Die Nominierten

Performance Dance
Ensemble Unusual Symptoms/tanzbar_bremen in »The Tide«
Theater Bremen
A collaboration with tanzbar_bremen

»Unusual Symptoms« creates a space for coexistence on stage. It is the subtle qualities of presence and the genuine (not feigned) vulnerability that captivate the audience. A performance so deeply imbued with reality manifests a presence free from narcissistic tendencies, thereby elevating dance to an expression of necessity. The work is characterised by the diversity of its performers and by the way in which dancers with and without disabilities move together to create a space of coexistence. Rather than emphasising differences for the sake of representation, the choreography allows different bodies to share space, agency and presence, thereby creating a field of relationships founded on mutual recognition.

The vulnerability on display appears as a lived state and contributes to an atmosphere of authenticity and mindfulness. The performers maintain a way of being that remains open, exposed and deeply connected to the reality of their experience.

Performance Dance
Nora Monsecour in »Façade«
Staatstheater Mainz/tanzmainz

In her solo piece »Façade«, Nora Monsecour explores her experience as a trans*woman, identity and role models. She plays with an exaggerated femininity and presents herself as if on a catwalk, turning her body into a projection screen for the perceptions of others.

She lays bare her search for self-assurance with unflinching honesty and captivates the audience with her charisma as a dancer. She draws the audience powerfully into her world and creates a variety of states through her dance. In doing so, she decorates out her movements with great precision, articulating her expression through her body in a fascinating way.

The way she sits so fragilely in an old wash tub, washing herself, is reminiscent of a scene from her childhood. It is powerful to see the dancer standing self-assuredly in platform shoes, singing the lyrics of the band Antony and the Johnsons: »One day I’ll grow up, I’ll be a beautiful woman!«

Performance Dance
Martino Semenzato as Franz Kafka in »Oh Dear«
Das Stuttgarter Ballett

Martino Semenzato, a dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet since 2018 and a soloist since 2025, delivers a compelling performance in his role in »Oh Dear« through an exceptionally intense and multi-layered portrayal of Franz Kafka. With great authenticity, he embodies the writer’s life and suffering, his doubts, fears, hopes and relationship struggles on his journey towards self-acceptance. In his encounters with key characters and his alter ego, Semenzato unfolds a moving portrayal of the character, rich in emotional depth.

Particularly impressive is his ability to reconcile opposites: his performance is powerful yet fragile, technically precise and characterised by great human vulnerability. Thanks to the quality of his movement, his expressiveness and his stage presence, he succeeds in sustaining the tension of the work throughout. He makes it tangible that weakness does not mean failure, but is also a starting point for personal development and creative expression.

Performance Acting
Shirin Ali as Hamlet in »Hamlet«
Nationaltheater Mannheim

Shirin Ali as Hamlet at the Nationaltheater Mannheim is a spectacle: full of energy, defiant and vulnerable all at once. Directed by Nuran David Calis, her Hamlet becomes a character of great immediacy: a young person who thinks, doubts, mourns, rages and yet never falls silent.

Shirin Ali plays Hamlet with a presence that electrifies the space: alert, physical, precise, vulnerable and yet imbued with immense power. She does not merely reinterpret the role, but propels it into our present – radically alive. Shirin Ali reveals a soul in a state of emergency: clear-sighted, fragile, rebellious. Tenderness and defiance, intelligence and pain, bewilderment and resistance intertwine in every moment. Her performance renders the famous lines existential, the anger comprehensible, the grief tangible. The result is a Hamlet who speaks from the present day and imbues the age-old questions with new urgency. This performance is breathtaking.

Performance Acting
Paulina Alpen as Thomas Melle in »Die Welt im Rücken«
Schauspiel Stuttgart

»I’ll make the city tremble«, says Paulina Alpen in »Die Welt im Rücken«, Thomas Melle’s unreservedly candid exploration of his own bipolar disorder. And indeed: Paulina Alpen makes us tremble. With radical transparency and candour, she navigates this text – a breakneck ride through a world caught between exclusion, collapse and euphoria. There is no safety net here, no safety measures – and if there was ever any thought of economising on the performance, it is neither discernible nor perceptible.

