Kay Matter
Writer, performance artist
Kay Matter, who grew up in Zurich and northern Italy, is an author and theatre maker. They studied theatre writing at the Berlin University of the Arts. His plays (some of which are still published under the name Selma Kay Matter) have been translated into several languages and performed internationally. For “Grelle Tage”, Matter received the Hans Gratzer Prize 2022 and the Viennese Theatre Prize NESTROY 2023, among others. In autumn 2024, his genre-bending debut novel “Muskeln aus Plastik” was published by Hanser Berlin. Kay Matter is currently working on a play based on "Muskeln aus Plastik" and a three-part theatre series entitled “Stützliwösch Supertrans”.
Selma Kay Matter as participant of the International Forum 2024:
Writer, performance artist – Berlin, Germany
Author and performance artist Selma Kay Matter [dey/they] was born in Zurich. They studied creative writing for the stage at the Berlin University of the Arts as well as literature, theatre and philosophy at Universität Hildesheim. Selma Kay Matter’s work has so far has been focussing on climate, bodies, illness and queerness.
Most recently, the play “Alias Anastasius”, which they created as a duo with Marie Lucienne Verse, had its world premiere at Berliner Ensemble. For “Grelle Tage”, Selma Kay Matter received several awards, including the 2023 NESTROY-Theatre Prize in the category as “Best Emerging Artist”. In the same year, the play was published in the book series Suhrkamp Theater.
Besides writing, Selma Kay Matter also performs, for instance as part of the half-improvised performance “You’ll never walk alone, dyke” with Duygu Ağal, Lynn Musiol and Evan Tepest at the event series “Dyke Dogs” at Berliner Schaubühne (2023). Currently, Selma Kay Matter is working on a genre-bending non-fiction text on the overlapping of queerness and chronic illness, which will be published as a hardcover book by Hanser Berlin in the autumn of 2024.
As of: April 2024