Christoph Lepschy is a dramaturge and professor of dramaturgy. Born in 1967, he studied literature and theatre at the University of Munich and Trinity College, Dublin. He has worked as puppeteer and, since 1989, as the artistic director of an international puppet theater festival in Augsburg, Munich, and Magdeburg. Since 1996 he has acted as a dramaturge at several municipal and state theaters, including the Schauburg, Theater Freiburg, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Staatsschauspiel Stuttgart, Theater Basel, and Salzburg Festival. In 2009, he and Beijing director Cao Kefei co-curated a Chinese-German festival for contemporary playwriting in Düsseldorf and Beijing, and he has since been involved in Chinese theater. He has collaborated with the Beijing Paper Tiger Theatre Studio since 2012.

In 2004 he began teaching contemporary drama at the University of Freiburg, and in 2009 he was appointed professor of dramaturgy at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg (Thomas Bernhard Institut). He has delivered lectures at theater academies in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, as well as at universities in Düsseldorf, Freiburg, Trier, Munich, Berlin, and Tel Aviv.

Jeroen Versteele

Born in 1980 in Leuven, Belgium, Jeroen Versteele has studied linguistics, literature, and transmedia. From 2005-2010 he worked as a dramaturge at NTGent, the city theater of Ghent, Belgium. During this period, he also was a journalist for the newspaper De Morgen and for the art magazines Etcetera and Theatermaker. In 2010 he became a dramaturge at the Munich Kammerspiele. Since then he has worked with international directors and choreographers such as Meg Stuart, Luk Perceval, Johan Simons, Susanne Kennedy, Kristian Smeds, and Alvis Hermanis.

Tian Gebing

Tian Gebing was born in Shaanxi province and graduated from the Central Academy of Drama. He has been involved in Beijing independent theater since the late 1980s, and in 1997 he founded the Beijing Paper Tiger Theater Studio. Since 1998 Tian has made a series of theatrical pieces inspired by contemporary China, using humor and cruelty to disturb and provoke official, classic, and commercial theater. Starting with his early works, Tian has blended elements of visual art with theatrical and non-theatrical scenes alike, combining complexly wrought scripts with improvisation and non-professional performance. As an independent dramaturge, director, writer, and curator, he has performed in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Berlin, Antwerp, and Zurich. Currently, Tian and his team from the Beijing Paper Tiger Theater Studio are touring six cities in the Netherlands with his work Reading. He will later be in Munich to rehearse his large-scale theatrical research project The Masses: Totally Happy at the Munich Kammerspiele.

Beijing Paper Tiger Theater Studio

The Goethe-Institut China