Paulina Alpen moves through all the stages of mania and depression, intuitively, intensely, with a natural charisma and ease that, against the backdrop of Lucia Bihler’s visually striking production, leaves one in awe and deeply moved. Not seeking pity, never sentimental, but angry, even funny – and very honest.

Performance Acting
Jens Harzer in »De Profundis«
Berliner Ensemble

In »De Profundis«, Jens Harzer draws us into the eponymous depths and abysses of human existence and allows us to look out from there – at nothing less than the world and existence itself. In a very confined space, which is dark at first and eventually becomes light, at times bathed in cold light, at others in warm, Jens Harzer takes the audience on an inner and outer journey – the one Oscar Wilde was forced to endure during his two years in prison – in a spectacular, intellectually incisive and emotionally profound manner: At the outset, Harzer portrays a man settling scores with his ill-fated lover, a man aware of his own vanity yet still retaining his pride. A man clinging to his significance as an artist, who becomes increasingly delirious and mad: driven to it by loneliness, physical and metaphysical pain. And who, in the end, leaves prison a changed man – less purified than scarred. On stage, Jens Harzer is an existential seeker, and that is quite simply a spectacle.

Performance Music Theatre
Ambur Braid as Katerina Lvovna Ismailova in »Lady Macbeth of Mzensk«
Komische Oper Berlin

Both vocally and in her acting, Ambur Braid is fully up to the great challenges of the role of Katerina at every moment. She possesses the necessary volume to carry the work’s full orchestral sound at all times. Her effortless high register comes into its own impressively. At the same time, her phenomenal technique and the rich substance of her voice allow her to realise vast dynamic nuances and, supported by her magnificent musicality, to captivate the audience.

Equally, Ambur Braid is an exceptional performer. Authentic at all times, she captivates us, challenges us to share in her experiences and sympathise with her, and leaves no one in the audience unmoved. In the overwhelming richness of her performance, rebellion and vulnerability are just as palpable as her character’s desperate loneliness.

Performance Music Theatre
Richard Glöckner as Algernon in »My Friend Bunbury«
Eduard-von-Winterstein Theater

Performers like Richard Glöckner are hard to come by, and not just amongst his own generation! With impeccable style, great charm and consummate confidence, he masters every discipline, from singing and acting to dance. What sets this young tenor apart is that effortless »je ne sais quoi« which makes him particularly well-suited to the genre of light-hearted musical theatre – and which, like all things light-hearted and carefree, is so incredibly difficult to achieve. Yet Richard Glöckner possesses a charisma that seems to come from another era, without ever appearing old-fashioned. Great artistry!

Performance Music Theatre
Nadine Lehner as Renata in »The Fiery Angel«
Theater Bremen

With her portrayal of Renata in Prokofiev’s »The Fiery Angel«, Nadine Lehner delivers an exceptional artistic performance that combines musical excellence, dramatic intensity and human authenticity. Renata is one of the most demanding female roles in 20th-century musical theatre. Portraying her convincingly demands far more than vocal brilliance: it requires the ability to make inner turmoil, spiritual ecstasy and psychological abyss equally palpable.

Nadine Lehner achieves this at the very highest level. With harrowing intensity, she sketches the psychological portrait of a woman caught between religious transfiguration and destructive obsession. Her performance exerts a magnetic pull that grips the audience and never lets go. It is not only the consistency of her acting that impresses, but also her vocal mastery. Lehner renders this demanding role with great expressive range, stamina and technical mastery. Even in states of extreme emotion, her voice remains steady, nuanced and moving. She does not turn Renata into a spectacle, but into a human being.

Performance Theatre for Young Audiences
Daniela Mohr in »Heimsuchung«
Theater im Marienbad

Daniela Mohr, who has been with Freiburg’s Theater im Marienbad since 1990, has the creativity, openness and depth to make any story her own. In Tom Schneider’s production »Heimsuchung« – a solo performance lasting almost two hours – she is the focal point. The story revolves around a plot of land that, from the Ice Age right through to the 20th century, has been home to various people who are searching for a home and are haunted by it.

