Armin Petras / Thomas Lawinky

Armin Petras:
Armin Petras was born in 1962 in Meschede, but moved to the GDR with his parents in 1969. From 1985 to 1987, he studied directing at the Ernst Busch University for Dramatic Arts in Berlin. In 1987, he directed WOLOKOLAMSKER CHAUSSEE 1-3 (The Road to the Tanks) by Heiner Müller in Nordhausen. In 1988, he left the GDR for the Federal Republic of Germany. He has directed productions at the Munich Kammerspiele, the TaT in Frankfurt/Main, the Kleist-Theater in Frankfurt/Oder, Chemnitz, Magdeburg, Leipzig, Mannheim, Rostock, the Berliner Ensemble, the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, the Schauspiel Hannover, the Munich Residenztheater and the Thalia Theater. He was senior director of drama in Nordhausen from 1996 to 1999 and director of drama at the Staatstheater Kassel from 1999 to 2001. Between 2001 and 2006, Petras held a permanent position as a director and member of the management team at the Schauspiel Frankfurt. Since the 2006/07 season, he has been the artistic director at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater in Berlin.



Thomas Lawinky:
Thomas Lawinky was born in 1964 in Magdeburg in the former GDR. After a failed attempt to escape to the West at the age of 14, he worked, among other things, as a construction worker specialising in the assembly of prefabricated buildings and trained as an anti-aircraft missile operator. Between 1988 and 1992, Thomas Lawinky studied at the Konrad Wolf Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. He has worked at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, the Schauspiel Frankfurt, the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and many other theatres, appeared in various television series and featured in television and cinema films. Thomas Lawinky lives in Brandenburg and Berlin.