Jörg Albrecht is a writer and holds a doctorate in comparative literature. Born in Bonn, he grew up in Dortmund, lived in Vienna and Berlin, and currently resides in Münster.

He has written prose/novels, theater texts, radio plays, and essays on topics such as surveillance, precariousness, queerness, and urban development. Since 1998, he has received various literary awards and scholarships.

He has repeatedly staged his texts in performative formats. In 2007, he founded the theater collective copy & waste with Steffen Klewar, which was awarded the George Tabori Prize by the German government in 2018 for its work.

Since 2018, Albrecht has been managing director of the Annette von Droste zu Hülshoff Foundation and founding director of Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature (CfL). The CfL operates at the two Westphalian locations where the poet Droste-Hülshoff lived and worked: Burg Hülshoff in Havixbeck (Coesfeld district) and Haus Rüschhaus in Münster.

Since 2003, he has regularly served as a juror, for example for the Federal Theater Prize, the Annette von Droste-Hülshoff Prize of the LWL, and the German Publishing Prize, as well as in funding programs for literature and diversity. He is chairman of the board of the LiteraturRat NRW.

Kerstin Evert studied Applied Theater Studies in Giessen, was a doctoral student in the research training group Body Stagings at the Free University of Berlin from 1997 to 2000, and wrote her doctoral thesis on DanceLab - Contemporary Dance and New Technologies (doctorate awarded the Dance Science Prize NRW 2001). Together with Oliver Behnecke she started the production label Stadt Raum Inszenierung (e.g. festival "ZeitenWende", Gießen 2000). From 2002 to 2006 Kerstin Evert was dramaturge at Kampnagel and founded the choreographic center K3 | Tanzplan Hamburg there in August 2006, which she has directed ever since. As a lecturer, she has taught in Berlin, Bern, Gießen, Hamburg, Frankfurt/Main and Salzburg, among other places, and was part of the co-leading teams of the artistic-scientific research training groups "Assembly and Participation" (HCU, Fundus, K3) and "Performing Citizenship" (HCU, HAW, Fundus, K3). She is a member of various juries and advisory boards, since 2017 on the board and since 2021 co-president of the European Dancehouse Network.

Thomas Frank has been working for 25 years in institutions that produce contemporary performing arts in an international context. Since November 2025, he has been senior dramaturg at the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen in Hanover. Prior to that, from 2016 to October 2025, he was artistic director of the residency program for independent theater, dance, and performance groups from Europe at the Schauspiel Leipzig. From 2015 to 2017, he was also engaged as a freelance curator at the VabaLava Theater in Tallinn, Estonia. In 2007, Thomas Frank and Haiko Pfost founded brut Wien as an international co-production house for interdisciplinary performing arts, which he managed with artistic and executive responsibility until 2015. From 2005 to 2007, he was program dramaturg at the Sophiensaele in Berlin, and from 2000 to 2005, he was assistant artistic director and dramaturg at the Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt am Main. He studied theater studies and communication and media studies in Leipzig and Glasgow. He has been a lecturer in dramaturgy at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theater in Leipzig since 2018.

Maximilian Grafe has been co-director of the Network of Independent Theaters (NFT) since 2022, coordinating the work of this nationwide network of production houses and independent theaters. At the same time, since January 2025, he has been setting up the “Menschen machen Kultur” (People Make Culture) program for the Lausitz region, which promotes civil society participation in art and culture in the process of structural change in Brandenburg's Lausitz region.

Previously, he was interim deputy director of the Halle Opera for the 2020/21 season and was active in various contexts in the performing arts. After studying theater studies at the University of Leipzig, he worked as artistic production manager and dramaturg at the Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, the Schauspiel Leipzig, the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau, and the Halle Opera, among others, and was also active for ITI Germany, the Mülheim Theater Days, and the Saxon Theater Meeting.

Anica Happich, born and raised in Klein Oschersleben (Saxony-Anhalt), is a cultural worker who is active in publicly funded theaters, the independent scene, and the film industry. In 2021, she initiated the PHOENIX Theater Festival. There, she promotes young artists, actively conducts audience research, and stages performances throughout the city using mobile stages and other artistic formats. For the festival, she developed the radical K's – radical cooperation, co-creation, and collaboration. With this maxim, she promotes interdisciplinary approaches and resource sharing. In 2024, she and the Plattenstufen-Festspiele team received the KULTUR GESTALTEN Future Prize from the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft e.V. 
At the beginning of the 2026/2027 season, Anica Happich will take over the drama department at the Staatstheater Cottbus together with Timofej Kuljabin.

