Jury 2019

The jury for the Theatertreffen chooses the ten productions invited to Theatertreffen and is made up of seven theatre critics. These honorary jurors are usually serving three years in succession. The jury is appointed by the director of the Theatertreffen and the director of the Berliner Festspiele.

Overview of the Theatertreffen juries since 2012

The jury of the Theatertreffen 2019. f.l.t.r. Dorothea Marcus, Christian Rakow, Shirin Sojitrawalla, Andreas Klaeui, Eva Behrendt, Wolfgang Höbel, Margarete Affenzeller

© Iko Freese / drama-berlin.de

Margarete Affenzeller

Born in Freistadt/Upper Austria in 1971, she studied German Philology and History at the University of Vienna. She has been a permanent member of the arts section of the Austrian daily newspaper der Standard since 1997; since 2007, her editorial focus has been on writing about theatre. She has been a member of various juries for several years, including the Nestroy Theatre Award and the Ö1 Award for Radio Plays. She is a correspondent for the magazine Theater der Zeit.

Eva Behrendt

Born in 1973, she studied History, Literature and Theatre Studies in Mainz, Dijon and Berlin. Since 2001, she has been a freelance editor for the magazine Theater heute as well as a writer for the newspaper taz, the public radio channel Deutschlandfunk Kultur and others. She has been on the juries for the festival Impulse, the Berlin Senate, the Berlin Theatertreffen from 2008 – 2010, the festival Politik im Freien Theater (Politics in Independent Theatre) and for the Capital Cultural Fund.

Wolfgang Höbel

Born in Kaufbeuren in 1962, he studied Modern German Literature and Journalism in Munich. He has been a music and theatre critic for Süddeutsche Zeitung and Tempo since 1985 and an arts editor of Der Spiegel since 1994.

Dorothea Marcus

Born in 1969, she studied German Philology and History at FU Berlin. She has been a freelance cultural journalist since 1999 – first based in Freiburg, then in Cologne – for the newspaper taz, the public radio channels Deutschlandfunk and WDR, for the magazine Theater heute and the online portal nachtkritik.de, among others. She was a jury member for the Cologne Theatre Award, NRW-Theatertreffen and the NRW Jugendtheatertreffen Westwind (conference of theatres for young people in North Rhine-Westphalia). From 2009 to its termination in 2014, she was editor-in-chief for the theatre magazine aKT in Cologne. She teaches “Writing about dance and theatre” for the degree course Dance and movement culture at the German Sport University Cologne.

Andreas Klaeui

Born in Basel in 1960, he studied German Philology and worked as an arts editor for the Swiss broadcasting channel SRF 2. Until 2008, Andreas Klaeui was senior editor of du – Die Zeitschrift für Kultur. Since then, he has been writing reviews and reports for various media, including Neue Zürcher Zeitung, NZZ am Sonntag as well as several German daily newspapers, radio and professional publications such as nachtkritik.de and Theater heute. His areas of expertise are theatre and classical music as well as the communication of cultural events from the French-language region and their backgrounds. Andreas Klaeui lives in Zurich and Paris. He is on the board of foundation of Schweizerische Goethe-Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft (Swiss Goethe-Foundation for Art and Science) and on the board of Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Theaterkultur (Swiss Society for Theatre Culture).

Christian Rakow

Born in Rostock in 1976, he studied German Philology and Philosophy in Rostock, Sheffield and Berlin. In 2010, he obtained a doctorate in Literary Studies at the University of Münster, supervised by Prof Dr Moritz Baßler. His dissertation “Die Ökonomien des Realismus – Kulturpoetische Untersuchungen zur Literatur und Volkswirtschaftslehre 1850–1900” (The Economies of Realism – Cultural poetic investigations on literature and political economy 1850–1900) was published by DeGruyter in 2013. Christian Rakow is an editor for the online portal nachtkritik.de and a theatre critic for Theater heute and Berliner Zeitung, among others.

Shirin Sojitrawalla

Born in Freiburg/Breisgau in 1968, she studied German Philology, Political Science and Comparative Studies, followed by a traineeship with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Since 2000, she has been working as a freelance cultural journalist for various media. Her chief interest lies in theatre and literature, with excursions into the fields of visual arts and film. Currently, she mainly writes for the online portal nachtkritik.de, the newspaper taz, Theater der Zeit, Frankfurter Rundschau and the public radio channel Deutschlandfunk as well as “Wiener Zeitung. Furthermore, she organizes festivals, conducts interviews and moderates readings.

New in the Jury for the 2020 Theatertreffen

Eva Behrendt, Dorothea Marcus and Christian Rakow are finishing their work for the Theatertreffen-jury after 3 years in 2019. Cornelia Fiedler, Georg Kasch and Franz Wille are taking over their positions.

Therefore, the jury of the Theatertreffen 2020 consists of the following members: Margarete Affenzeller, Eva Behrendt, Wolfgang Höbel, Andreas Klaeui, Dorothea Marcus, Christian Rakow and Shirin Sojitrawalla.

Cornelia Fiedler

Cornelia Fiedler was born in 1978 and studied Ethnology and Cultural Journalism in Munich. She has been working as a freelance journalist and critic since 2008, writing for media like Süddeutsche Zeitung, nachtkritik.de, Theater heute and Münchner Feuilleton. She also works as a lecturer in Media and Creative Writing seminars (both at universities and as part of trade union education programmes), as a ghost writer and a moderator. She was a jury member for Körber Studio Junge Regie in Hamburg (2015) and for the Mülheimer Theatertage (2017–2019).

Georg Kasch

Georg Kasch was born in 1979 and studied Modern German Literature, Theatre Studies and Cultural Journalism in Berlin and Munich. Following a traineeship in Nürnberg, he returned to Berlin in 2010 and has since been working as an editor for nachtkritik.de. He also writes for daily newspapers like Berliner Morgenpost and magazines like Oper!, ZITTY and the Amnesty Journal and teaches at universities in Berlin, Munich and Mainz. He has been a jury member for the Brüder-Grimm-Preis and the Theaterpreis des Bundes, among others.

Franz Wille

Franz Wille was born in Munich in 1960. He studied Theatre Studies as well as German and English Philology in Munich and obtained a D.Phil. From 1982–1986, he was a dramaturg at Theater der Freien Volksbühne in Berlin (Artistic Director Kurt Hübner). He has been editor of the magazine Theater heute since 1990.