Christoph Marthaler

© David Baltzer

Born in 1951 in Erlenbach near Zurich. Studied music in Zurich and mime training under Jacques Lecoq in Paris. In the 1970s and 1980s he was employed as a theatre musician at various German-speaking stages and developed his first small music theatre projects in Switzerland. Frank Baumbauer then brought him to Basel Theatre in 1989 where he gave his first song evenings and presented his first productions. There, met the set designer Anna Viebrock and the literary manager Stefanie Carp, with whom he has formed a production team ever since.

From 1993 onwards various directorial work as in-house director at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg under the management of Frank Baumbauer and under Frank Castorf at the Berliner Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. From 1994 also opera projects with the conductor Sylvain Cambreling in Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna and Salzburg.

In 1996 he was awarded the Konrad Wolf Prize, in 1997 together with Anna Viebrock the Bavarian Theatre Prize and the Fritz Kortner Prize and, in 1998, the Europe Prize in Taormina. In 1997 and 1999 he was voted director of the year in the critics’ survey of “Theater heute”.

In 2001 he became the manager at the Zurich Schauspielhaus, which he left prematurely in 2004 after political disagreements. In 2004 he was awarded the Berlin Theatre Prize together with Anna Viebrock.

In 2011 Christoph Marthaler was honoured with the most important prize in Switzerland for theatre makers, the Hans-Reinhart-Ring.