Mirjam Hesse is a freelance puppeteer and figure designer. She studied figure theater at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts until 2010 and was a guest student at the Accademia Dimitri - L'accademia del Physical Theatre, CH. In 2011 she founded the Theater Miamou (touring theater) and since then has been developing her own productions, mainly children's plays, with which she can be seen in numerous cities in Germany as well as internationally. Regular venues include Berlin, Braunschweig, Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Saarbrücken, Lübeck, Lingen, Winterthur (CH). Guest performances at numerous festivals including Wies (A), Stamsund (NOR), Moscow (RUS), Dublin (IRL).

Her performance style combines various figure techniques and materials/objects, whereby the choreographic formulation of the movements (her own as well as those of the figures/objects) plays a central role. The productions are characterized by a calm, clear and poetic visual language.

Barbara Kastner studied theater and communication studies in Berlin as well as scenic arts and Brazilian history in Campinas, Brazil. She was subsequently employed at the Theaterhaus Jena, then at the Städtische Bühnen Münster. From 2004 to 2008, she worked as a freelance dramaturge and production manager (productions at Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, Artheater Köln, Roxy Basel, Theaterhaus Hildesheim, Theater unterm Dach Berlin, T-Werk Potsdam, Divadlo z Pasaze/Slovakia, among others). From 2008 to 2011 she was dramaturge at Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Berlin (directed by Shermin Langhoff), then at Theater Krefeld and Mönchengladbach. From 2016 to 2020, she was responsible for artistic direction and dramaturgy at Theater dasvinzenz in Munich, as well as production manager for RODEO 2020 and for independent productions as a dramaturge (including Theater der Keller Köln; Rosa - Trotz alledem: Theater unterm Dach, directed by Anja Panse; XX-Tanztheater/ Bibiana Jiménez) and held various teaching positions (including at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, cultural funding). Since 2020, she has headed the cultural office of the city of Lünen with the Heinz-Hilpert-Theater.

She studied scenic arts at the University of Hildesheim and at the Università di Bologna, Italy, and worked as a dramaturge for drama and puppet theater at the Bühnen Halle as well as a freelance theater maker in various projects with young people, including for the Goethe Institute in sub-Saharan Africa and the UNART performance festival. She is also involved in various expert juries, e.g. for the allocation of state funds in the field of independent performing arts in Saxony-Anhalt and the NEUSTART KULTUR - Junges Publikum (ASSITEJ) funding program. Since 2023, Skadi Konietzka has been on the board of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft (BAG) Spiel & Theater.

Sabine Kuhfuss studied education, sociology and cultural management in Bielefeld and Hannover. After assisting the team leader of the cultural department of the city of Detmold and co-directing the festival for performing arts in public space "Bildstörung" from 2010 to 2018, she has been the technical-artistic director of the KulturTeam of the city of Detmold and artistic director of the festival "Bildstörung" since 2019. She is interested in the effects and perspectives of performing arts as well as interdisciplinary formats in public space, especially their relevance for municipal culture.

Since 2014, she has been an associate member of the European network for the promotion and development of artistic creations in public space In Situ. As a board member of the Bundesverband Theater im öffentlichen Raum e.V., she is committed to the development and promotion of the genre.

Director of the Academy for Theater and Digitality, the sixth division of Theater Dortmund, newly founded in 2019.

As artistic director of the Dortmund Academy, he is in demand locally, nationally, and internationally for lectures and discussions; one of his main concerns is the formation and promotion of a wide variety of networks for the performing arts, as well as the communication of artistic research in correspondence with the latest technologies to theater and educational institutions, politicians, and audiences.

Since 1995, he has worked as a director, set designer, and author in music and spoken theater, and since 2014 he has also been regularly invited as a guest lecturer to various renowned colleges and universities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Julia-Huda Nahas initially trained as an advertising manager and worked for several years as a project manager, marketing and sales manager in the private sector. In 2011, she decided to change course and study cultural education at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, which she completed in 2015 with a bachelor's thesis on inclusive theater as part of the EU project “kunst verbind(e)t”. In addition to realizing independent productions and projects, she works for municipal and independent theatres. In addition, there are always thematically focused projects, such as the scenic reading “Heller Schatten”, a commissioned work on the occasion of the inauguration of the Nazi memorial in Neandertal. In 2020-2023, Julia-Huda Nahas led the project BITTER (SWEET) HOME, which she initiated with a focus on the promotion of BI*POC artists, anti-racist narratives and collaborative writing. In addition to her intensive networking work (theaterautor*innen-netzwerk, VThea, ASSITEJ), she is regularly represented on juries. She is currently a member of the jury for the German Federal Children's and Youth Theater Prize.