In a workshop space, Tom Schneider and Daniela Mohr skilfully and imaginatively bring the images of this plot to life using earth, water, fabrics, stones, tree roots, picture frames, a loop station, a recorder and a live camera. The actress devotes herself so wholeheartedly to the demanding on-stage proceedings that the audience can effortlessly empathise with stories spanning over a hundred years. Daniela Mohr literally gets her hands dirty, operating a loop station or live camera, yet ensures none of it feels technical. Her performance feels more like a state of being. Like a tracker, she follows every story into its darkest corners. She moves and convinces.

Performance Theatre for Young Audiences
Sibel Polat as Nergiz in »Endland«
Schauburg – Theater für junges Publikum in München 

Nergiz (played by Sibel Polat) is the most likeable character in the play »Endland«. She speaks warmly of her family and with optimism about the future. And yet she stands before a stretch of woodland with a wall, not knowing what lies beyond it. The play presents a vision of the future in a country where all the AfD’s rhetoric is put into practice: Nergiz, as a refugee, is labelled an »invader«. Sibel Polat’s Kurdish character, Nergiz, flees from Turkey to Germany to escape poverty, persistent drought and political persecution. And she plays the role openly, unpretentiously and always convincingly. Her portrayal of a person who remains human in the face of the greatest hardship and stands by her principles is complemented by a long sequence in which she recites actual quotes from AfD politicians. In a way, this is the most demanding acting feat of all.

Sibel Polat delivers the quotes neutrally yet clearly, presenting them non-violently without succumbing to the violence inherent in the content itself. The play is set in 2030 – just under five years in the future. As harsh as the play is, and as unbearable as the story it tells may be, it is vital that it is told. Sibel Polat is the linchpin of the production. Together with her four colleagues, she ushers in a nightmare in which young people are confronted with present and future dangers. And from which they themselves may emerge a little more resilient and more human. Just like Nergiz.

Performance Theatre for Young Audiences
Trigal Sandberger Cañas in »ich sehe was / was du nicht siehst«
Theater der Stadt Aalen

The production is based on a significant, well-crafted script and on Trigal Sandberger Cañas’s performance. Together with her co-star Marius Petrenz, she shares the role of the first-person narrator. Together, they embody two sides of the nameless protagonist. He recalls his youth, a very special summer’s evening, a party, spin the bottle, a first French kiss and more – things he didn’t want. Trigal Sandberger Cañas brings a great directness to her performance and her use of language. And she demonstrates this directness here too, in her interaction with her stage partner and with the audience. She performs with great openness, never coming across as aloof.

Trigal Sandberger Cañas’s range of expression in sketching the various characters surrounding the first-person narrator seems inexhaustible. Through her performance, the situations feel so genuine and natural that, as a member of the audience, you feel transported back to your own teenage years and can relate to your own experiences. She portrays insecurities and awkward moments with great sensitivity and conviction. In doing so, she acts with humour without making the characters look ridiculous.

Choreography
Ivan Alboresi for »Giselle«
Theater Nordhausen/Loh-Orchester Sondershausen/Ballett TN LOS!

In their reinterpretation of this classic, Ivan Alboresi and his ensemble develop a unique approach to the work. Using simple means, a limited space and a comparatively small cast of 14 dancers, they tell the familiar story through a fluid movement language that boldly departs from the original – barefoot and earthy, without losing the romantic poetry of the work. The plot is stripped back to its essence; secondary characters are omitted and the psychological relationships between the main characters are reinterpreted. Four soloists are embedded within a prominent ensemble which, as the »fifth leading role«, plays a decisive part in shaping the evening. The simple yet effective set and costume design supports the aesthetic reimagining of the familiar material.

Using dense visual language, Alboresi develops clearly comprehensible plotlines without directly quoting the original. The worlds of the two acts – cheerful and down-to-earth on the one hand, nocturnal and sombre on the other – are clearly distinguished from one another without falling into folkloric or ethereal clichés. Complemented by electronic sounds, the choreography blends seamlessly with Adolphe Adam’s composition. The result is a captivating contemporary narrative ballet that lends the work a fresh perspective and is compelling as a cohesive whole.

