by Valentina Iancu // June 3, 2025
The stage of Volksbühne’s Grüner Salon is conceived as a modest interior, sparsely furnished in the style of early 20th century design. A large mirror at the rear reflects the audience, subtly integrating us into the performance and dissolving the boundary between stage and spectator. Two women, one Black (Billie) and the other white (Maria), begin to recount the stories of their lives. Their meeting feels like a reunion—like old friends falling into a deep, intimate conversation. They exchange stories about their birth, origins, childhoods, rape, abortion, love, abuse, passion, addiction, the paths their lives have taken and, above all, about music.
‘Billie & Maria’ // Photo by Diana Ziman & Alexandru Cîrneală
Billie was born to a couple of young teenagers. Her great-grandmother, still living at the time, kept alive the memory of the years she had spent in slavery. Maria was the second child of a poor family, living somewhere in a slum. Both were born into deep poverty, a common thread that shaped their journeys. Billie started working at eight-years-old, washing the floors of a brothel. Maria worked in the field during her childhood, for the small family business, selling flowers. Billie was raped at 10-years-old. She was the one blamed for being sexually abused by a white man. Maria had an affair with a middle class physicist, a white man. When she turned out to be pregnant, the man persuaded her to have an abortion: he took care to take out everything she had inside. She was a teenager. Maria was never able to have children. Billie never wanted children. She wanted to focus on her career. They both managed to put their careers first. Music was a survival tool, transforming individual and trans-historical trauma into passion. Today, both stand revered as towering figures in the world of music. Their voices, unmistakable in their timbre, echo with a rare brilliance—and their music lingers, haunting and unforgettable, like a melody etched in time.
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan, 1915–1959) and Maria Tănase (1913–1963) were never friends—in fact, they never met in their lifetimes. Their meeting in the afterlife is a fictional creation, carefully written and directed by Berlin-based, Romanian theater director Iulia Grigoriu, and starring Maimouna Sow and Ioana Elena Urda. Shaped by feminism and critical race studies, Grigoriu’s perspective in ‘Billie & Maria’ emphasizes a deeply personal lens on the portrayal of their stories.
‘Billie & Maria’ // Photo by Diana Ziman & Alexandru Cîrneală
The Billie Holiday character was written based on the autobiography of the singer, entitled ‘Lady Sings the Blues.’ Maria Tănase did not leave any autobiographical writing behind, and her memory is highly mythologized today. Although she told her story in the above-mentioned autobiography, Holiday’s life is highly mythologized, as well. Grigoriu’s work with the memory of both singers addresses the bruises of their lives, digging into racism, sexism, poverty, addiction and many other oppressive moments that violently left their mark. The stories unfold in parallel, having common points but also major differences.
Billie Holiday was a rising star of the Harlem Renaissance, and her music gave voice to racial struggles in the US, making her a target of racist governmental surveillance. Maria Tănase was active around the small Jewish circles of the Romanian avant-garde, these close connections making her a target of the Far Right. Although her music is based on Romanian folklore, she was banned by the dictatorship, the legionaries destroying her records and calling her “a gypsy.” Meanwhile, Billie Holiday’s iconic song ‘Strange Fruits,’ released in 1939—a protest against the practice of lynching Black Americans in the South—was banned: her main label, Columbia Records, refused to release the song, most radio stations wouldn’t allow it to be played and some venues persuaded her not to sing it. The song brought Holiday to the attention of authorities and she was eventually imprisoned for heroin possession.
‘Billie & Maria’ // Photo by Diana Ziman & Alexandru Cîrneală
Maria Tănase and Billie Holiday’s meeting in the afterlife reveals broadly how women’s careers were often conditioned by their fight against misogyny and racism. Navigating stories of trauma through a feminist lens, Grigoriu pays an important homage to both artists, while broadly criticizing the conditions of women under patriarchal regimes, both in democratic times and under Far Right and communist dictatorships (as in Romania). The narrative is linear, chronological, simple yet catchy, making the story easy to follow and understand. Above all, Billie & Maria’s performative encounter in the afterlife is a story about survival through passion—it’s a living monument, honouring the memory of both singers.
Performance Info
Volksbühne
Iulia Grigoriu: ‘Billie & Maria’
With: Maimouna Sow and Ioana Elena Urda
Performances: June 5 & 6, 2025; 8pm
volksbuehne.berlin
Grüner Salon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 2, 10178 Berlin, click here for map
