Jury
Stephan Czuratis, born in Staßfurt in 1984, is passionate about culture. He has been in charge of the Salzlandtheater Staßfurt as theatre director since 2016. His involvement in INTHEGA, where he has been active since 2017 and has headed up the eastern country group since 2019, demonstrates his wide-ranging interest in the cultural and theatre landscape. A commitment that paid off: the Salzlandtheater received the Salzlandkreis Culture Prize in 2020 and the Federal Theatre Prize in 2021. As drummer in the band FiJazzKo, he has realised numerous concert projects and musicals. He toured the USA in 2011. He shared his musical expertise as a percussion teacher at private and public music schools. He has also been enriching local life as an honorary local politician since 2017. In his private life, he is happily married and lives with his wife and two children in Saxony-Anhalt.
Tessa Hart has been a culture maker and culture changer in the performing arts, film, community work and socio-cultural fields for over 15 years, working across interfaces and boundaries. Since July 2024, Tessa Hart has been a consultant for qualification programmes at kultur_formen (Berlin Project Fund for Cultural Education). In addition, Tessa Hart’s ongoing activities range from curation and participation in selection committees, such as at the Max Ophüls Preis film festival since 2020, to mediation and educational work, to artistic direction of the collective company Goblin Baby Co. since 2013. Previously, Tessa was project manager and artistic director of AfroPolitan Berlin from 2020 to 2024, co-founder and artistic and managing co-director of the Bread & Roses Theatre in London from 2012 to 2022 and has contributed to seven book publications since 2018. Born in the GDR, raised near Berlin and in Brussels, Tessa Hart lived in London for almost a decade and has been back in Berlin since 2018. Throughout all of this, Tessa Hart has navigated very intersectional worlds of experience, with expertise critical of power and discrimination as well as a commitment to equal opportunities and cultural reflection on actual social realities always being a leitmotif.
Michael Lang has been the director of the Ohnsorg Theatre, one of Germany’s best-known theatres, since 1 August 2017. With the aim of creating authentic, touching, multi-layered folk theatre with its finger on the pulse of the times, in which the Low German language plays a leading role, the theatre prudently and persistently builds bridges between tradition and further development on its two stages, but also on numerous external playing fields, also with regard to the younger generations, who generally no longer grow up with the Low German language. In recent years, the theatre has been repeatedly awarded prizes for this, for example the ‘Monica Bleibtreu Prize’ and the ‘Hamburg Theatre Prize Rolf Mares’.
Previously, Michael Lang was director of the Winterhuder Fährhaus comedy theatre in Hamburg for 19 years. He created an important addition there with the independent theatre KONTRASTE in the small hall with contemporary drama that was critical of the times. The theatre received the Pegasus Prize for Private Theatre for this in 2004 and again in 2016.
After leaving school in Hamburg, Michael Lang initially trained as an orchestral musician and music teacher, and was a clarinettist in the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra (State Opera) for six years before deciding to study cultural and media management. Michael Lang is still active at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre today, as Chairman of the University Council. Michael Lang also works as an honorary judge at the Hamburg Theatre Arbitration Court.
Anta Helena Recke is a German-Senegalese artist. She works with performance, concept, copy and re-enactment, writing and video. She spent her training years studying scenic arts at the University of Hildesheim and as an assistant director at the Münchner Kammerspiele. She was voted Emerging Artist of the Year 2018 in the Theater heute critics’ poll and also received the 2019 International Theatre Institute Prize and the Tabori Prize in 2020. Her directorial works “MITTELREICH” and “Die Kränkungen der Menschheit” were invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. She is co-founder of the German Museum for Black Entertainment and Black Music and collaborates as a dramaturge in the performative arts with Joana Tischkau and Jeremy Nedd. Since 2021 she has occasionally been involved in various writers’ rooms (Jünglinge Film, Netflix). In 2023, she made her series debut in screenwriting and directing with ‘Made in Germany’ (ARD Degeto). Recke is a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Programme 2024/25.