Choreography
Alan Lucien Øyen for »Underdog«
Staatstheater Mainz/tanzmainz 

Alain Lucien Øyen’s choreography »Underdog« is a successful blend of dance and theatre, combining powerful ensemble scenes with moments of individual expression. Øyen skilfully explores the tension between the collective and the individual through his choreography. Powerful images of frantic bodies and interpersonal chasms unfold. Scenes of powerlessness, loneliness and self-doubt, but also of a longing for security and connection, follow one after another. Lines such as »My flat reeks of despair« or »Perhaps I could breathe if it weren’t so important to me that you like me« linger in the air. It is also about structures and the longing to constantly break them down and shift them. Alain Lucien Øyen has created a powerful piece of dance theatre that relies on dynamic and vigorous scenes brimming with vitality, whilst remaining deeply human.

Choreography
Andrea Peña for »Let’s talk about Trance«
Staatstheater Kassel/TANZ_Kassel

Andrea Peña’s choreographic work »Let’s talk about Trance« invites the audience on an uncompromising journey through energy and physicality. The piece is characterised by its exploration of the body as a place of intensity, endurance and transformation.

Particularly striking is the juxtaposition of tenderness and a physical, deliberately defiant roughness. The performers’ bodies embody the notes of a demanding score, creating a dynamic interplay between structure and vitality. The choreography brings effort to the fore as a form of expression and makes physical labour visible without detracting from its poetic dimensions. The movement evolves from mechanical repetition into flowing, undulating and twitching variations. This gradual transition from a collective pulse to individual gestures makes the trance referred to in the title physically tangible.

Direction Drama
Jan-Christoph Gockel for »Wallenstein«
Münchner Kammerspiele

Jan-Christoph Gockel’s »Wallenstein« is sensual, political and relevant theatre that draws on a wealth of resources. The production dismantles the war-torn chamber of horrors that unfolds daily in reality, using every means at the theatre’s disposal to break it down into its constituent parts and thereby lay it bare. Schiller’s »Wallenstein« is interwoven here with the story of Prigoschin, the head of the Wagner troupe. »Putin’s chef« and the kitchen, where food is cooked live and the aromas fill the air, are linked both conceptually and sensually. Indeed, everything about this production is exuberant and compellingly condensed. As a result, the nearly seven-hour play is at times terrifying, at times hilarious, and often both at once. An impressive, tireless and wildly enthusiastic ensemble naturally brings Schiller’s verses and political observations close to the here and now. A major theatrical production featuring puppetry, media and live video, which illustrates in the most compelling way the relevance of the Münchner Kammerspiele’s motto: »Don’t leave reality in peace.«

Direction Drama
Anne Lenk in »Hinkemann«
Deutsches Theater Berlin

Eugen Hinkemann and his wife Grete stand crammed into a cramped, frog-green kitchen. Their relationship – and their souls – are just as crooked and lopsided as the room itself. Eugen, a war invalid, »castrated«, at odds with the contemporary image of masculinity; and Grete, who doesn’t know how to relate to him. Anne Lenk lets her actors hit the ground running, striking the right tone straight away and getting straight to the point: what is a human being? In the quirky mini-kitchen, the characters are visible as if under a magnifying glass, moving very close to the audience. Powerful – not a single note is out of place.

Then the space opens up: with minimal means, Anne Lenk creates a space for association that clearly points beyond a time-bound social drama. Faces distorted into grimaces in video projections, text collages, a dancing group with children’s swollen heads – a chamber of horrors of violent masculinity.

The director is masterful in her staging language. Her aesthetic has an unmistakable style. And it is precisely from this that she gains the freedom to take risks, to experiment and to evade the tragic ending. She self-assuredly counters Toller’s play with hope and a way out.

Direction Drama
Luise Voigt for »Das Buch der Unruhe«
Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus

With »Das Buch der Unruhe« at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus, Luise Voigt pulls off a remarkable feat: from Fernando Pessoa’s elusive collection of fragments of thought, melancholy and existential doubt, she crafts not a literary evening, but an intoxicating theatrical journey. With a bold commitment to radicalism and boundless imagination, the director translates the source material into magnificent images, soundscapes and scenes that sparkle with poetry, humour, pain and a diagnosis of the present day.

