Tobias Schuster

Born in the Ruhr region of Germany in 1983, Tobias Schuster studied theatre, politics and arts administration in Bochum and Zurich. He then took a course on curating in the dramatic arts at the University of Salzburg. From 2006 to 2009, he was engaged as an assistant dramaturge at the Schaubühne on Lehniner Platz in Berlin where he first met Falk Richter and Jan-Christoph Gockel. Tobias Schuster then worked as a freelance dramaturge including for the Schauspielhaus Graz and the Berlin theatre collective copy & waste and, in 2010, as artistic director of the German-Polish Unithea theatre festival in Frankfurt/Oder. From 2011 to 2013, he was dramaturge at the Baden State Theatre in Karlsruhe at the beginning of Peter Spuhler’s directorship, followed by head dramaturge at Theater Lübeck. From 2015 to 2020, he was head dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus in Vienna in a team with Tomas Schweigen.

He has had significant collaborations with directors including Lucia Bihler, Anna Bergmann, Felicitas Brucker, Florian Fischer, Jan-Christoph Gockel, Gernot Grünewald, Karin Henkel, Lisa Lie, Franz-Xaver Mayr, Theda Nilsson-Eicke (formerly Thomas Bo Nilsson), Falk Richter, Patrick Schlösser, Tomas Schweigen, Jette Steckel and Marco Štorman. A focus in his work is on devising plays with playwrights including Enis Maci, Thomas Köck, Falk Richter, Miroslava Svolikova and Madame Nielsen.

He has initiated and worked on several world and national premieres that have been invited to festivals including the Autor*innentheatertage in Berlin, the Mülheimer Theatertage, the Lessingtage in Hamburg, Radikal jung in Munich and the Festwochen in Vienna. He collaborated with director Florian Fischer and playwright Ewe Benbenek to conceive the play “Tragödienbastard” which was voted Best Play by the jury of the 2021 Mülheim Drama Prize. He collaborated with Felicitas Brucker on the polyphonic adaptation of Ibsen’s “Nora” with texts by Sivan Ben Yishai, Ivna Žic and Gerhild Steinbuch, which was invited to the 2023 Theatertreffen in Berlin. In the same year, he collaborated with director Karin Henkel on a participatory stage adaptation of Michael Haneke’s film “Liebe” (“Love”) for the Salzburg Festival.

He has recently published several texts on contemporary drama and has been on the jury of various literary prizes including for the Austrian Federal Chancellery, the Kleist Prize, the Hans Gratzer Scholarship, the Munich New Playwriting Award and the Retzhofer Drama Prize.

Tobias Schuster has taught and been guest lecturer including at the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the Danish National School of Performing Arts in Copenhagen. Since 2021, he has lead the “Playlist” writers’ workshop for drama and opera in Munich together with Laura Olivi. He has been part of the Münchner Kammerspiele’s artistic management team since 2020.