Tom Kühnel

© Sebastian Hoppe

Born in Cottbus on 4 April 1971. From 1992 to 1996 studied Direction at the Ernst Busch University for Dramatic Arts in Berlin. While he was still a student, he formed a directorial team with Robert Schuster and also worked with the puppet mistress Suse Wächter. In 1994 they staged Alexander Vvedensky’s “Christmas at the Ivanovs’” in Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theatre and were awarded the Friedrich Luft Prize. One year later they were awarded the Max-Reinhardt Prize for their production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Measures Taken”.

After completing their studies, the directorial team produced plays in Berlin and at the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus. In 1998 they and the virtual author Soeren Voima started to treat classics and to write plays. From 1999 to 2002 Kühnel and Schuster were the artistic directors of Frankfurt’s Theater am Turm (TAT). Since 2000 Tom Kühnel has been producing plays on his own.
Since leaving TAT, he has worked as a director at the Berlin Schaubühne, Basel Theatre, the Deutsches Theater Berlin and, recently, Aachen Theatre, where he took his first step towards opera direction when he staged Henry Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen” together with Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.