In the early 1990s, Bella was cast as Frank Wedekind's Lulu at the Chelsea Centre Theatre, London.

“The role is elusive, almost fantastical. And as part of my research, I discovered the autobiography of Wedekind's wife, Tilly. The book was called Lulu: The Role of My Life, and I imagined that I would discover within its contents the ways in which playing Lulu had launched Tilly into a dramatically successful career. As I was then in my early twenties, I was hoping for the same...”

​But the book was written in German. So, clutching her schoolgirl German dictionary, Merlin began the lengthy process of translating it into English.

“Bit by bit, I discovered that Tilly had coined the title for her autobiography because, in fact, Frank had turned her into Lulu in the course of their turbulent marriage. Frank would take parts of their married life, turn them into provocative plays, stage them for public consumption, and expect Tilly to enact the female roles. The boundaries between fact and fiction became increasingly blurred. And Frank became increasingly jealous. It was an absolute powder keg!”

Tilly grew increasingly depressed. And in the end, Frank took all her roles off her and gave them to another actress. Now Tilly really was without a professional body and voice.

She suffered a nervous breakdown.

She booked herself into a hotel and swallowed poison. Three days later she was found by the chambermaid and taken to a sanatorium. Her innards were completely corroded by the poison, and Tilly was a wreck.

Gradually the poison worked its way out of her body through her skin. With daily emollient treatments, her dried skin flurried like snowflakes in the air.

One day, the skin of her hands came off like a pair of gloves. On the glove-hands, the lines of her old life were etched, while the new skin on her actual hands was baby-soft. Like a snake sloughing its old self, Tilly was emerging as a new creature.

Merlin was so captivated by this image of self-destruction and reincarnation, she knew she had to explore the material further.

“Not only was I quite in love with Tilly Wedekind by the time I’d finished translating her autobiography, but I was also deeply curious about the nature of acting.

“Who are we as actors? What are we really doing? We take on these words, lives, clothes and bodies of invented characters, but when you peel away the layers of the onion, who’s inside? Anybody? Nobody?”

“It so happened that when Tilly was in her late teens, she had lost her virginity out of wedlock. Her brother was so appalled, he declared she was no longer worthy of the family name, ‘Newes’. So for a while Tilly changed 'Newes' to 'Nieman', which is very close to the German word for 'nobody': ‘Niemand’.

“This, too, made me curious about sex and identity. And it became a stimulus forTilly No-Body.”

In 2005, Merlin met Miles Anderson , and five years later they began to craft Tilly No-Body.

“I like moments of magic as a director,” said Anderson. And this husband-and-wife team brought Tilly back to life. Though their dynamic was quite different from that of Frank and Tilly!

Twelve years after Tilly No-Body’s first iteration, Merlin restaged the piece at Shakespeare & Company, (Massachusetts) in 2022.

Now in an older body, and post-#MeToo, Merlin experienced the material in a different way.

“What was Frank really doing to Tilly? Why on earth did Tilly stay? What’s the addiction of toxic relationships? Why are women’s voices silenced? These questions now haunted me. Not least because I’d experienced the same thing…back in the 1990s…”

In 2024, Miles and Bella shared Tilly No-Body in a virtual parallel event at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Hosted by Sheva Carr, CEO of the Fyera Foundation, the event looked at the commodification of women in the entertainment industry.

Sheva encouraged Bella to share her own story…

“I was resistant at first. I didn’t think my autobiographical experience was relevant. But I was invited to understand that when we do dare to share our own stories, we actually shine the light on those whose own stories have been kept in the dark. We give permission to others, who might be feeling the same shame, embarrassment, humiliation, to be witnessed, heard, validated. That’s helpful and healthy. It creates connective tissue.”

Tilly No-Body was invited to the 2024 Daejeon International Theatre Festival in South Korea, and again the same thing happened…

“When people asked if there was a personal connection to the material, and I explained how Tilly had become the role in my life, they too seemed to be emboldened to share their stories.

“Human relationships can be complicated. When we hand over our sense of self-worth to other people - especially those we entrust with loving us - we often lose our true identities. Authentic love has to begin with ourselves, otherwise it’s almost impossible to maintain our balance in the circus of life.

“And so, in turn, we invite you to let Tilly No-Body light up your Somebody!”