Tabori Prize 2025
This year, the Fonds Darstellende Künste was awarding the Tabori Prize for the 16th time. The prize was endowed with 100,000 euros. With this award, the Fonds Darstellende Künste honored not only an artistic position, but also the independent performing arts as another important pillar of the theater landscape alongside the diverse theater institutions and their aesthetic signatures and profiles in Germany. With this prize, the Fonds promotes the visibility and public perception of the award-winning artistic works as significant positions in the independent performing arts of their time.
The highest national award for the independent performing arts was presented on September 25, 2025, as part of “The Show Must Go ON. BUNDESTREFFEN25 of the Independen Arts” at HAU Hebbel am Ufer.
Tabori Preisträger*innen 2025
© Dorothea Tuch
pulk fiktion
The 2025 Tabori Prize of the Fonds Darstellende Künste went to pulk fiktion. The highest national award in the independent performing arts was endowed with €100,000 again this year. The jury justified this year's award as follows:
The pulk fiktion theater group has been setting standards for years with its artistic work for young audiences: formally unconventional, politically aware, aesthetically outstanding. [...] With the award, the jury is honoring a group that knows how to bring creativity and criticism, art and responsibility into productive tension. A theater that does not shy away from the present – and that gives young people a stage: as audience, co-creators and the key to the future. pulk fiktion is theater for today. And for tomorrow.
About pulk fiktion
The Award Ceremony
© Dorothea Tuch
The highest national award for the independent performing arts was presented on September 25, 2025, as part of “The Show Must Go ON. BUNDESTREFFEN25 der Freien Darstellenden Künste” (The Show Must Go ON. National Meeting 25 of the Independent Performing Arts) at HAU Hebbel am Ufer.
Jury
The award is based on the decision of a jury comprising members of the Fonds executive board and board of trustees as well as renowned experts in the field of independent performing arts. Holger Bergmann, managing director of the Fonds Darstellende Künste, acts in an advisory capacity to the jury. The jury members are Aljoscha Begrich, Amelie Deuflhard, Anne-Cathrin Lessel, Dan Thy Nguyen, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, and Anna Wagner.
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Aljoscha Begrich
Dramaturg, Curator | Berlin
© Abraham
Aljoscha Begrich
Dramaturg, Curator | BerlinHe grew up in rural East Germany before moving to Berlin in 1989. His interest in unusual forms and problems of everyday life led him to work with Rimini Protokoll since 2010. Between 2014 and 2019, he was dramaturge at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, where he was in charge of the interdisciplinary Berliner Herbstsalon. He is interested in expanded theatre and has realized projects in public space in Chisinau, Tehran and Buenos Aires, among others. Repeated collaboration with raumlaborberlin. Between 2020 and 2022 dramaturge at the Ruhrtriennale (2020-2022). Co-founder of the festival OSTEN in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, which he artistically co-directed in 2022 and 2024.
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Amelie Deuflhard
Intendant Kampnagel, Board Member of Fonds | Hamburg
© Marcelo Hernandez
Amelie Deuflhard
Intendant Kampnagel, Board Member of Fonds | HamburgAmelie Deuflhard has been the artistic director of Kampnagel, Germany’s largest independent venue for international performing arts, since 2007. Prior to that, she served as artistic director of the Sophiensæle and the Volkspalast in Berlin. Her work focuses, among other things, on the interplay between art, cultural production, and the city, as well as on issues of diversity, decolonization, and inclusion. She has transformed Kampnagel into a place of encounter that brings international artistic perspectives into continuous dialogue with activists, scholars, local artists, and diverse urban communities. Amelie Deuflhard was part of the four-member curatorial board 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 of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 2013. In 2018, she received the European Cultural Manager of the Year award, and in 2021, the Berlin Theater Prize.
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Anne-Cathrin Lessel
Artistic Director LOFFT - DAS THEATER, Board Member of Fonds | Leipzig
© Tom Dachs
Anne-Cathrin Lessel
Artistic Director LOFFT - DAS THEATER, Board Member of Fonds | LeipzigAnne-Cathrin Lessel studied theater studies, psychology, and cultural studies at the University of Leipzig. Until 2011, she worked as a freelancer on artistic projects with children and young people, primarily at the Theater an der Parkaue in Berlin.
In 2011, she became the program and production director at LOFFT – DAS THEATER, and in 2019 she took over as its artistic director and managing director.
Anne-Cathrin Lessel has been actively involved in cultural policy at various levels for many years: for 12 years she served on the board of the Bundesverbandes Freie Darstellende Künste; since 2020 she has been a board member of the Landesverband der Freien Theater in Saxony; since 2023 she has been a board member of the Fonds Darstellende Künste; and starting in 2025 she will serve on the board of the Bundesverband Zeitgenössischer Zirkus.
Among other things, she is also a member of various expert juries, including those for the City of Leipzig, the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, the German National Academic Foundation, the National Performance Network, and various festivals.
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Dan Thy Nguyen
Theater maker, director fluctoplasma festival, Studio Marshmallow | Hamburg
© Nico Scagliarini
Dan Thy Nguyen
Theater maker, director fluctoplasma festival, Studio Marshmallow | HamburgDan 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.
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Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schneider
Chairman of the Fonds Darstellende Künste
© PAP Branchentreff des LAFT Berlin Foto Mathias Voelzke
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schneider
Chairman of the Fonds Darstellende KünsteWolfgang 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).
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Anna Wagner
Artistic Director and Managing Director Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm | Frankfurt
© Maximilian von Lachner
Anna Wagner
Artistic Director and Managing Director Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm | FrankfurtAnna 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).
© pulk fiktion