Bettina Masuch studied theater studies in Giessen. After working as a dramaturg at the Kaaitheater in Brussels and the Theaterhaus Jena, she moved to the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin in 1998, where she worked as a dramaturg for productions by Frank Castorf, Christoph Schlingensief and René Pollesch, among others. In 2002 and 2003 she was production dramaturge for the choreographer Meg Stuart at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. From 2003 to 2008, Bettina Masuch worked as a dance curator for Berlin's Theater Hebbel am Ufer. Until 2008, she was a member of the artistic direction of the renowned dance festival "Tanz im August" and was also responsible for its 25th anniversary edition in 2013. She was artistic director of the Springdance Festival in Utrecht from 2009 to 2013. From January 2014, Bettina Masuch was artistic director of tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf, which was awarded the "Theaterpreis des Bundes" under her directorship in 2017. She is the editor and author of various specialist publications and holds teaching positions at national and international universities. Bettina Masuch is a member of various juries and expert commissions, including the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the Fonds Darstellende Künste and the Goethe-Institut. She has been Artistic Director of the Festspielhaus St. Pölten since fall 2022.

Haiko Pfost (*1972 in the Black Forest) is a trained industrial clerk and studied theater and religious studies as well as psychology in Berlin. He worked as a festival dramaturge at the Theaterformen festival in Braunschweig and Hanover (2003/04), at steirischer herbst in Graz (2005-2006), at the International Schiller Days in Mannheim (2007 and 2009), and in 2010/11 as a member of the program jury of the Politik im Freien Theater festival. In 2004/05 he was director of the opening, dramaturg and curator of the Volkspalast, the cultural interim use of the Palast der Republik in Berlin. Together with Thomas Frank he founded brut - Koproduktionshaus Wien in 2007 and directed the house until 2013. In 2009 they received the Nestroy Special Award for the best program. From 2014 to 2017 he worked as a freelance curator, dramaturg, lecturer and consultant, including as director of the three-year workshop and development program The Autonomous Actor (2015-2018) in Finland. He was a jury member for bestOFFstyria, Performancepreis H13 as well as Hauptsache Frei and teaches at A!DRAMA - applied dramaturgy in music and performing arts in Vienna. For the festival editions 2018 to 2023 Haiko Pfost is artistic director of the Impulse Theater Festival.

Martin Jörg Schäfer has been teaching theater research at the University of Hamburg since 2014. He is currently researching processually and collaboratively generated text forms in contemporary theater and performance, as well as theater and performance manuscripts in the sign of digitalization. 2014-2021 Co-director of the MA Performance Studies at the University of Hamburg. 2014 Co-organizer of the geheimagentur-initiated congress "The Art of Being Many" at Kampnagel. Since 2015 co-curator of the "DachSalon" series of talks on theater and politics at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus. For the seasons 2016/17 to 2019/20 member of the jury of the Hamburg Authority for Culture and Media for the funding of projects of the independent performing arts in the field of spoken theater/music theater/performance as well as in the overarching promotion of new talent and concepts. 2017 Leadership team of the annual conference of Performance Studies international "OverFlow" at Kampnagel as part of "Theater der Welt". Since 2020 member of the jury for the Start Off Prize of the Lichthof Theater and the Hamburg Kulturstiftung.

Ella Steinmann studied philosophy and religious studies in Bochum. After working as a project officer in the field of cultural education at Stiftung Mercator in Essen, she moved in 2016 to the Zukunftsakademie NRW, an association for diversity in art, culture, and cultural education. In addition to advising and accompanying cultural institutions, she designed further education and exchange formats there. In the Master Scenic Research in Bochum, she is working on the possibilities of knowledge acquisition through performative art forms. Since July 2019, she is one of the two agents for diversity development within the program "360° - Fonds für Kulturen der neuen Stadtgesellschaft" of the German Federal Cultural Foundation at Theater Oberhausen.

Felizitas Stilleke is a freelance dramaturg, artist and curator. She directs conferences, such as the B.A.L.L. - Bundesweites Artist Labor of the Labore 2022, the Branchentreff 2019-2021, the Bundesforum 2017 or the RATSCHLAG DER VIELEN 2019, and takes over festival dramaturgies (Berliner Theatertreffen 2018, Impulse Theaterfestivals 2017 (under Florian Malzacher) or together with Johanna Yasirra Kluhs the theater festival FAVORITEN 2014) and is on the road as a production dramaturg in NRW, Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich. She completed her Bachelor of German Studies/Education in Bochum and a Master in Cultural Poetics at the Wilhelms University in Münster. In 2018/19, she studied "Expanded Curation" as part of the international master's program at DAS theatre in Amsterdam. In 2020, she launched a series of podcast sessions at Ballhaus Ost titled "The Mother in Me is the Mother in You," in which she subjects the topic of not-yet/not-more/maybe/maternity to a collective rededication of discourse.

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.