And the production places its trust in the audience: nothing is explained, nothing is spoon-fed; everything remains open to interpretation. This, too, is where its power lies. Luise Voigt depicts a world in turmoil, shaken by mediocrity, crises and hubris, whilst at the same time allowing the longing for a self-determined, open life to shine through. Carried by a strong ensemble, the result is a wild, clever, sensual theatrical experience that unsettles, enchants and lingers long in the memory. This production proves just how vibrant, daring and necessary theatre can be.

Direction Music Theatre
Frank Hilbrich for »Rummelplatz«
Die Theater Chemnitz 

In his world premiere production of Ludger Vollmer’s »Rummelplatz«, based on the novel of the same name by Werner Bräunig, Frank Hilbrich succeeds in making a key work of post-war German literature accessible to the audience without neglecting the complexity of the plot and the music.

Hilbrich’s directorial choices are entirely at the service of Bräunig’s original text and Jenny Erpenbeck’s libretto, without ever appearing conventional. A deliberately slow pace and precise direction of the characters enable the audience to follow the work without becoming lost in it. A highlight of the 2024/25 German-language theatre season and of Chemnitz’s year as European Capital of Culture, the success of which is due in no small part to Frank Hilbrich’s astute direction. 

Direction Music Theatre
Anna Weber for »Die Reise nach Reims«
Theater Bremen

With plenty of irony, imagination and a flair for intelligent entertainment, Anna Weber tackles one of the repertoire’s most challenging operas in her production of »Die Reise nach Reims«. The plot, which is by nature rather stagnant, is challenged by a powerful conceptual approach and, through a strong staging, transformed into a narrative arc full of suspense. The extensive use of video technology does not overshadow the characters’ enthusiasm for their roles. The wonderfully exaggerated characters are superbly directed and shine at every moment with a rich, full performance. The chorus performs with great commitment. This production brings to the fore many aspects of a distinctive directorial voice.

Direction Music Theatre
Matthew Wild for »Peter Grimes«
Theater Bielefeld

With his production, Matthew Wild offers an insightful interpretation of the work, characterised by masterful characterisation. The interweaving of the opera and the composer’s biography is particularly original. By integrating references to Benjamin Britten and his lived experience as a homosexual outsider of his time into the production, Wild broadens the perspective on the opera to include an additional layer that is both socially relevant today and rooted in the work itself. The story thus becomes a reflection on social norms, on how we deal with otherness, and on the destructive power of prejudice. In doing so, the production avoids any simplistic categorisation and instead opens up space for different interpretations. At its heart lies the question of the mechanisms of social attribution and exclusion.

Wild tells the story of »Peter Grimes« not merely as the tale of an outsider, but as an exploration of how suspicion, rumour and collective certainty arise. With subtle precision, Wild portrays a community that creates its own truths and increasingly turns them against the individual. The chorus becomes the driving force behind the action. It is precisely in this combination of musical precision, intelligent analysis of the work and great emotional impact that the production unfolds its particular power.

Direction Theatre for Young Audiences 
Hanna Bylka-Kanecka for »MOPPS«
Staatstheater Mainz

Hanna Bylka-Kanecka is a choreographer, performer and curator. She says that she draws her greatest artistic inspiration from physically observing the various aspects of her own motherhood. At the Mainz State Theatre, she has created a wonderful, interactive dance piece with four dancers for an audience aged three and above. »MOPPS« is a dance performance centred on cleaning. Not only are the stage elements made exclusively from cleaning materials, but the entire repertoire of movements is also inventively derived from various cleaning processes. There is mopping, sweeping, scrubbing and rubbing – not in a realistic sense, but rather as the basis for the choreography. The mops and rags on hand are transformed into the feet of a penguin or the feathers of a bird.

The audience sits on the floor in the same space as the dancers. Throughout the performance, the audience is constantly on the move, until, towards the end, they are encouraged to dance, hop and jump themselves as part of a guided obstacle course. At the end, everyone tidies everything up together in a playful manner. Here is a choreographer at work who knows her audience and who experiments with her ensemble to see what they can achieve together with the audience. In doing so, she provides her dancers with a safe space and takes dance seriously. The result is a performance suitable for everyone aged three and over, in which everyone gets their money’s worth.

