Matthias Bundschuh

Matthias Bundschuh is a German actor, author and puppet theatre director. He studied theatre at the University of London and acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and at the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts Berlin, from where he graduated with distinction. He initially appeared almost exclusively as an actor, working with directors such as Luc Bondy, Barbara Frey, Jürgen Gosch, Karin Henkel, Manfred Karge, Michael Thalheimer, Jossi Wieler and Robert Wilson. He was a member of the ensembles of the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Deutsches Theater Berlin. He also made guest appearances at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Schaubühne Berlin, the Schauspielhaus Zürich and the Salzburg Festival. He became acquainted with the work of Claus Guth (Wiener Festwochen), Robert Carsen (Deutsche Oper Berlin) and Barrie Kosky through various speaking roles in opera productions. After turning to film and television, he became known to a wider public through big-screen films such as Shoppen and So viel Zeit and through films such as Die Wannseekonferenz. As an author, Matthias Bundschuh has adapted novels by Fyodor M. Dostoevsky and Robert Walser for the stage, and his screenplay Vergehen, based on a novel by Jan Peter Bremer, was recently made into a film. Since 1997 he has also worked as a director and designer for marionette theatre performances. His productions include Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Cottbus and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in Munich. He was responsible for the screenplay, direction and set designs for the short marionette film Wohin ist, der ich war und bin, after Franz Werfel, filmed in 2009 in collaboration with the Salzburg Marionette Theatre. At the Salzburg Marionette Theatre he has also staged Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals and, for the 2024 Mozartwoche, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, for which he also designed the puppets and stage set. After appearing as an actor at the Salzburg Festival in 2001, 2004 and 2016, he made his directing debut at the Festival with L’Histoire du soldat, designed by Georg Baselitz in 2025.