Documentary Theatre Director & Video Artist
Lidia Sinelnik
I work across theatre and moving image, focusing on documentary material, site-specific formats, and artistic research.
My practice explores personal experience within large-scale historical and cultural trauma, often through ego-documents — diaries, letters, interviews — and archival materials.
I initiate and develop projects independently, shaping them from research and concept to performance, video work, or installation. I work both solo and in collaboration with artists, performers, and institutions.
Based in Dortmund, Germany.
My practice explores personal experience within large-scale historical and cultural trauma, often through ego-documents — diaries, letters, interviews — and archival materials.
I initiate and develop projects independently, shaping them from research and concept to performance, video work, or installation. I work both solo and in collaboration with artists, performers, and institutions.
Based in Dortmund, Germany.
Education:
Working languages:
English (C1) / Russian (native) / French (B1) /German (A2)
My contacts:
- BA Sociology at Higher School of Economics, 2020-2021;
- BA Cinema and video art at HSE Art&Design, 2021-2024;
- MA Scenography at Fachhochschule Dortmund, 2025.
Working languages:
English (C1) / Russian (native) / French (B1) /German (A2)
My contacts:
Artistic Method
My work is grounded in documentary research. I often begin with ego-documents — diaries, letters, interviews, court transcripts — and treat them not only as sources, but as dramaturgical material.
I am interested in how personal texts reveal larger historical mechanisms: war, repression, ideology, violence, and intergenerational memory. My projects translate documentary material into performative, visual, and sound-based forms, creating spaces where research and artistic experience coexist.
I am interested in how personal texts reveal larger historical mechanisms: war, repression, ideology, violence, and intergenerational memory. My projects translate documentary material into performative, visual, and sound-based forms, creating spaces where research and artistic experience coexist.
SELECTED PROJECTS:
On this website there is information on my five key projects as a documentary director:
- Documentary theatre performance “On the Solovetsky Islands”
- Experimental video art “If China Were a Town”
- Site-specific performance “Apology of Joseph Brodsky”
- Documentary audio play “The Spanish Children”
- Video art “200 km to Moscow”
DOCUMENTARY theatre play (2025)
On the Solovetsky Islands
I initiated and independently produced the project, assembling the creative team and leading the research process.
The project is built on texts written by prisoners of the Solovetsky labour-camp (the first GULAG).
The performance incorporates video footage shot by me during an expedition to the Solovetsky Islands and functions as a layered documentary space.
The structure plays with time, mixing historical texts with present-day video footage to create a space of witnessing, where individuals confront historical systems and violence.
Alongside the performance, I presented the original archival documents on which the play was based, allowing the audience to engage directly with the source material as part of the documentary experience.
The project is built on texts written by prisoners of the Solovetsky labour-camp (the first GULAG).
The performance incorporates video footage shot by me during an expedition to the Solovetsky Islands and functions as a layered documentary space.
The structure plays with time, mixing historical texts with present-day video footage to create a space of witnessing, where individuals confront historical systems and violence.
Alongside the performance, I presented the original archival documents on which the play was based, allowing the audience to engage directly with the source material as part of the documentary experience.
Performance poster
PUBLICATIONS IN MEDIA*
PTJ (Petersburg Theatre Journal):
"The space turned out both cinematic and theatrical, yet its center is not built around action or image but around the word — almost the sole expressive medium here. Everything exists for the sound of the text: the actors perform not characters or images, but the text itself; the space is filled not with set pieces, but with words. In this sense, the performance becomes a text — not only in the semiotic sense, but quite literally, almost as a literary one: a voiced, three-dimensional text to which the utmost importance is given."
10.09.2025
ptj.spb.ru/blog/rossiya-schastie-rossiya-svet
"The space turned out both cinematic and theatrical, yet its center is not built around action or image but around the word — almost the sole expressive medium here. Everything exists for the sound of the text: the actors perform not characters or images, but the text itself; the space is filled not with set pieces, but with words. In this sense, the performance becomes a text — not only in the semiotic sense, but quite literally, almost as a literary one: a voiced, three-dimensional text to which the utmost importance is given."
10.09.2025
ptj.spb.ru/blog/rossiya-schastie-rossiya-svet
Teatr Magazine:
"Lidia Sinelnik’s production unfolds both on stage and among the audience — spectators have to keep turning their heads so as not to miss a moment. Ropes stretch around the seating area, echoing those marking the graves of the executed on Solovki, and small concrete stones scatter like teeth knocked out during interrogations. The performance intertwines stories of the Solovetsky Islands’ stunning natural beauty with accounts of the horrific executions, when thousands of prisoners were killed by cold and hunger."
08.08.2025
oteatre.info/v-teatre-doc-lagernoe-proshloe
"Lidia Sinelnik’s production unfolds both on stage and among the audience — spectators have to keep turning their heads so as not to miss a moment. Ropes stretch around the seating area, echoing those marking the graves of the executed on Solovki, and small concrete stones scatter like teeth knocked out during interrogations. The performance intertwines stories of the Solovetsky Islands’ stunning natural beauty with accounts of the horrific executions, when thousands of prisoners were killed by cold and hunger."
08.08.2025
oteatre.info/v-teatre-doc-lagernoe-proshloe
Slovo Slavy Theatre Blog:
"Sinelnik worked not only with a strikingly diverse range of texts but also shaped them into a distinctly postmodern form. Here, documeets farce, lived experience meets declamation, performance merges with theatre that spills beyond the stage into the audience. Every moment of the production stirs the viewer with inner conflict: the sacred site is also a place of executions; majestic nature coexists with humanity’s basest instincts; triumphant propaganda collides with nightmarish reality."
