Yana Eva Thönnes

Director – Munich, Germany
Participant International Forum 2018

Yana Thönnes was born in 1990 and lives in Munich. She studied Philosophy and Cultural Reflection as well as Directing for the Theatre. This was followed by work as an assistant director at Münchner Kammerspiele, where she worked with Toshiki Okada among others. Since 2015, she has been developing performances with the company The Agency, together with Magdalena Emmerig, Rahel Spöhrer and Belle Santos. These projects, which she directs, experiment with the manifestations and formats of neoliberalism in an immersive manner, through the device of affirmative over-amplification. Their topics include technologies of the self and post-human intimacy and alienation. Key projects of The Agency are “Medusa Bionic Rise” (2017), in which they created a post-human fitness movement as part of the festival Treibstoff Theatertage Basel, and “Perfect Romance” (2018, Münchner Kammerspiele), in which The Agency and Leif Randt design a service enterprise that provides romantic simulations. These works have been presented both in the German-language region and across Europe, for instance at the 2018 Athens Biennale. Yana Thönnes is a fellow of the Saison Foundation Tokyo in 2017/18, conducting research for the coming work of The Agency: A new Men’s Movement.