Matthias Bundschuh is a German actor, author and puppet-theatre director. He studied theatre at the University of London and acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and at the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts in Berlin, from where he graduated with distinction. He initially appeared almost exclusively as an actor, working with directors such as Luc Bondy, Barbara Frey, Jürgen Gosch, Karin Henkel, Manfred Karge, Michael Thalheimer, Jossi Wieler and Robert Wilson. He was a member of the ensem-bles of the Munich Kammerspiele and the Deutsches Theater Berlin. He also made guest appearances at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Schaubühne Berlin, the Schauspielhaus Zurich and the Salzburg Festival. He became acquainted with the work of Claus Guth (Wiener Festwochen), Robert Carsen (Deutsche Oper Berlin) and Barrie Kosky through undertaking various speaking roles in opera.
After turning to film and television roles, he became known to a wider public through big-screen films such as Shoppen and So viel Zeit and through television films such as Die Wannseekonferenz.
As an author, Matthias Bundschuh has adapted Dostoyevsky and Walser for the stage, and his screenplay Vergehen, based on a novel by Jan Peter Bremer, was recently made into a film.
Since 1997 he has also worked as a director and designer for marionette theatre performances. His productions have included Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Cottbus and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in Munich. He was responsible for the screenplay, direction and set designs for the short marionette film Wohin ist, der ich war und bin, after Franz Werfel, filmed in 2009 in collaboration with the Salzburg Marionette Theatre. At the Salzburg Marionette Theatre he has staged Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals and, for the 2024 Mozartwoche, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, for which he also designed the puppets and stage set. After appearing as an actor at the Salzburg Festival in 2001, 2004 and 2016, in 2025 he makes his directing debut at the Festival with L’Histoire du soldat, designed by Georg Baselitz.
