Val Germain

I was born in Chile in 1979, and my journey into the performing arts began with a deep curiosity for the human condition — for what moves us, connects us, and transforms us. I trained as a professional actress at the Universidad Finis Terrae and as a theatre pedagogue at the Universidad de Chile. Since 2009, I’ve been based in Berlin, where I continue to explore the intersections between performance, pedagogy, and collective creation.

My artistic practice moves fluidly between biography, fiction, and time. I work with memory and imagination as materials, shifting between Spanish, German, and English — not only as languages, but as ways of thinking and feeling. From a feminist and migrant perspective, I understand creation as a sensitive form of research that links the personal and the collective, addressing social and existential questions through the body, perception, and memory.

 

Before moving to Germany, I spent seven years as part of the permanent ensemble of the National Theatre of Chile, performing in over ten productions that toured internationally. In 2009, I came to Berlin with a grant from the International Theater Institute to complete a residency at the Volksbühne, working with René Pollesch and the collective Gob Squad.

 

Since then, I’ve collaborated with artists and companies such as She She Pop, Gob Squad, Rieke Oberländer(Stadttheater Bremen), and Bárbara Galego (Theater an der Parkaue). I’m also a co-founder of the collectives Pink Valley, 77 Stolen Fish, and Meinhof-Germain, through which I’ve developed site-specific and collaborative projects that explore postdramatic theatre and the idea of “experts of their own lives,” inspired by Rimini Protokoll.

 

My projects have been shown in Chile, Spain, Italy, and Germany, weaving together performance, pedagogy, and interdisciplinary collaboration. At the core of my work lies a conviction that sensitivity is a powerful tool for transformation, and that cultural difference is a source of empathy and creative expansion. Through these encounters, I understand art as a shared resonance — a space to question, connect, and reinvent how we live and relate to the world.