Direction Theatre for Young Audiences 
Catharina Fillers for »FIESTA«
echtzeit-theater

The play »FIESTA« (by Gwendoline Soublin), directed by Catharina Fillers, is staged in a way that closely reflects the everyday lives of children aged nine and over. The play centres on Nonno’s tenth birthday, which is set to go down in history. Were it not for Storm Maria-Theresia, which has everyone on tenterhooks. When adults play children, it can quickly turn into mere imitation. Here, it is quite different. The adults remain adults, but take the remarks and dialogues of the child characters seriously, so that they become meaningful statements. Such as the idea that one’s own birthday must be a celebration, or that it hurts when you lose someone important.

The stage space allows the children to be close to the performers. Theatrical techniques are used creatively to portray complex historical details. Since 2011, echtzeit-theater has been creating artistic experiences that open up space for imagination and interpretation. In Catharina Fillers, the theatre has found the ideal director for this.

Direction Theatre for Young Audiences 
Sandra Strunz for »Wimmelstadt«
Theater der Jungen Welt

Inspired by Peter Handke’s »The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other«, Sandra Strunz’s Leipzig production »Wimmelstadt« is a piece that functions almost entirely without dialogue, whilst depicting the everyday encounters of a wide variety of people. It is brimming with creativity, wit and the magic of theatre.

For this production, Sandra Strunz has looked closely, listened intently and really tuned in. Her production is a call to live consciously. A great deal happens on stage: from the first pigeons of the day to a choreographed football ballet, or street musicians singing exactly the right song at exactly the right moment. The beauty of this production lies in the fact that it is impossible to take in everything in detail. It is inexhaustible – every glance reveals something new. In her production »Wimmelstadt«, Sandra Strunz lets her love of theatre and of people swarm through poetic, meticulously observed images of everyday life.  In this work, the director demonstrates that she has a keen sense of space, rhythm and tension on stage. This makes every one of the production’s seventy minutes well worth experiencing.

Scenic Design
Mehmet Akal & Kazim Akal (set design & video animation) for »Katzelmacher«
Münchner Kammerspiele

With their set design for »Katzelmacher«, Mehmet Akal & Kazim Akal create an uncompromising theatrical space of great visual power. Realistic depictions of social settings are replaced by an artificial world that blends pop aesthetics, digital imagery and a social nightmare. The space becomes the central vehicle of meaning in the production: it makes the mechanisms of exclusion, fear and violence immediately tangible and precisely transposes Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s material into an idiosyncratic artistic world. The combination of analogue and digital elements gives rise to haunting images that leave a lasting impression. Particularly compelling is the consistency with which the set design tells its own story. Mehmet Akal & Kazim Akal have created a work of extraordinary artistic autonomy that defines the evening. This production compellingly combines aesthetic innovation with social relevance.

Scenic Design
Marlene Lockemann (set design) for »Romeo und Julia«
Residenztheater

The set for »Romeo und Julia«, directed by Elsa-Sophie Jach, consists of a framework of tiers of steps stacked one on top of the other. These can twist in relation to one another and are rearranged for each scene to create surprising spatial configurations. Thus, one side of the long platform becomes a grand staircase, whilst on the other a wall emerges that requires considerable effort to scale. The spaces between the steps become dangerous hiding places, and the entire structure serves as a metaphor for the prison in which the two feuding families find themselves. The performers physically exploit every possibility that this »playground« offers them.

Within this highly abstract stage system, Marlene Lockemann creates concrete, performable possibilities that lead to powerful moments in the play. In this way, the space dynamically shapes each scene and underpins the entire performance.

Scenic Design
Ida Müller (set design) for »Peer Gynt«
Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

Ida Müller’s set design for »Peer Gynt« transcends any theatre space, even that of the Volksbühne, which over the past 30 years has established itself as a master of exuberant scenography. Müller’s highly distinctive visual language, honed over decades, culminates in a visionary synthesis in this production: she combines elements of puppet theatre with a radical, psychotic masquerade. Her highly emotional, intensely grotesque masks alienate the performers and merge them with the space to create a garish comic world for anti-heroes with manic delusions. As difficult as this overwhelming experience is to bear, Müller ingeniously sets a daring, powerful counterbalance to Henrik Ibsen’s psychological reality. She tells us a visually expansive fable about social alienation and the distortion of the human ego. Her maximalist, obsessive aesthetic of garish, cryptic imagery and her hand-painted, unsettling expressionism take this total work of art to the extreme.

