Nicolas Stemann

Nicolas Stemann, born in 1968 in Hamburg, started out mainly making music and playing in various bands, and although he has never given up on music, he then studied philosophy and finally theatre direction in Hamburg and Vienna. Since his beginnings with his independent company and his collaboration with the dance company El Colegio del Cuerpo in Cartagena, Colombia, Stemann has worked in all the major theatres of the German­speaking world and has repeatedly been invited to international festivals. He has an exclusive working relationship with Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek. To this day, Stemann’s constant motivation is to bring into contact the contradictory, irreconcilable and yet simultaneous movements and trends of our contemporary world. Even the media he uses are subject to constant variation: as well as music, he is constantly opening up the theatre to other forms of art, as in his “Faust I & II”. And it was precisely with this Faust, which perfectly demonstrated his ability to infuse canonical texts with playful thoughts and feelings that are relevant to people today, that he made his first appearance in Zurich. This is where Nicolas Stemann is holding the position of artistic director together with Benjamin von Blomberg since the 2019/20 season.