Evelyne Didi

I come from a town that's black with coal from its mines, but later it turned white again, which is a shame. ‘You don't die, you fall asleep’, my favourite Kaurismäki cue for filming Mimi's death in La Vie de bohème. ‘I love you, you know, but life is difficult’, the line from Mimi that gave Marthaler the idea of casting me in Papperlapapp. ‘C'est pas grave’, one of his expressions during rehearsals. Bob Wilson used to say to me, ‘Stand up straight’, and I'm still trying to do that. ‘I want to fly’, said Euphorion, son of Faust and Helen of Troy, tapping his club foot on the walls of the Salpêtrière. ‘Calm’, said Grüber, “words fall like pebbles”. He put me in the cannon to leap over the boundary walls. 3,500 spectators of Les Bacchantes booed me in Thessaloniki, the 14,000 in Epidaurus fell silent to listen. ‘Theatre is alive, you see’, Langhoff told me. I move back and forth between my theatre giants, friends from the past who have embellished my life as an actress immeasurably, and my current adventures. It keeps me in shape.