A selection for you

Laura Linnenbaum, born in 1986, studied directing at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. She has worked as a freelance director since the 2011/12 season. At the same time she was an assistant director and a fellow of the regieSTUDIO at Schauspiel Frankfurt, where she created several productions, among them collaborations with Gerhild Steinbuch.

In 2016 she was curator and artistic director of the theatre meeting “Unentdeckte Nachbarn” in Chemnitz, as part of which she staged “Beate Uwe Uwe Selfie Klick” (Heidelberger Stückemarkt, youth jury prize at the WILDWECHSEL festival in Dresden) at the Figurentheater Chemnitz.

In 2015 the journal Theater heute nominated her as best young artist for her production “Silent Noise: Ein Projekt über Sylvia Plath”, and in 2017 as director of the year for the world premiere of “Homohalal”. Ibrahim Amir’s “Homohalal” was also invited to the Heidelberger Stückemarkt 2018 and the Mülheimer Theatertage 2018. In 2019 her productions of “Der zerbrochene Krug” at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and “Kafkas Haus” at the Saarländisches Staatstheater were again nominated in Theater heute, this time as production of the year.

Since then she has directed further work at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and, among others, at the Berliner Ensemble, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Theater Bonn and the state theatres in Hannover, Kassel, Darmstadt and Saarbrücken. In the 2023/24 season she went on to direct at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and Schauspiel Frankfurt.

Piotr Pacześniak is a theatre director, dramaturg and screenwriter based in Warsaw, Poland. He studied art history at the University of Warsaw and directing at the National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków. As a director and dramaturg he has worked with numerous theatres in Poland, including the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw, STUDIO teatrgaleria, the Polish Theatre in Poznań, the Adam Mickiewicz Theatre in Częstochowa and the New Theatre in Łódź, where he made his directing debut with “A People’s History of Poland”.

In his work he reflects on the situation of his generation against a backdrop of geopolitical, economic and identity-related change. He is interested in people as individuals within family, social and historical dependencies, and in how late capitalism shapes our relationships with family, nation, Europe and other people.

Petra Rațiu is a Romanian theatre director, born in Mediaș in 1989. She studied acting at UNATC in Bucharest, where she performed at the National Theatre. She later broadened her work through a collaboration with the Athanor Academy in Passau under David Esrig, where she staged her first productions.

Her career took her to the Volksbühne Berlin and the Schauspielhaus Zürich as assistant director to Herbert Fritsch; from 2017 to 2019 she worked with various directors at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz.

Since 2020 she has been directing in Switzerland and Germany, including “Sauerstoff” at the Musiktheater Gelsenkirchen and “Muttersprache Mameloschn”, which won the main prize at the Mittelsächsisches Theaterfestival in Leipzig.

Henrike Albers started out as a tailor and knows what a costume still has to withstand after the fiftieth performance. For dance she develops fabrics that move with the body instead of just looking good.

Lotte Jansen prefers to design set and costumes together, so that space and characters are all of a piece. She works with a few strong colours and a lot of light from the side.

Marek Sobczak builds spaces that change over the course of the evening: walls that move, floors that rise. He draws everything by hand first and then builds models at a scale of one to twenty. Alongside the theatre he designs exhibitions.

Konrad Liebig spent twelve years as Kapellmeister at a municipal theatre before going freelance. He conducts opera and concerts and rehearses choirs that have never sung together before.

Mira Okafor comes from jazz and now writes for dance, theatre and concert. She likes music that comes about in the room and would rather bring three musicians on stage than press play on a recording.

Jonas Weidinger writes music you often only notice when it is missing. He works with synthesisers, field recordings and small ensembles and is almost always in the rehearsal room. For “Kaltes Licht” he wrote his first major film score.

Ruben Achterberg films live on stage and edits while the performance is running. The result is close-ups you rarely see in the theatre. Between productions he shoots documentaries.

Timo Reinhart turns facades, prosceniums and entire halls into projection surfaces. He plans the technology so that it still runs in the rain at two in the morning, which makes him a welcome presence at open-air shows.

Ilka Sander builds images that respond to movement and sound. She programs most of her tools herself, and during final rehearsals she sits with her laptop in the middle of the auditorium.

Yannick Brose danced in musicals himself for ten years and knows how a sequence feels in the eighth show of the week. He choreographs musicals, operas and shows and also takes on fight scenes.

Alma Ferreira studied dance in Lisbon and Essen and has been choreographing her own pieces since 2015. She is as happy working with large groups as with a single body in an empty space. “Lichtjahre” is her first evening for Tanzhaus Süd.

Greta Sommerfeld gets opera choruses and drama ensembles moving, even when nobody there is a dancer. She works a lot with everyday gestures and makes sure everyone on stage knows why they walk and when.