Costumes
Andy Besuch for »Penthesilea & Der zerbrochene Krug«
Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar

In »Penthesilea & Der zerbrochene Krug«, Andy Besuch achieves a costume design of extraordinary artistic freedom whilst maintaining dramaturgical precision. His designs create a visual space that connects the two seemingly contrasting works whilst precisely delineating their respective worlds. With clear silhouettes and a visual language that bridges myth, the present and the future, the characters become embodiments of power, desire, violence and social roles. Colour functions not as a decorative element, but as a dramaturgical instrument that renders affiliations, conflicts and shifts visible.

Particularly impressive is the natural ease with which the highly conceptual design of the costumes blends with their immediate impact on stage. The costumes structure the evening, leave a lasting impression on the audience’s perception of the production and exude an extraordinary presence. Andy Besuch has created a work of great originality that produces unmistakable images and significantly shapes the artistic message of the evening.

Costumes
Josa Marx for »The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui«
Schauspiel Frankfurt

Josa Marx’s costumes for »Arturo Ui«, directed by Christian Weise, explore the banality of evil with humour and lightness. We see rough characters, real gangsters and bizarre figures in a gloomy, sleazy, cartoonishly exaggerated black-and-white world.

Brecht’s gangster parable on fascism highlights how evil can thrive precisely where it is not taken seriously. Josa Marx’s costumes, for instance, depict a likeable, over-the-top villain in a pink fluffy jumper, who, dressed as Maya the Bee, works himself up into a dictatorial speech. This makes them entertaining, yet at the same time reminds us of our own susceptibility to seduction. In doing so, he does not forget to showcase the rest of the gallery of Nazi characters: sinister, seductive, exaggerated and yet accurate.

Costumes
Carolin Mittler for »Die drei Rätsel«
Deutsche Oper Berlin

Carolin Mittler’s costume design for the two-act opera »Die Drei Rätsel«, aimed at both children and adults, shines through its exceptionally precise characterisation. Mittler’s radical use of pointed, character-defining costume elements transforms the entire ensemble into veritable mythical figures of unmistakable humour and sharpness, without ever making them look ridiculous. Mittler goes one step further by influencing the performers through technical constraints in the cut of the costumes.

It is largely thanks to her costume design that this socially critical story about the distortion of a rigid adult world is told in a visually compelling way on stage. Without sacrificing attention to detail, Mittler succeeds in showcasing her visually striking aesthetic on the opera stage with a large ensemble and a children’s choir. Her baroque, technically flawless design lovingly invents a counter-model to everyday monotony — with richly detailed, colourful and tongue-in-cheek creations.

Media
Mehmet Akal & Kazim Akal (video animation), Enik (composition & sound design) for »Katzelmacher« 
Münchner Kammerspiele

Mehmet Akal and Kazim Akal’s visual language in »Katzelmacher« is characterised by extraordinary originality and imaginative power. From the fragmented text excerpts of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s »Katzelmacher«, they develop a stream of surprising, grotesque and precise images. Dense, garish visual spaces emerge amidst the underground, soft toys, computer games, horror visions and pop-art exaggerations. Whilst sentences are repeated in the text, the images lead the viewer into ever-changing digital worlds. They shift perspectives, generate contradictions, create spaces for association and provide a clear counterpoint to the violence inscribed in the language.

The technically masterful realisation of the digital visual spaces, particularly in close interplay with the sound design, contributes significantly to this effect. Image, sound and rhythm form an intense tapestry that helps shape the entire form of the piece.

Media
Nils Corte (direction, video FX), Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger (creative technologist), Lena Rucker (direction) for »Ich hasse Menschen«
Theater Altenburg Gera
A co-production with Yvonne Schäfer and ARGEkultur Salzburg

The post-digital tragicomedy »Ich hasse Menschen« addresses the central existential and social questions raised by technological upheavals driven by machine intelligence not merely critically, but also practically and with a great deal of humour. The interaction between the robot vacuum cleaner Volker, the fridge Frosti and the router Conny with the actors and an automated LLM chat functions seamlessly. Artificial intelligence is not merely a subject of discourse here; rather, in the development of this play, it is examined for its narrative potential and shortcomings and effectively integrated into the performance.

