and non-binary identities with migration, family, and belonging. The Berlin-based playwright, curator, novelist, and activist is a vital voice in contemporary European theater and literature. As co-founder of the Conflict Zone Arts Asylum at Berlin’s experimental Maxim Gorki Theater, Salzmann created an international network of artist-activists exploring transnational and post-migrant experiences. Their novels Beside Myself and Glorious People have been translated into more than 15 languages, while their theatrical works have garnered numerous awards. They co-founded the culture magazine freitext, and their essays have appeared in newspapers including the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Neue Züricher Zeitung.
The four-day residency spans multiple disciplines, featuring a public conversation and reception in Theater Arts as well as an event at the Goethe Institute in Boston, and small-group workshops with students of German across multiple classes. These events particularly inform the curriculum in Emily Goodling’s Fall 2025 seminar on German politics and art as well as Blythe de Oliviera Foster’s Motion Theater class, offering students in those classes a direct engagement with an artist whose work embodies the complex cultural negotiations of contemporary Europe.
Salzmann’s visit fosters interdisciplinary dialogue across SHASS while enriching students’ understanding of how literature and performance can address urgent questions of cultural identity, political belonging, and social transformation in an increasingly globalized world.
Schedule
Of Lights in Dark Places: A Conversation on Theater, Politics, and Community in Germany and the US
Tuesday September 30, 2025 / 7:15-8:30pm (Reception to follow)
MIT Theater Building W97, Room 160
Join Berlin-based curator and activist Sasha Salzmann, director and Theater faculty Jay Scheib, and Lecturer of German Emily Goodling for an open conversation on the place of theater in our contemporary world. From Germany’s state-supported stages to the evolving aesthetics of U.S. performance, the discussion will explore theater and performance as tools for social critique, community building, and political engagement. What are the limits and the potentialities of theater in our society, and what can we learn about them from two very different cultural contexts? Open to all; reception afterwards.
This conversation is made possible thanks to generous support from CAST, Global Languages, and Theater.
Related Event
Sasha Salzmann presents Glorious People
Book Talk | In conversation with William Pierce
Friday, October 3, 2025 / 7:00pm
Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02116
Sasha Salzmann discusses their new novel Glorious People with William Pierce, editor of the literary and cultural magazine AGNI. A story of two Russian-speaking families in Ukraine during the Soviet era, Glorious People examines how systems disintegrate and people are swept along by the maelstrom of events.
Free and open to the public
Registration and more information
Collaborators at MIT
Emily Goodling, Lecturer in German
Per Urlaub, Department Head, Director of Global Languages
Biography
Sasha Marianna Salzmann is a playwright, novelist, curator, and director. They were the co-founder of the culture magazine freitext and the artistic director of the experimental stage STUDIO Я. Salzmann also co-founded NIDS – New Institute for Drama, where they gave workshops on political writing. Their theatrical work is translated, shown, and awarded in more than 20 countries.
Website: sashamariannasalzmann.com