Julie Van den Berghe (1981) graduated from the Amsterdamse Theaterschool with De Coup/e by Mark Ravenhill (Ton Lutz Award). Together with met Frascati Producties and NTGent she made Het meisje dat te veel van lucifers hield. In Gent she directed, among others, Olifant Jezus (Oscar van den Boogaard) and Een Lolita (Bernard Dewulf), with the Münchner Kammerspiele Agatha van Marguerite Duras. In December 2013, she will premiere her first production with TA-2: Blood Wedding. In March 2016 her second premiere with TA-2 will be Liliom.

Julie Van den Berghe about Liliom

‘Budapest, 1909. Just before the WWI. Molnár writes Liliom. 1956. Russian invasion. My grandfather flees his country. On the way to Canada, he loses his heart to a Belgian girl. Ghent, 2016. Two generations later, I – his oldest granddaughter – want to relive the mental journey he made. I start looking for Hungarian repertoire and come to the conclusion that there is not much left to find. How is that possible? Welcome to the wondrous world of Liliom. Where life is what it is, and not just what it seems to be. Welcome to the fair. The perfect place where I myself could taste the enchantment and magic as a child. Where the borders of reality faded in front of my own eyes. Liliom begins as a drama from the laboring classes and evolves into a fairy tale that takes place in the gateway to the hereafter. It is a gift to the imagination. The world of today steers clear of sentiment. It is regarded as kitsch and anti-art. Hungary is sentimental. Molnár writes in a sentimental way. I would want to embrace that.’