Dan Thy Nguyen is a freelance theater director, actor, writer and singer in Hamburg. He has worked on various productions at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Mousonturm Frankfurt, Kampnagel, MDR and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, among others. In 2014 he developed and produced the play "Sonnenblumenhaus" about the pogrom of Rostock -Lichtenhagen, which won the "Hörnixe" in 2015 in its radio play version and is still played at various institutions. Since 2020, he has directed the Hamburg festival "fluctoplasma - 96h Kunst Diskurs Diversität" with his production company Studio Marshmallow and he is deputy board member of the LAG Kinder- und Jugendkultur Hamburg. In 2021, together with the entire ensemble, he received the German Radio Play Award for his acting performance. In 2022 he published, among other things, his first volume of poetry "Über Wasser und Tote" and co-curated the exhibition "Wer wir sind" at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn in 2023.

Elena Philipp is an editor at nachtkritik.de and works as a presenter and freelance cultural journalist for publications including Freitag and Berliner Morgenpost. Since 2018, she has co-hosted the theater podcast with Susanne Burkhardt (Deutschlandfunk Kultur); in 2020, the duo held a guest lectureship in literary criticism at the University of Göttingen. In 2021, Elena Philipp was co-curator of the conference “Theater & Netz” and co-editor of the anthology “Theater und Macht” (Heinrich Böll Foundation & nachtkritik.de). She is a member of various juries and an occasional lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. In 2023, she and her colleagues received the Bernd Mand Prize for Cultural Journalism for the online event series “Play Time – Stream und Diskurs junges Theater” (Play Time – Stream and Discourse on Young Theater).

Theresa Schütz has been working as a research associate at the interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Center “Affective Societies. Dynamics of Coexistence in Moving Worlds” at the FU Berlin. As part of this, she completed her doctorate in 2021 on strategies of audience involvement in immersive theater (“Theater der Vereinnahmung”, Berlin 2022); further focal points in research and teaching are artist collectives in the past and present, dis_ability aesthetics and institutional change in the arts and cultural institutions. She studied cultural and media management at the University of Music and Theater in Hamburg. In the summer semester of 2024, she taught as a visiting professor of philosophy at the Folkwang University of the Arts. 
Since 2013 she has regularly published theater and performance reviews, mainly for Theater der Zeit and nachtkritik; jury activities for NEUSTART KULTUR programs, Theaterpreis des Bundes and Preis der jungen Dramatik. 

Anna Wagner has been the artistic director and managing director of Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt together with Marcus Droß since September 2022. After studying theater, she worked as assistant dance curator at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and directed the dance department at Theater Freiburg, which she transformed from an ensemble company into a production platform for independent choreographers and dancers. In 2014, she moved to Frankfurt's Mousonturm as dramaturg. There she established ongoing working relationships with dance, theater and performance creators from the national and international independent scene such as Paula Rosolen, Eisa Jocson, Helgard Haug/ Rimini Protokoll, Jetse Batelaan and Eisa Jocson among others. She is also co-founder of Tanzplattform Rhein-Main and developed numerous special projects and festivals such as "Indonesia LAB" (2015) "Oper Offenbach" (2018) and "This is Not Lebanon" (2021).

Julian Warner is a German-British artist and curator. He was artistic director of the Brecht Festival Augsburg from 2023 to 2025 and was responsible for the Festival of the Stuttgart Cultural Region in 2022. Prior to that, he designed festivals and spectacles for the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, the Münchner Kammerspiele, and many others. He has long-standing working relationships with conceptual artist Anta Helena Recke, choreographer Joana Tischkau, theater maker Oliver Zahn, and musician Markus Acher. He is the editor of an anthology on problems of postcolonial criticism in Germany, After Europe. Beiträge zur dekolonialen Kritik (Verbrecher Verlag, 2021) and has been training as a group analyst at the Seminar für Gruppenanalyse Zürich (SGAZ) since 2018. In the summer of 2025, he received a call to the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts (HMDK).

