Urs Schönebaum is a freelance lighting designer for theatre, opera, dance, exhibitions, performances and installations. His work so far includes more than 200 productions for leading theatres, including the Paris Opéra (Bastille and Garnier), the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Comédie-Française, the Metropolitan Opera and the Park Avenue Armory in New York, the Festivals of Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals, the Schaubühne in Berlin, the Residenztheater and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Teatro Real in Madrid, La Scala, Milan, and the Sydney Opera House.
Directors with whom he has collaborated include Thomas Ostermeier, Michael Haneke, Claus Guth, La Fura dels Baus, Pierre Audi, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet, Laurent Pelly, Sasha Waltz and William Kentridge. He has a longstanding working partnership with Robert Wilson. He has also designed lighting for art projects by Vanessa Beecroft, Anselm Kiefer, Dan Graham, Soundwalk Collective, Taryn Simon, Anne Imhof and Marina Abramović.
Since 2012 Urs Schönebaum has also worked as a set designer and director. In 2012 and 2014 respectively he directed and designed the world premieres of Mathis Nitschke’s Jetzt (in a double bill with Elliott Carter’s What Next?) and Nitschke’s Happy Happy at the Opéra National de Montpellier, and in 2022 he staged and designed the second act of Die Walküre for the new Ring project at the Stuttgart State Opera. He has also designed sets and lighting for Ginastera’s Bomarzo at the Teatro Real, excerpts from Stockhausen’s Licht cycle in three parts at the Holland Festival, Samir Odeh-Tamimi’s L’Apocalypse Arabe and Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Linzer Klangwolke 22, Bastarda (after Donizetti’s Tudor operas) at La Monnaie in Brussels, Marisa Manchado’s La Regenta at the Matadero in Madrid and the Stockhausen production Inside Light at the Park Avenue Armory.
