Sivan Ben Yishai

Sivan Ben Yishai was born in 1978 and has lived in Berlin since 2012. She is one of the leading dramatists of her generation. Her plays have been widely performed in German-speaking countries and around the world, including in South Korea, France, Spain, Czechia, Sweden and Finland.

She has twice won the Mülheim Drama Prize, in 2022 for Wounds Are Forever and in 2024 for Nora oder Wie man das Herrenhaus kompostiert, and recevied two further nominations for LIEBE/ Eine argumentative Übung (2020) and Bühnenbeschimpfung (2023).

The critics’ poll published by Theater heute magazine voted her Playwright of the Year in both 2022 and 2023. Her play Like Lovers Do (Memoiren der Medusa) in a production by the Münchner Kammerspiele (direction: Pınar Karabulut) was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2022 and received the Berlin Theatre Prize at the Theatertreffen in 2023, to which she was again invited with Nora. A Thriller by Sivan Ben Yishai, Hendrik Ibsen, Gerhild Steinbuch, Ivna Žic (direction: Felicitas Brucker).

Sivan Ben Yishai lectures in Creative Writing, holds keynotes and curates and moderates talks series, most recently Brave New Voices for Ruhrtriennale 2025.Her theatre plays are translated from English into German by the author Maren Kames and the author Gerhild Steinbuch.