07.08.2025
t.me/slovoslavy/3219
*translated from Russian
"Sinelnik worked not only with a strikingly diverse range of texts but also shaped them into a distinctly postmodern form. Here, documeets farce, lived experience meets declamation, performance merges with theatre that spills beyond the stage into the audience. Every moment of the production stirs the viewer with inner conflict: the sacred site is also a place of executions; majestic nature coexists with humanity’s basest instincts; triumphant propaganda collides with nightmarish reality."
07.08.2025
t.me/slovoslavy/3219
*translated from Russian
EXPERIMENTAL documentary video art (2024)
If China was a Town
This video art is based on video interviews with teenagers involved in nationalist and violent subcultures in the China Town district.
They speak about nationalism and common violence in their social groups.
The project is built as a documentary experiment, separating speech from image to expose ideological structures rather than individual identities.
A techno soundtrack and rapid, music video–style editing are used to reflect both the nature of the video art’s protagonists and the broader sense of disorientation characteristic of the new generation that is growing up in Russia during the war time.
The video art was created for the exhibition “Grounding. 14 Lanes” at Ground Solyanka Gallery.
It is currently distributed by Non.Fiction international streaming platform.
They speak about nationalism and common violence in their social groups.
The project is built as a documentary experiment, separating speech from image to expose ideological structures rather than individual identities.
A techno soundtrack and rapid, music video–style editing are used to reflect both the nature of the video art’s protagonists and the broader sense of disorientation characteristic of the new generation that is growing up in Russia during the war time.
The video art was created for the exhibition “Grounding. 14 Lanes” at Ground Solyanka Gallery.
It is currently distributed by Non.Fiction international streaming platform.
If China was a Town
with english subtitles
site-specific play (2023)
Apology of Joseph Brodsky
For this site-specific performance, I brought together two eras — antiquity and the 20th century — by merging Plato’s Apology of Socrates with the court transcript from the trial of Joseph Brodsky.
The production was staged in the “Greek Courtyard” of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts — a space not originally meant for theatre, surrounded by copies of Parthenon sculptures. Working with this environment, I built the staging entirely around its existing architecture and visual context.
Through mise-en-scène and spatial composition, the performance created visual and conceptual rhymes between the ancient setting and modern text, revealing the continuity of conflict between the individual and the system. Both Socrates and Brodsky — condemned in their time — remain present in world culture, standing as witnesses to the resilience of human thought and artistic freedom.
The production was staged in the “Greek Courtyard” of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts — a space not originally meant for theatre, surrounded by copies of Parthenon sculptures. Working with this environment, I built the staging entirely around its existing architecture and visual context.
Through mise-en-scène and spatial composition, the performance created visual and conceptual rhymes between the ancient setting and modern text, revealing the continuity of conflict between the individual and the system. Both Socrates and Brodsky — condemned in their time — remain present in world culture, standing as witnesses to the resilience of human thought and artistic freedom.
Performance poster
Audioplay (2024)
The Spanish Children
Created for the exhibition “Images of Spain” at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the documentary audio play The Children of Spain tells the story of Spanish children evacuated to the USSR during the Civil War of the 1930s. Separated from their families, they grew up between two cultures, carrying both nostalgia and a need to belong.
The project was developed as a research-based audio work, combining archival interviews with dramaturgical composition. I commissioned an original script and led the project from concept to final sound mix — shaping the narrative from archival materials and directing the artistic team. My goal was to make this complex story clear and emotionally resonant, guiding the listener through a collage of six intertwined voices.
The audioplay is based on interviews from https://ninosdelaguerra.ru/es
and is available (rus) on the links below:
shadow drama performance (2022)
My mother is Maria Tsvetaeva
The original play, written by me, is based on the life of the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and her relationship with her daughter. The text was created from biographical documents — diaries, letters, and Tsvetaeva’s poetry — forming the foundation for a documentary performance.
The production explores the story through two perspectives — an adult’s and a child’s — combining dramatic acting by two actors with elements of shadow theatre. I worked with a team of twelve designers to create shadow theatre and shape the visual environment.
The piece was created specifically for the theatre festival “Tarusa Stories”.
The production explores the story through two perspectives — an adult’s and a child’s — combining dramatic acting by two actors with elements of shadow theatre. I worked with a team of twelve designers to create shadow theatre and shape the visual environment.
The piece was created specifically for the theatre festival “Tarusa Stories”.
Poster
Video trailer of the theatre performance
Video art (2023)
200 km to Moscow
In June 2023, during the attempted coup d’état led by Prigozhin in Rostov-on-Don. The work reflects my personal position as an eyewitness, transforming documentary sound into a poetic and political video form.
Built on the principle of inversion, the sound carries the narrative through news fragments, noise, and music, while the static image evokes the closed space of a train where movement continues, but control is lost.
Built on the principle of inversion, the sound carries the narrative through news fragments, noise, and music, while the static image evokes the closed space of a train where movement continues, but control is lost.
200 km to Moscow refers to the distance at which Prigozhin’s tanks stopped before reaching the city.
YouTube
Other directoral and public projects
Availability
I am open to artist residencies, research-based projects, and grant-supported work.
I am particularly interested in processes that involve archival research, documentary material, and the development of new artistic forms across theatre and video.
I am particularly interested in processes that involve archival research, documentary material, and the development of new artistic forms across theatre and video.
My contacts
