Matthias Schulze-Kraft studied German studies and philosophy before beginning his training as a director. As part of this, he assisted directors including Peter Palitzsch and Hans Gratzer. He has worked as an assistant director, actor and director and in a wide variety of production situations, ranging from independent opera groups to repertory and ensemble theaters.
After conducting further studies in the field of culture and education management, he assumed leadership and managerial roles in a variety of cultural and educational institutions.
He has served as artistic director of Lichthof Theater in Hamburg since 2008, which is one of the most important performance venues for the independent performing arts community in the Hanseatic city.
 

glanz&krawall are an independent Berlin-based music theater collective working with the director Marielle Sterra.
In their work, glanz&krawall destroy the protective mechanisms of the opera and theater apparatus and root through the debris of the history of reception. They are striving to create a form of music theater that has something to say about the world in which we live and about the one in which we could live. The singers are let off the leash, the music directors are courageous, a chorus may take the stage (but doesn’t have to), an orchestra plays (but doesn’t have to) – and sometimes a portable radio plays too. Sometimes actors perform too. Or bands. They nail the peepholes shut and steal the plush chairs from the audience. Their credo is: Get out of your safe little caves! In order to return to a proximal relationship with the performers and audience, they perform in clubs, reservoirs, hospitals and piles of broken fragments. Opposition to cuteness and the acceptance of things always being the same lets glanz&krawall declare a state of emergency with every little piece of music theater and spoken word theater. Techno beats devour Alban Berg motifs, trashcans and typewriters come to life through medieval songs, a puny orchestra beats out the opera CARMENon children’s instruments until her bitter end, Orpheus searches for his love Eurydice in the loony bin until he finally loses himself. The collective breaks opera – “these shining diamonds", as Schlingensief said, into its component parts and puts them back together anew before the eyes of the audience.
 

Dörte Wolter was born in 1981 in Berlin. She holds a certificate in business administration. She studied arts management (M.A.) at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. She worked as an assistant at Tanzhaus Kopenhagen, the Danish Cultural Institute and numerous other institutions (2001 - 2004). The focus of her work rests in the field of production management for music theater and project development in the area of cultural education. She is a founding member and the co-director of Perform[d]ance e.V. in Stralsund. Alongside her conceptual work and project management, she is also responsible for fundraising and production for dance theater productions, dance in schools projects and large-format projects such as Occupy Theater – a Tanzfonds partner project. She began working as a production dramaturg in the field of dance in 2014. She has been the production manager as well as a member of the Berlin-based opera company NOVOFLOT since 2007. She has served on a wide variety of boards since 2008 and is currently the speaker of the advisory council for Jugendkunstschule Vorpommern-Rügen.
 

Heike Schmidt works with a variety of forms of theater and art in interdisciplinary contexts. With her performances, she sets off on the search for a specific connection between various forms of expression, the merging of voice, movement, images and language. The performer studied theater studies and audiovisual media at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlanger-Nuremberg, after which she completed her vocal studies at École de la Chanson de Paris and continued to train with a variety of instructors, including Martina Catella, Andreas Talarowski and the Institute for Living Voice. She trained as a Feldenkrais teacher with Myriam Pfeffer following her dance training, Expression Primitive, which she also conducted in Paris with Herns Duplan.
With Bed&Breakfast, Heike Schmidt created a lullaby performance which premiered during the Dublin Fringe Festival and which was nominated for the Dublin Fringe Festival Award. Before touring internationally with the performance (including to Brussels, Athens, Ghent, Leuven and Terni), she also transformed the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (amongst other locations) into a dormitory, earning attention from various media, including Der Spiegel. Her first Berlin production, Die Amerikanerin (Eva Plackner) by Nikolaj Koljada and which took place at the Wittenbergplatz subway station, also attracted a great deal of interest from the media. As a performer and singer, she appeared in Kafka Labyrinth at Kammergericht Berlin as an homage to Kafka on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of his birth and performed in Tino Seghal’s Kiss as part of the Berlin Biennial, amongst many other performances. The duet zwischenstoff – kleines bewegungsspiel (video: Thomas Kiesel) was created together with Ingo Reulecke. Heike Schmidt has helped to create a wide variety of song recitals. Heike Schmidt and Thomas Kiesel were invited to a five-week residency in Beijing by Theatre in Motion and the Beijing Goethe-Institut to conduct research for Prayer – a human function. Prayer – a human function premiered in September 2009 at STUK, Leuven (Belgium) and was then presented in Genk. The German premiere took place in 2011 during the festival Kunst und Spiritualität in Hellerau – European Center for the Arts in Dresden. Heike Schmidt ended her parental leave with the video work Stillen – ein Hörbild (Nursing – an Aural Picture), which was presented during the Long Night of Books in May 2012.
Her song performance Shape of Joy which she created with the musician Franz Bauer (vibraphone, marimba, percussion) premiered in February 2013 in Aschaffenurg. She completed her studies in theater from 2013 – 2016 and received a B.A. degree. In 2014, she worked with the 2nd year students in the Dance Intensive program of tanzfabrik Berlin to create a performance based on a poem by Thomas Brasch: Bleiben will ich wo ich nie gewesen bin (I Want To Stay Where I Never Was).
The short film Stillen (Nursing) followed in 2015. She sang in her sleep again in October 2017 with Bed&Breakfast, this time in Teatro die Sardegna in Cagliari.
www.heikeschmidt.net, www.prayer-ahumanfunction.com, www.feldenkrais-schoeneberg.de

