Ina Karr

In summer 2021 Ina Karr took over the directorship of the Lucerne Theatre, opening her tenure with the Swiss premiere of Mauricio Kagel’s Staatstheater in a production directed by Lydia Steier. Her work focusses especially on the promotion of contemporary pieces, and on the development of new formats in all areas of theatre.

Ina Karr studied musicology and German studies at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, and school music at the Freiburg University of Music. During the course of her studies she worked as a reviewer and author for daily newspapers and for specialist journals, and as a research assistant at the Freiburg University. She subsequently worked as a dramaturg for contemporary music and music theatre for the ECLAT new music festival in Stuttgart, and as managing director of Ensemble Aventure. From 2002 to 2005 she was a dramaturg at the Mannheim National Theatre in Mannheim, going on to work at the Oldenburg State Theatre, where until 2014 she was director of opera.

From 2014 to 2020 Ina Karr was chief dramaturg in the opera department of Mainz State Theatre, where she continued her longstanding working relationships with directors such as Elisabeth Stöppler and Lydia Steier.

Ina Karr has initiated and devised international co-productions with the Munich Biennale, the Schwetzingen SWR Festival and the music theatre project Tamass, funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Federal Republic of Germany) with project phases taking place in Lebanon.

She has also initiated and devised numerous world premieres, including of compositions by Isabel Mundry, José María Sanchez-Verdú, Gordon Kampe, Zad Moultaka and Simon Steen-Andersen, and worked with directors such as Amélie Niermeyer, Jan-Christoph Gockel, David Hermann, Lorenzo Fioroni and Hans Neuenfels.

Lectureships and collaborative projects have taken her to the University of the Arts Bremen, the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and the Lucerne School of Music. She was the curator of the European festival Happy New Ears in Mannheim and a member of the jury at the theatre festival Augenblick mal! in Berlin. Since 2021 Ina Karr has been a juror for Jupiter, an initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

She was elected to the International Theatre Institute in 2019 and to the German Academy of the Performing Arts in 2021.