PETER GREENAWAY/SASKIA BODDEKE

BIOGRAPHIES

Peter Greenaway was born in England in 1942. He trained as a painter, and began working as a film editor in 1965, spending 11 years cutting films for the Central Office of Information. In 1966 he started making his own short films before his feature, The Draughtman’s Contract, completed in 1982, received enormous critical acclaim and established him internationally as one of the most original and important film makers of our times.

Greenaway’s best know films include A Zed and Two Noughts (1982); Drowning by numbers (1988); The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989); Prospero’s Books (1991) and The Pillow Book (1995) and most recently Eight & A Half Woman (1999).

Since then has continued to produce paintings, texts, exhibitions, installations and cinema. The world première of Rosa, A Horse Drama (1994) marked his première as an opera director and librettist. In 1997 he invented the modern prop-opera 100 Objects to Represent the World.
The opera Writing to Vermeer (1999) has been shown in Amsterdam, Adelaide and New York. He also staged Christopher Columbus from Darius Milhaud at the State Opera of Berlin.

Apart from numerous group and single exhibitions, Peter Greenaway has realized installations all over the world, e.g. The Physical Self in Rotterdam, his Stairs in Munich, Geneva and Graz, Bologna Towers 2000; 10 Maps To Paradise in Ljubliana as well as Hell and Heaven in Groningen.

Saskia Boddeke, Dutch opera-and-theatre director, graduated at the Academy for Social Studies and at the School for Performing Arts in Amsterdam. In 1986 she started to work with De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. In 1989 she founded her own theatre company Theatergroep vals Akkoord and since then creates, writes and produces projects which are characterized by a mixture of symbolism, film-imagery and movement language often accompanied by modern music.

In 1994 Saskia started her collaboration with Peter Greenaway as co-director in Rosa, A horse Drama, and later as director for 100 Objects to Recreate the World, the opera Writing to Vermeer in 1999 and the play Gold in 2001.

Whilst at the Amsterdam Opera, Saskia Boddeke has collaborated with Peter Stein, David Pountney, Robert Carsen and Harry Kupfer, Dario Fo and Pierre Audi.