Armin Petras

© David Baltzer

Born in Meschede in the Sauerland in 1964. In 1969 he moved to the GDR with his parents. Grew up in East Berlin. 1985-1987 studied Direction at the Ernst Busch University for Dramatic Arts in Berlin; co-founder of the independent theatre group Medea Ost. In 1987 he produced Heiner Müller’s “Wolokolamsker Chaussee 1-3” at Nordhausen Theatre. In 1988 he left the GDR and moved over to West Berlin.

Assistant director at Frankfurt’s Theater am Turm (TAT) and at the Munich Kammerspiele. After the Berlin Wall came down he produced plays at western and eastern German theatres: Kleist Theatre Frankfurt/Oder, Chemnitz Theatre, Freie Kammerspiele Magdeburg, Schauspiel Leipzig, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Volkstheater Rostock, Berliner Ensemble, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, Schauspiel Hanover, Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel Munich.

1996-1999 Senior Play Director at Nordhausen Theatre and in-house director in Leipzig. 1999-2002 Director of Acting at Staatstheater Kassel. In 2002 he moved to Schauspiel Frankfurt as full-time director, where he has managed the venue in Schmidtstraße since the 2003/2004 season. In addition, he also produces plays at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg and at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.

Armin Petras also works as a writer under the pseudonym Fritz Kater. For his play “time to live, time to die” he was awarded the Mülheim Dramatists’ Prize in 2003 and in the annual survey of the journal Theater heute voted him “Dramatist of the Year”. Petras’s production of this play, and the premiere of his play “We are camera/Jasonmaterial” (2003), were invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen.
From the season 2006/2007 onwards Petras will be manager of the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin.