Stephan Kimmig
Born in Stuttgart in 1959, Stephan Kimmig trained as an actor at the New Munich Theatre School. From 1988 to 1996 Kimmig lived in Amsterdam and worked as a freelance director in Dutch and Belgian fringe theatre. From 1996 to 1998 he was Resident Director at Theater Heidelberg, from 1998 to 2000 at Stuttgart State Theatre, from 2000 to 2009 at the Thalia Theater Hamburg and from 2009 to 2016 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. He also directed at venues including Schauspiel Frankfurt, the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Vienna Burgtheater and Schauspielhaus Zürich.
His productions of «Thyestes – Curse of the Atrides» by Hugo Claus after Seneca (2002, Stuttgart State Theatre), «A Doll’s House» by Henrik Ibsen (2003, Thalia Theater Hamburg), Schiller’s «Maria Stuart» (2008, Thalia Theater Hamburg) and Dennis Kelly’s «Love and Money» (2010, Thalia Theater Hamburg) were invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. In 2004 he was awarded the Vienna Theatre Prize NESTROY as Best Director for Grillparzer’s «The Golden Fleece» (Vienna Burgtheater). In 2007 «Maria Stuart» was awarded both the Rolf Mares Prize and the FAUST Theatre Prize. In 2011 he was awarded the FAUST Theatre Prize as Best Director for Gorky’s «Children of the Sun» (Deutsches Theater Berlin). He made his opera debut in 2009 with Mozart’s «Don Giovanni» at the Bayerische Staatsoper. His most recent productions were for Stuttgart State Theatre, Theater Bremen, the Deutsches Theater Berlin and Theater Basel.
Productions
The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta is just around the corner. But first Theseus has to help his friend Egeus. His daughter Hermia has fallen in love with the wrong man, Lysander. In order to change Hermia's mind, an effective threat is set up. The lovers have only one choice: to flee into the darkness of a dreamy June night. And here, in the pale glow of the wild setting, reality and reason are transformed into sexual desire and animal lust. «A Midsummer Night's Dream» is not only William Shakespeare's best-known comedy, but also perhaps his most abysmal. Stephan Kimmig stages the creatures from Shakespeare's famous fairy world as real-life eccentrics. Weird, unconventional and dazzling, they radically question what is considered normal.
Ein Sommernachtstraum (A Midsummer Night's Dream)