The result is a vibrant performance in which robotics, projection (VR worlds, AI videos, vacuum cleaner POV, AI commentary and pre-produced material), audio playback and a dynamic ensemble of performers create highly contemporary theatre that cracks open and punctures the smooth AI black boxes that surround us.

Media
Vincent Stefan (video) for »Mazeppa«
Oper Dortmund 
A production in collaboration with Palazzetto Bru Zane

In »Mazeppa«, Vincent Stefan transforms opera music into a powerful, distinct visual world. The videos feel like cinema on stage: a fascinating, unique superhero world is created in an aesthetically striking and gripping manner. The powerful visual compositions and a wealth of perfectly employed cinematic techniques convey emotional nuances and shed light on the characters’ inner conflicts.

The film manages to surprise time and again whilst remaining true to the narrative. It succeeds in adapting to the times, accompanying the protagonist on his journey and allowing the audience to witness his transformation. The worlds of film and theatre merge through the magnificent fictional performance both in front of and behind the camera, and the film editing; everything interlocks with rhythmic precision. The result is a fascinating superhero aesthetic of great visual power and clear narrative tension, blending tragedy and comedy.

Every single image allows the audience (complete with capes) to fly through the evening.

Crossover
Dominik Breinlinger, Julian Kämper, Felix Kruis (3D sound theatre), Benno Heisel (musical direction, composition), Katharina Mayrhofer (director) for »Just Listen«
Bayerische Staatsoper & Schauburg - Theater für junges Publikum in München

Perceiving the world through another person’s ears: the musical theatre production »Just Listen« opens up the world of a special school to us from various perspectives: singers and performers wear tiny binaural microphones, and the audience, seated throughout the »Just Listen« stage set in a sports hall, hears the world from one person’s perspective thanks to similar headphones. Directed by Katharina Mayrhofer, Julian Kämper, Felix Kruis and Dominik Breinlinger have developed a dramaturgically conceived, technically and artistically coherent concept for a unique 3D sound theatre experience: the audience perceives the world differently in a sensory way and is immersed in a multi-layered narrative of rumours and social dynamics. In »Just Listen«, the ability to experience the world from a different perspective transforms it into something malleable.

Crossover
Ayşe Güvendiren for »Dinge I über I Leben«
Nationaltheater Mannheim

With »Dinge I über I Leben«, Ayşe Güvendiren forges a link between theatre, the museum, documentary research and a performative culture of remembrance. The stage is transformed into a walk-in museum, a place of remembrance and a theatrical meeting place. Inspired by the life of Mevlüde Genç, the peace ambassador from Solingen, Güvendiren develops a form of theatre in which objects, stories, music and the presence of the performers are interwoven.

The actors become museum curators, mediators and witnesses. Through the interplay of documented sources, artistic imagination and collective memory, a space emerges that unites historical reappraisal, socio-political reflection and a sensory theatrical experience.

»Dinge I über I Leben« opens up new ways of remembering and storytelling. The production demonstrates how theatre can transcend its conventional forms without losing its immediacy. It is precisely through this innovative fusion of different artistic languages that this production breaks the mould!

Crossover
O-Team for »Staub«
A production by O-Team in collaboration with Theater Rampe

With »Staub«, O-Team creates a haunting, theatrical state of emergency. In a flat that is crumbling before the audience’s eyes, wallpaper peels away from the walls and objects become performance partners. Using rubble, dust and everyday objects, the performers develop a poetic choreography of decay through a wordless, highly precise interplay of body, material and sound.

Without words, the production combines object and puppet theatre, performance, sound, visual art and installation into a unique form that defies any clear categorisation. Materials become actors, the stage space a living sculpture, and the sound a force that can be physically experienced. The result is a dense, sensually immersive theatrical space that draws the audience directly into the action.

It is precisely through this consistent transcending of genre boundaries that »Staub« exemplifies the »crossover« category.