Ersan Mondtag

Ersan Mondtag is an interdisciplinary artist, particularly in the fields of visual arts, theatre and opera.
His works have been shown internationally, and he has been invited to work at venues such as the Berliner Ensemble, the Münchner Kammerspiele, MMK Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Schauspiel Köln, Thalia Hamburg, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Schauspiel Gent, the Staatsoper Hannover, the Opéra de Lyon and the Burgtheater Wien. Most recently, he has shown his works at NT Gent, the Antwerp Opera, in Lorraine, Krakow, Istanbul, Rome, Belgrade and Venice.

He has interpreted such diverse classics as “Die Orestie” at the Thalia Theater Hamburg, “Freischütz” at the Staatsoper Kassel, Antichrist at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as contemporary works, including Elfriede Jelinek’s Wut at Schauspiel Köln, Wonderland Avenue (Schauspiel Köln) and Hass-Triptychon by Sybille Berg (Wiener Festwochen and Gorki Theater Berlin), Phaedra by Thomas Jonigk at Schauspiel Köln and Das Erbe by Olga Bach at the Münchner Kammerspiele. His own plays, such as Tyrannis (Kassel State Theatre), Das Internat (Schauspiel Dortmund) and Die Vernichtung (Theater Bern), were invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen.

Source: mondtag.com

At the 2023 Berlinale, Mondtag made his debut as director of a “theatre in film”: in the film “Seneca” (directed by Robert Schwencke), he staged Seneca’s play “Tyest” with Samuel Finzi, Louis Hofmann and John Malkovich.

In 2024, he collaborated with multimedia artist Yael Bartana to design the German pavilion at the 60th Venice Art Biennale.

Mondtag has received numerous awards for both his directing and his original stage design compositions. In 2016, he was named Costume Designer, Young Director and Young Set Designer of the Year (Theater heute) for Tyrannis, in 2017 he was named Set and Costume Designer for Die Vernichtung, and in 2019 he received the 3sat Prize for Das Internat. Most recently, he received the Oper! Award for “Best Set Designer” for “Der Schmied von Gent” (The Blacksmith of Ghent), the title of “Set Designer of the Year” in the 2022 critics’ poll conducted by Deutsche Bühne, and the award for “Best European Opera Production” at France’s prestigious critics’ awards for “Der Silbersee” (The Silver Lake).

The spectrum of his work and awards testifies to Mondtag’s performative and interdisciplinary vision of theatre, which – not only since his recent intensive engagement with opera – seems to have always been nourished by the “spirit of music”. Mondtag’s works address the mechanisms of our psyche, showing victims and perpetrators of language and rationality. This results in expressionistically overwhelming visual worlds (Salome, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin), but also quiet surreal studies (De Living at NT Gent) that challenge conventional perception and make a powerful sensual political impact on rigid realities.

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