Albrecht Ziepert was born in 1980 in Weimar. He works as a musician and composer for contemporary dance companies, theater productions, orchestras and bands. He received his education in piano, composition and conducting at Sibelius Akademie in Helsinki, the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy for Music in Leipzig and the Detmold Academy for Music.

He wrote his first theatrical compositions in 2008 at Deutsche Nationaltheater Weimar and was invited to the renowned media art festival ARS Electronica in Brucknerhaus Linz the same year. In 2010 he received an award for the best film music in Stiller See by Lena Liberta at the Novara Cine Festival in Milan. He began working as the music director for production at Deutsche Theater in Göttingen in 2011. Amongst others, he worked here with the artistic director Mark Zurmühle as well as Michael von zur Mühlen, Michaela Dicu and Sven Miller. In 2012, he composed his first orchestra commission for a concert of the MDR symphony orchestra in the former Centraltheater Leipzig under the direction of Torodd Wigum. In 2013, in conjunction with the production Faust! Der Tragödie erster und zweiter Teil at Deutsche Theater in Göttingen, he published the soundtrack Faust – Music for Theatre, which was revisited in 2015 with Philharmonie Jena under the direction of Marc Tardue. He made a new arrangement for the opera Carmen in 2014 for the world premiere of Ay! Ay! Carmencita adapted from Mérimées Novelle Carmen at Deutsche Theater in Göttingen. Parallel to this, he developed music for the Tanzfonds Erbe production Anita Berber Retroperspektive at Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin. In 2015, alongside work for Jenaer Philharmonie, he composed work for the symphony orchestra STÜBAPhilharmonie and developed the interactive sound installation Move, which was exhibited at festivals in Berlin and Athens.

He is currently developing work with the company MS Schrittmacher at Theaterdiscounter Berlin and at Staatstheater Saarbrücken. Albrecht Ziepert is the pianist for the band Pentatones and the music collective No Accident In Paradise.

Christopher Boehm was born in 1986 in Bückeburg and studied music (with a focus on bass) and philosophy (with a concentration in aesthetics) in Hanover and at the Swiss Jazz School Bern with Stefan Rademacher. Bands: 13YearCicada (progressive songwriting), Jelly (instrumental techno-funk). He has also worked in music and sound design for radio plays (NDR) and theater (Schauspielhaus Hannover, Aufbruch Theater Berlin, internil). In 2014, he received a commission to create a composition for Orchester im Treppenhaus in Hanover. In 2015 and 2016, he was commissioned to compose for Podium Festival Esslingen. In 2016, he received a composition grant from the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony as well as the flausen research grant. In 2017, he worked on the MOG/MAGOG I performance with internal, the piece of sci-fi music theater Prognose:Schlimm with ufaaq and the performance he-wolf/she-man with Katharina Haverich.

Bettina Junge was born in 1968 in Cologne and studied music and instrumental teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts with a primary concentration in the flute.
She is a founding member of ensemble mosiak. Alongside her work as a flautist, she is also active on the organizational level and as an artistic director. She conceptualizes concert and festival projects such as series/studies/etudes, audible interfaces, open sources and concert series such as visible music, commented music or autonomous music. In doing so, the individual works performed, their compositional principles and artistic means are reflected and interpreted within specific contexts and new approaches in performance practice are developed and tried out. The handling of these themes also leads her to her own compositional activity.
She is involved in the artistic work of ensemble mosiak from the project development all the way through to the realization.
With ensemble mosaik, Bettina Junge has been a guest at many of the most important international festivals for contemporary music and has played on numerous broadcasting recordings and CD productions.
She has performed as a soloist and the guest of other ensembles at international festivals and concert series.
She taught at Musikschule Reinickendorf in Berlin from 1991 – 2014. Within the context of concerts and competitions, she continues her teaching activities at music academies and in festival seminars.
Bettina Junge was a member of the board of Berliner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik and has been a board member of initiative neue musik Berlin e.V. 2014, which represents the interests of the independent contemporary and current music community in Berlin.
She has worked as a jury member, amongst other programs, on behalf of the DAAD exchange program and gnm - deutsche Gesellschaft für zeitgenössische Musik.