Janne Weirup works as a freelance dramaturge, festival organizer, and production manager and lives in Hamburg. After studying theater studies in Leipzig, she was part of the management team at the Figurentheaterzentrum Westflügel Leipzig until 2018. She works with independent groups as a dramaturge at the interface with directing, focusing on contemporary puppet theater. Her collaborations include Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel, Lehmann und Wenzel, flunker produktionen, Gyula Molnár, Christoph Bochdansky, Stefanie Oberhoff, and Cora Sachs. Since 2013, she has been part of the artistic direction and production management of the at.tension Theater Festival, organized by Kulturkosmos Müritz e.V. in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. As a freelance production manager, she has worked in Hamburg for the Hauptsache Frei Festival, as well as for festivals (Nordwind, 2019 / Fokus Tanz 2021) and productions (Markt für nützliches Wissen und Nicht-Wissen, 2021 in collaboration with the Mobile Academy Berlin – Hannah Hurtzig) at the international cultural factory Kampnagel. In November 2023, she took over the management and artistic direction of Flachsland - Hamburger Puppentheater.

Franziska Werner is a dramaturge and curator and has been Artistic Director of the Impulse Festival in NRW since September 2024.  From 2011 to summer 2023, she was Artistic Director of Sophiensaele Berlin. 
Her curatorial interests include questions of work ethics and accessibility, the link between humor and queer feminism, performativity and everyday life, body politics and how origins shape artistic work. She has a special interest in so-called East German themes, because these always contain pan-German and international discourses as well as global issues and systemic questions.
She has been or is active in various juries and committees, including the Berlin Council for the Arts, the advisory board of the Goethe-Institut's theater/dance department, as a mentor for the PAP of LAFT Berlin e.V. or in the mentoring program “Women in Culture & Media” of the German Cultural Council.
She was born in East Berlin in 1975, grew up in Weimar and studied Theater Studies/Cultural Communication, Art History and European Ethnology at Humboldt University Berlin (M.A.) and Études Théâtrales at the Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris.

Silvia Werner studied English (M.A.) and Finnish (B.A.) with a focus on literary studies at the University of Cologne. As a cultural manager, she has spent many years working primarily in the field of contemporary dance in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and internationally, accompanying productions and collaborating with artists. This work was complemented by teaching assignments at both the University of Cologne and the Center for Contemporary Dance (ZZT) in Cologne. From 2021 to 2026, she headed the FESTIVALFRIENDS network based in Dortmund, which aims to promote nationwide, supraregional networking among festival organizers and artists.

Since 2026, Silvia Werner has been the director of Europe Direct Dortmund, one of over 400 centers in the European Union that provides education on European policy at the interface between civil society and the EU.

Melanie Zimmermann worked in film and television before studying cultural and dance studies in Frankfurt/Oder and Paris. She worked for the Forsythe Company and studied dramaturgy with Hans-Thies Lehmann in Frankfurt/Main and Brussels. In 2010 she was a danceWEB scholarship holder. As a freelance dance and theater dramaturge, she has worked for Wanda Golonka, Peeping Tom and Laurent Chétouane, among others, and was project manager of the collective MAMAZA. From 2010 to 2023, she worked as a dance dramaturge and curator at Kampnagel in Hamburg, where she was jointly responsible for the local and international dance program and several major dance events such as the Dance Platform 2014 or the Biennale Tanzausbildung 2020. In her networking work, she primarily supported artists with disabilities and representatives of Black Dance Culture. In 2021, she co-founded the Bottom Up Dance School, an inclusive artistic school project. In 2023/2024, she was co-project manager of “Juste Debout”, which was presented for the first time in Hamburg and broadcast by ARTE. 
Since 2023, she has been the artistic director of the international Real Dance Festival in Hanover.

