detheatermaker

Lieselot Siddiki (she/her 1994) is a multidisciplinary artist. After completing her studies in Fashion and Autonomous Design (KASK, 2021), she followed the master’s in Drama in Ghent. During this master, she collaborated with artists/theatre-makers such as Kris Verdonck and Rodrigo Batista, and did an internship directing with Lisaboa Houbrechts (Vake Poes).
Lieselot is active as a creator, performer and costume designer. She researches and fights for a form of total theatre that seeks a spiritual and a physical experience, intuitive – not cerebral. This (unbridled) urge for form expresses itself in total creations, projects in which play, music, costume and scenography are of equal value
In 2021, as an undergraduate thesis, she made the performance Night Swimming together with Jarne Van Loon, a brutal performance, an absurdist ode to the night, in which thirteen performers, including actors, non-actors, a DJ and drag queens, surrender to the lure of intoxication. The performance was performed at the GIF Festival (Ghent, ‘22), Theater aan Zee (Ostend, “22), Love at First Sight (Toneelhuis, Antwerp, ”22), the international Fringe Festival in Amsterdam (’22) and at Electropark in Genoa, Italy (’23), among others.

In 2023, Lieselot Siddiki made her first professional performance, Up Your Ass, in collaboration with theatre producer Nona Demey Gallagher. They departed from the eponymous comedy by American Valerie Solanas, the writer who shot Andy Warhol in New York in 1965. In consultation with Solanas’ heir, Karen L. Biondo, Siddiki and Gallagher were allowed to be the first in Europe to stage a current version of this play. Up Your Ass humorously highlights the US underbelly shaped by sexism. The performance was called ‘feminist in a quirky way’ in the press, and very positively received. It went on tour at home and abroad: including Radikal Jung in Munich, KVS, The Great Post, TAZ (‘24) and the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh (’25).

Characteristic of Siddiki’s work is a strong preference for multiplicity and the synergy between performing and visual arts. In 2024, she is active in various roles in various projects: as costume designer in Motherbaby (Sophia Bauer & Marieke Schraepen) and BARZAKH (Thomas Bellinck), as director of the closing event of the GIF festival, as coach of a master’s thesis at KASK drama and as actress in What The Butler Saw (Tom Goossens). She toured Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria with several productions, including Up Your Ass, Spring Awakening (Wolf Wolf), Pinokkio (directed by Jonas Baeke) and The Apricot Tree/Kayısı Ağacı (Klub Kilim).
She previously starred in television and film productions including We (René Eller, ‘19), Season of Sex(’22), Splinter (‘23) and Fuck You Very Very Much (’23). Although much acting has given her insight into various aspects of theatre, her heart lies with making and she wants to focus mainly on that in the future.
Lieselot Siddiki is a (founding) member of several interdisciplinary collectives, including SOUTH PARK and Camping Sunset, where she made her debut as an actor in the production Ten War III (’21) in the role of the wanton King Edwaar.
In 2025, Siddiki is creating The Thruthful, which will premiere at CAMPO in Ghent on 14 May ‘25.
Photo: Vibe Stalpaert