In January 1999 the Theater an der Ruhr was the first European ensemble since the 1979 Islamic Revolution to participate in the Fadjr International Theatre Festival in Tehran, and it has been a regular guest there ever since. In return, Iranian groups have been invited to Mülheim. With his diplomatic skills, Ciulli had worked towards this exchange for many years; and as there has not been an official cultural agreement between Iran and Germany since 1987, he concluded an agreement of his own with the competent authorities - and thus opened the doors for other western companies. The high point of this cultural exchange came in 2002 with his production of García Lorca’s dark female tragedy “The House of Bernada Alba” that he developed in Tehran with Iranian actresses in the Persian language. The Frankfurter Rundschau found an “existential and political urgency” in this production, which could also be seen in Germany.
For the cosmopolitan Ciulli, theatre is political per se, it is a place for dialogue and an instrument for changing the world. The local vision of a national or municipal theatre has always seemed too restrictive for him because he thinks globally. His theatre comes from a dissatisfaction, “a dissatisfaction with social conditions and a world that is not as it should be.” Enthused by this spirit, for years Ciulli has been pursuing his “Silk Road Project”: with his theatre he travels from Turkey to China through all of the countries on the old trading route and, in return, invites groups from these countries to Mülheim.
Because the historic Silk Road also led through Iraq, in 2002 Ciulli’s theatre guested in Baghdad in 2002 in spite of all the criticism (Saddam Hussein was still in power) – as the first and only western ensemble –, it showed “Antigone” and Handke’s “Kaspar”, “The Little Prince” by Saint-Exupéry and Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera”. Ciulli disregards political embargos: “Because it is a crime to isolate a people culturally.”
As early as 1987 Ciulli started close cooperation with the Turkish State Theatre, resulting in a joint production with the director Müge Gürman: “The House of Bernada Alba” with eight male Turkish actors in the Turkish language. In 1995 Ciulli presented a multi-lingual production of Brecht’s “Jungle of Cities”, involving actors from various cultures. In January 1991 Lorca’s “Blood Wedding” was the first Mülheim production of the Roma Pralipe Theatre, which Ciulli integrated into his theatre.
Not just artistically, but also from its organisational structure, Theater an der Ruhr, which is a limited company, is an alternative model to conventional municipal theatre. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung once called it “the most unusual non-municipal theatre in the Republic: half strolling Land players, half permanent independent group”.
As a director, Roberto Ciulli is convinced that theatre is an autonomous art with the actor at the centre. His productions come about with long rehearsal times in the “work in progress” method. The plays are almost never played in the original, but developed in improvisational work and an exchange of experiences with the actors. Ciulli's productions are never “finished” at the premiere, they are like journeys themselves: adventure trips into the imagery worlds of this thinking director and his strong actors, who he sees as “co-authors”.
Occasionally, Ciulli appears as an actor himself, most recently in Jean Genet’s celebration of death “The Screens”. He guided the audience through the scenes as a master of ceremonies, that he arranged like the snaps in a photo album with “a lightness of death and grimness of life” (Süddeutsche Zeitung): memorial and mourning with the means of beauty and art.
