Armin Petras

Armin Petras, born in Meschede in 1964 and raised in East Berlin, studied directing at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” in Berlin. He has directed plays at Nationaltheater Mannheim, Schauspiel Leipzig, Staatstheater Hannover, Thalia Theater Hamburg, Volksbühne Berlin and Münchner Kammerspiele, among others. He held leading positions at Theater Nordhausen, Staatstheater Kassel and Schauspiel Frankfurt and was the artistic director of the Berlin Maxim Gorki Theater from 2006 to 2013. His world premieres of the Fritz Kater plays “zeit zu lieben zeit zu sterben” (2003) and “WE ARE CAMERA / jasonmaterial” (2004) as well as his production of “Gertrud” (based on Einar Schleef, 2007) were presented at the Theatertreffen. In 2005, he received the Lessing-Award of the Free State of Saxony. Armin Petras has been the Artistic Director for Drama at Staatstheater Stuttgart since the summer of 2013.

His alter ego Fritz Kater writes theatre texts, among them the plays of the years of 2003 (“zeit zu lieben zeit zu sterben”) and 2004 (“WE ARE CAMERA / jasonmaterial”), as chosen by the magazine Theater heute. In 2003, “zeit zu lieben zeit zu sterben” won the Mülheim Dramatists’ Award. In 2008, Kater received the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Dramatists’ Prize.

As of May 2017.