Änne-Marthe Kühn is a librettist, dramaturg and producer working in the field of new music theater. As a grantee of Akademie Musiktheater heute funded by the Deutsche Bank Founation, she was responsible for the libretto and overall dramaturgy of the two-part opera minibar, which was composed by Sven Daigger and Manuel Durão and which received its world premiere at Staatsoper-Hamburg in February 2016. Parallel to this, she worked as a project and production manager for Rimini Protokoll (Evros Walk Water - a Cage reenactment) and Theater Basel (DONNERSTAG aus Licht), amongst other projects.
As a recipient of the Deutschlandstipendium at Freie Universität Berlin, she is currently finalizing her Master’s thesis in theater studies by focusing on the topic “Opera was yesterday – is music theater today?“ with a concentration on the performative strategies and new opera formats of Berlin’s independent performing arts community.  In doing so, she continues to pursue her previous artistic research on new forms of music theater in virtual and urban space which was already expressed in 2012 with the alternative opera project X Days Until the Miracle – an Alternate Reality Opera (x-tage.de) which took place all over Berlin and received public funding from a variety of sources.
Internships and assistantships brought Änne-Marthe Kühn to institutions such as Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, Musiktage Donaueschingen, the Bregenz Festival and radioeins.
In her free time, she hosts readings of special literature spiced up with new, analog and electronic music.

Klaus Schöpp (musician) was born on August 8, 1963 in Völklingen and studied music (with a primary concentration on the transverse flute) in Saarbrücken and Berlin. He has worked as an independent musician in Berlin since 1990, primarily in the area of new music, and is also a music school teacher and a composer. He has performed in important ensembles for new music (Berlin Improvising Composers Ensemble BICE, Ensemble UnitedBerlin) as well as in numerous large symphony orchestras. 
He founded the modern art ensemble in 1994 together with Unolf Wäntig, Matias de Oliveira Pinto and Yoriko Ikeya and has served as its flautist and manager ever since. The modern art ensemble has received funding from numerous sources, including Initative Neue Musik Berlin INM, the Deutsche Musikrat and the Berlin Senate. Klaus Schöpp has organized concert trips for the ensemble to South Korea and to the Philippines as well as numerous concert tours and festivals all throughout Germany and Europe. In addition, he was responsible for the ensemble's participation in numerous music theater productions, especially at Konzerthaus Berlin.
Together with the artists Klaudia Stoll and Sandra Setzkorn, Klaus Schöop received an award during the operare competition held by Zeitgenossiche Oper Berlin in 2011. Together, they realized a staged production of John Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis in Berlin’s Central Train Station.
Klaus Schöop performs regularly in Marc Lingk’s ensemble Elektronisches Glück. This connects contrasting worlds to each other: old and new electronica, such as vintage synths, are combine with contemporary software plugins, electro-acoustic and purely acoustic musical instruments, elements improvised live and composed works, effect devices and unplugged special effects.
He spent many years as a member of the board of Iniative Neue Musik Berlin e.V., he is a member of the council of spokespersons for the Coalition of the Independent Arts as well as Landesmusikrat Berlin, Berlin's state music advisory council.
He is married to the Japanese pianist Yoriko Ikeya and they have an adult daughter.
 

Co-director of the event location ausland, filmmaker, born in 1981

• Studied Japanese studies at FU Berlin (2002 to 2006).
• Moved to Tokyo in 2006, began studying directing in 2007 at the Japan Academy of Moving Images which was founded by Imamura Shoei, screenwriting seminar under the direction of Daisuke Tengan and Itoh Yasutaka.
• Various assistant director positions, directing class taught by Isaka Satoshi.
• Production of the thesis film Ottekuranshi/Wish You Were Here (2010). This was screened at a variety of Japanese as well as Asian film festivals.
• It was also screen in Europe at Festival du Court-Métrage de Clermont-Ferrand in 2011
• Winner of the Asia Pacific Regional Prize in the Kodak Film School Competition
• Grand prix winner of the 28th Thesis Film Festival of the Moton Picture Engineering Society of Japan
• Creation of video footage for Shion Sono
• Numerous performances in Japan with DJ Mameshiba Hibiki

Freelance, various live concert filmings in Berlin, former project manager and event manager at SUPERMARKT, responsible for the following events, amongst others: COMPLICITY | 2013 Berliner Gazette Conference ROG panel discussion: Sotschi and the Internet; transmediale 2014: future past – past future
He has been a member of the ausland team for five years and has organized numerous concerts there. Together with Michael Freeix, he is the curator of the monthly series [auslands-filme].
www.ausland-berlin.de