Portrait of Jan-Christoph Gockel
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Sandra Singh

Jan-Christoph Gockel

Jan-Christoph Gockel is a theater and film director and a member of the artistic management of the Münchner Kammerspiele. Like hardly any other director, he combines politics with poetry: in his work, puppets, actors*, film, music and documentary material meet. As in-house director, he shapes the image of the Kammerspiele as a theater that transcends national and genre borders.

He studied theatre, film and media studies in Frankfurt and directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin and worked at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Theater National Brussels. His feature films “The Revolution eats your children” (2019) and “Coltan fever” (2022) were shown at numerous festivals. From 2014 to 2020 he was resident director at the Staatstheater Mainz, from where he came to Munich. Co-productions have taken him to the African continent, where he has, among other things. showed works at the Fabrique de Fictions festivals in Lomé, Togo and Récréâtrales, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

For a long time he has been working with puppet maker and puppeteer Michael Pietsch, with whom he founded the company peaches&rooster and has so far realized five works at the Kammerspiele.