Mey Seifan is a board member of the Landesverband der Freien Darstellenden Künste (LAFT). She is also actively involved in the ‘Access and Transformation’ working group of the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste (BFDK) and in the United Network’s national cultural policy network. These roles enable her to actively influence cultural policy issues and improve conditions for the independent performing arts community.
Mey began her training at the ballet school in Damascus and continued it at the HfMDK in Frankfurt before completing a degree in theatre studies at the LMU in Munich. She is the first professionally trained dancer in Syria and is considered a pioneer of the Arab performing arts scene, whose innovative works and projects have contributed significantly to the development and recognition of this art form in the region.
In her work, she always deals with social and political issues and explores their influence on both individuals and society. Since the Arab Spring, she has focussed on themes such as collective trauma, dreaming under totalitarian governments and PTSD, resulting in projects such as ‘Zerstörung für Anfänger’, ‘Siesta’ and ‘Reality Check’. Her most recent works, including the VR project ‘How am I here?!’ and the event ‘Double Learning: Humans, Machines and Inclusivity in the AI Sphere’, extend these discourses into the digital space.
Mey Seifan is committed to feminist values and strives to build bridges and strengthen networks through her work.
Shirin Sojitrawalla, born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1968, studied German, comparative literature and political science before completing an editorial traineeship at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Since 2000, she has worked as a freelance cultural journalist focusing on theatre and literature for various newspapers and radio stations (taz, Theater der Zeit, nachtkritik.de, Deutschlandfunk, SWR, WDR, Frankfurter Hefte and others). From 2016 to 2020 she was a member of the jury for the Berlin Theatertreffen, and from 2021 to 2024 she was a member of the jury for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. She lives in Wiesbaden.
After completing her degree in economics, Ayla Yeginer first worked as a press officer at the Winterhuder Fährhaus comedy theatre, then as a dramaturge and production manager at the KONTRASTE theatre in Hamburg. She has been working as a director since 2012. In Hamburg, she also run her own café until she moved to Hildesheim in 2020, where she is engaged as theatre director and in-house director at the theatre für niedersachsen. For her production of ‘Kleiner Mann – was nun?’ at the Ohnsorg Studio, she received the Hamburg Theatre Prize – Rolf Mares in the category ‘Outstanding Director’ in 2022. At the University of Hildesheim, she teaches at the Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture. Together with students from the Department of Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Communication, she is creating the documentary play ‘Der Weg zur Hölle ist gepflastert mit guten Absichten’ (The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions), which addresses the topic of sexualised violence against children and young people in a church context and will premiere at the theatre für niedersachsen in 2024. Ayla Yeginer is currently working on further research into this topic. From the 2025/2026 season, she will take over the artistic directorship of the Ernst Deutsch Theatre Hamburg together with Daniel Schütter.
Christina Zintl has been co-director of Schauspiel Essen with Selen Kara since the 2023/2024 season. She was born in Bonn and studied scenic arts in Hildesheim and Aix-en-Provence / Marseille. She was director of the Theatertreffen Stückemarkt and dramaturge of the Theatertreffen from 2012-2018. She is an experienced festival and production dramaturge and has worked at renowned theatres, including the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel and the Staatstheater Nürnberg; here she has worked in various artistic and management positions, including as managing dramaturge/member of the theatre management of the Staatstheater Nürnberg. She worked as a production dramaturge with renowned directors and was primarily responsible for contemporary drama, play development and interdisciplinary works. As a curator, she is responsible for discursive-artistic programmes, especially on intersectional-feminist themes. She has lectured at the FU Berlin and the Mozarteum Salzburg, among others. In 2018 and 2019, she co-directed the industry meeting of the Berlin Performing Arts Program, most recently at the Sophiensæle, Berlin. She has performed with the performance group ‘Hotel Europa’ at the Maxim Gorki Theatre and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, among others. In addition to new plays, new forms and discursive formats, her work focuses on opening up urban theatre to urban society – particularly through co-creation processes.