Lecture series: IM FOKUS
13.06.24 Director and stage designer Ulrich Rasche
20.06.24 Stage designer Annette Kurz
For the second semester in a row, the Department of Stage and Costume Design invites you to the lecture series ‘IM FOKUS’. Outstanding stage and costume designers from the fields of film and theatre present their work and working methods and engage in discussion with students and interested parties from all departments. Excerpts and examples from their productions and project-specific research approaches and processes provide unique insights into the working and thinking approaches of sought-after artists behind the stage and/or camera.
After an inspiring start to the summer semester with stage and costume designer Christian Schmidt, we are delighted to announce two further lectures in June. On 13 June, renowned director and stage designer Ulrich Rasche will be our guest, followed by multi-award-winning stage designer Annette Kurz on 20 June.
Ulrich Rasche, born in Bochum in 1969, studied art history and comparative literature. His choral project 'Singing! Immateriell arbeiten', which premiered at the Palast der Republik in Berlin in 2004, he achieved national fame as a director. This was followed by productions at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, the Wiener Festwochen, the Volksbühne Berlin, the Schauspiel Frankfurt and the Sophiensæle Berlin. In 2011, he dramatised and directed Heinrich von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas at Theater Bonn. In 2013, Ulrich Rasche was honoured with the Art Prize of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. In 2014, he co-produced 'The Cosmic Octave' by Nis-Momme Stockmann (Sophiensæle Berlin). Further works followed, including 'Danton's Death' by Georg Büchner (2015, Schauspiel Frankfurt), 'The Robbers' by Friedrich Schiller (2016, Residenztheater Munich, invitation to the 2017 Berlin Theatertreffen), 'Woyzeck' by Georg Büchner (2017, Theater Basel, invitation to the 2018 Berlin Theatertreffen), 'Das große Heft' (2018, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, invitation to the 2019 Berlin Theatre Meeting), The Persians by Aeschylus (2018, Salzburg Festival), 'Elektra' by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (2019, Residenztheater Munich), 'The Bacchae' by Euripides (2019, Burgtheater Vienna), '4. 48 Psychosis' by Sarah Kane (2020, Deutsches Theater Berlin) and 'Leonce and Lena' by Georg Büchner (2023, Deutsches Theater Berlin). At the Residenztheater, he also staged 'The Earthquake in Chili' (2020) by Heinrich von Kleist and 'Woyzeck' (2020) by Georg Büchner. In 2022, he directed 'Agamemnon' by Aeschylus, a co-production of the Residenztheater and the Athens Epidaurus Festival, which premiered in the ancient theatre in Epidaurus. With his production of Nathan the Wise (2023, Salzburg Festival), Ulrich Rasche was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2024.
Annette Kurz studied Fine Arts and Art History in Paris (Ecole du Louvre). After graduating in Fine Arts (Université Paris VIII), she attended the École Supérieure d'Art Dramatique du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) and graduated with the Diplôme de Scénographie. After France, Hamburg was the starting point for her international career: she worked there as an assistant set designer for Anna Viebrock at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus and later spent ten years (2009 - 2019) as head of set design at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. Since 2022, she has been the first ever visual artist to be artist in residence at Ensemble Resonanz in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, working with sculpture, painting, performance and staging in collaboration with the orchestra. She is in demand internationally as a freelance stage designer and scenographer. Her work is decisively characterised by her intensive and long-standing collaboration with the director Luk Perceval, for whose theatre and opera productions Kurz has been designing highly complex, open symbolic spaces since 2001, which mostly emerge from the elementary basic space and the cultural and visual history of her sculptural stage elements (‘scenic objects’). Her theatre and opera works with Luk Perceval and others have been presented at the Thalia Theater Hamburg, the Berliner Ensemble, the Schaubühne Berlin, the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Salzburg Festival, the Zurich Opera, the Basel Opera and the Deutsche Oper Berlin as well as at festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, Prague and Vienna. They have been awarded the German theatre prize DER FAUST-best stage design, stage design of the year in the TheaterderZeit critics' survey, the Hamburg theatre prize ROLF MARES-best stage design, the Norwegian theatre prize HEDDA nomination for best stage design and many more.
The Akademie der Künste Berlin will set up an Annette Kurz archive of her work in the Archive for the Performing Arts. Annette Kurz has taught scenography at various universities in Germany and abroad.
Currently on show in Berlin : ‘ Exil’ , directed by Luk Perceval , Berliner Ensemble
Currently to be seen in Hamburg : ‘Wolf unter Wölfen’ directed by Luk Perceval, Thalia Theatre
Further lectures this semester:
04.07. Wolfgang Menardi