Wolfgang Schneider was founding director of the Institute for Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim and holder of the UNESCO Chair "Cultural Policy for the Arts in Development" (2014 - 2020). He was the first director of the Children's and Young People's Theater Center in the Federal Republic of Germany, chairman of the Lower Saxony Theater Advisory Board, member of the Goethe-Institut's Dance and Theater Advisory Board and, as an expert member of the German Bundestag's Enquete Commission "Culture in Germany," rapporteur for the chapter on theater, among other things. He is chairman of the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V., a personal member of the German UNESCO Commission, a trusted lecturer of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a member of the federal board of the Cultural Forum of Social Democracy, a member of the board of the Initiative for the Archives of Independent Theater e.V., a member of the International Theater Institute, a member of the Council for Performing Arts and Dance in the German Cultural Council, an honorary member of ASSITEJ Germany and Switzerland, and honorary president of the International Association of Theater for Children and Young People. In 2018, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class by the German President for his honorary international commitment. Numerous publications on theater policy, editor of, among others, "Theater und Schule. Handbuch zur kulturellen Bildung" (2009), " Theater und Migration. Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis" (2011), "Theater entwickeln und planen. Kulturpolitische Konzeptionen zur Reform der Darstellenden Künste" (2014), "Theatermachen als Beruf. Hildesheimer Wege" (together with Julia Speckmann, 2017); ""Partizipation als Programm. Wege ins Theater für Kinder und Jugendliche" (together with Anna Eitzeroth, 2017); "Performing the Archive. Studie zur Entwicklung eines Archivs des Freien Theaters" (together with Henning Fülle and Christine Henniger, 2018), "Theater in der Provinz. Künstlerische Vielfalt und kulturelle Teilhabe als Programm" (with Katharina Schröck and Silvia Stolz, 2019); "Theater in Transformation. Artistic Processes and Cultural Policy in South Africa" (with Lance Lebogang Nawa, 2019).

Amelie Deuflhard was artistic director of Sophiensæle (Berlin) from 2000 to 2007. In 2004/05 she was part of the artistic direction of "Volkspalast", a festival-like performance of the deconstructed Palast der Republik. Since 2007 she has been artistic director of Kampnagel (Hamburg), Europe's largest production center for the independent performing arts. With EcoFavela Lampedusa Nord, she initiated a living and action space for refugees in 2014. The project has found its extension at Kampnagel in the award-winning encounter space Migrantpolitan. Amelie Deuflhard was part of the curatorship of four of Theater der Welt 2017. She is the author of numerous publications and regularly holds teaching positions at universities. For her work, she was awarded the Caroline Neuber Prize in 2012 and the Insignia des Chevaliers des Arts et Lettres in 2013. In 2018, she received the European Cultural Manager of the Year award.

Anne-Cathrin Lessel, born in 1987, studied theater, psychology and cultural studies at the University of Leipzig. Until 2011, she worked as a freelancer in artistic projects with children and young people, primarily at the Theater an der Parkaue Berlin. From 2011, program and production manager at LOFFT - DAS THEATER, whose artistic direction and management she took over in 2019. Since 2013 she has been a board member of the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste and since 2020 a board member of the Landesverband der Freien Theater in Sachsen. For many years she has been a member of various professional juries, including those of the City of Leipzig, the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, the German National Academic Foundation, the National Performance Network and the Fonds Darstellende Künste.

Holger Bergmann is a curator, mentor and, as managing director, heads the Fonds Darstellende Künste; he lives in Berlin. He was born in the Ruhr region in 1965. After graduating from a technical school for social pedagogy and working in so-called social hotspots, he studied theater at the Ruhr University in Bochum from 1990 to 1995. Founding member and from 2002 to 2014 artistic director of the theater production house Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, which under his direction became known for contemporary performing arts and urban, participatory projects. Own productions at independent theaters and numerous projects with artists and artist collectives of independent theater, often in collaboration with municipal theaters or international festivals. Publications at the Université de Luxembourg, among others. Cultural Capital Representative of the City of Mülheim and curator with a focus on urban space projects in the field of SOCIAL URBAN ART. Artistic director of the theater festival FAVORITEN 2016 in Dortmund. Member of boards of trustees and juries, among others, for the Theaterpreis des Bundes in 2015 and 2017 in the framework of the European Capital of Culture Aarhus (DK). In January 2016 Holger Bergmann took over the management of the Fonds Darstellende Künste in Berlin. In 2016 and 2017 he curated city projects in Dortmund, Duisburg and Bochum. Mentor for the thematic field of interculture for the Capital of Culture application RUHR2010, consultant for theater houses as well as individual management staff and member of the advisory board for the application of the city of Nuremberg for the European Capital of Culture 2025. In mid-2017, he co-founded the cultural-politically engaged association DIE VIELEN. Between 2018 and 2025, he was a member of the board of the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft (Cultural Policy Society). Since 2021, he has been a member of the Council for Performing Arts and Dance of the German Cultural Council.