OLIVIA EBERT

Artistic Director

Olivia Ebert majored in Theatre Studies and Art History in Frankfurt, Germany and Aberystwyth, Wales. She has been working as a curator and playwright in in the performing arts for ten years. Her works are developed through collaborative processes and distinguish themselves by applying political perspectives to contemporary works of art. She is greatly interested in placing art in social and urban contexts.

Together with Fanti Baum, Olivia Ebert now works as an art director for the Dortmund-based festival Favoriten. Before this, they also collaborated to put on the performance festival Implantieren in Frankfurt in 2016 and organised the feminist dialog format off the record: Denken in präziser Unschärfe at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm.

From 2009 to 2011 as well as in 2016, Olivia Ebert curated the Aerowaves festival for young choreographers from Europe in the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. As the artistic production manager, she worked closely with Akira Takayama, Kate McIntosh, Daniel Cremer, YRD.Works, Rimini Protokoll and other artists. From 2016 to 2017, she was an academic research associate of Theatre Studies at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and is the co-publisher of the conference volume Theater als Kritik (transcript, 2018). Olivia Ebert is a member of ID_Frankfurt, Independent Dance and Performance Frankfurt Association.

Now, she is taking on the artistic management for the Theaterfestival Schwindelfrei 2020.

NICOLE LIBNAU

Performing Arts Project Manager

Nicole Libnau works as the Performing Arts Project Manager at the Kulturamt Mannheim. Among her responsibilities is organising the Theaterfestival Schwindelfrei. In addition, she initiates various collaborations, projects and one-time events.

Seda Keskİnkiliç-Brück

Project Management

Seda Keskinkılıç-Brück is responsible for the project management of the Theaterfestival Schwindelfrei at the Kulturamt Mannheim.

After completing her master programme in linguistics and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, she worked as a production assistant at the Junges Nationaltheater Mannheim on the realisation of the anti-racism project “Happyland” in the 2019/20 season.

Prior to this, she was an intern at the Schauspielhaus in Bochum in the 2017/18 season, working in the areas of direction and dramaturgy. Here she accompanied, amongst others, the productions “Istanbul”, “Ende gut, Alles gut” as well as “Geschlossene Gesellschaft”.

Besides her work in theatre, she is also an author and has held readings during the Literaturtage in Heidelberg.

Fanti Baum

Dramatic Advisor

Fanti Baum lives and works as an artist and theorist in Dortmund and Frankfurt. She has been involved in diverse collaborations between different fields of art and has developed performances, installations, dance pieces and site-specific works. Recently, in collaboration with Frédéric De Carlo, Joana Tischkau, René Alejandro Huari Mateus and Zwoisy Mears-Clarke, Fanti presented the dance piece “Hors de Combat” in the Frankfurt LAB as part of the festival (which was recently transplanted to Frankfurt) Land/Horses: “the feel of horses long before horses enter the scene“ which took place at the Galopprennbahn, a horse racetrack that has been torn down since then.

Fanti Baum is a member of the performance group Arty Chock, whose work was recently presented at the Lichter Filmfestival and in MMK Frankfurt. She has worked as an artistic director for the Theater Winkelwiese in Zürich, for the exhibition and performance project “Demonstrations. Making Normative Orders” at the Frankfurt Art Association, for the production of “Josefine” at the Fonds experimentelles Musiktheater NRW (FexM) and in collaboration with Claudia Bosse, at the Tanzquartier Wien (TQW). She received the artistic project grant FORMAT from the Thalia Theater Halle. With her grant from the Goethe Institute, she travelled to Egypt and with her flausen + scholarship, she developed her piece “to be policed: how police move our body.” She was also a research assistant at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and has taught courses on theory as well as producing theatre projects at the Universität der Künste (UdK), Berlin, the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Offenbach, the University of Bochum and the University of Düsseldorf.  

Together with Olivia Ebert, she directed the Frankfurt performance festival “implantieren” and initiated the feminist discussion seriesoff the record. Denken in präziser Unschärfe” at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. At the moment, she is the artistic co-director for the (2018/2020) Favoriten Festival for the Performing Arts NRW that takes place biennially in Dortmund.  She has been awarded the Akademie Schloss Solitude scholarship for 2020/2021

Denise Koch

Marketing and Public Relations

Denise Koch works at the Kulturamt Mannheim and focuses on project management, fundraising and cultural mapping. She is assisting the Theaterfestival Schwindelfrei in the area of marketing.

Denise Koch studied cultural studies with a historical focus and a major in art history in Saarbrücken and Paris. After having worked as a curatorial assistant for the non-profit organization Basis e.V. in Frankfurt (Main) for two years, she started working on her dissertation in art history receiving a grant from the German Research Society’s research training group transnational media events (JLU Giessen). Recently, she completed a traineeship within the lab.Bode (Bode Museum) Initiative to Strengthen Museum Education in Museums at the Kunsthalle Mannheim.

Tilo Schwarz

Event Engineer

From 1993 to 2007, Tilo Schwarz was the chief lighting director at the Badische Landesbühne in Bruchsal.

From 2000 to 2016, he was the curator and artistic director of zeitraumexit, Mannheim working on the international festival for performance art and networking entitled “The Wonder of the Prairie,” among other projects.

He also works as a freelance graphic artist, lighting and stage designer.

Tilo Schwarz works and lives in Mannheim.

Christian Thurm

Technical Director

Christian Thurm, after completing schooling in carpentry and metalworking, started studying industrial design at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart. It was during his studies that he began to design stage sets; winning 3rd prize (Mercedes 1998) and the 1st prize for theatre (Tagträumer 1990) awarded by the Stuttgarter Zeitung.

After completing his studies, he developed exhibition display systems, furniture and trade fair stands and won the Roter Punkt award in 1996 und IF Design Award in 1997. In 1997, Christian started working as the technical director for the Jungen Nationaltheater Mannheim (until 2003 under the direction of Brigitte Dethier, and afterwards under Andrea Gronemeyer). In addition, he was the production director in the technical direction at the National Theatre between 2001 and 2006. In 2006, he took over the technical direction of the Jungen Oper. Starting in 2015, he became the head of stage design at the Jungen Oper and Jungen Nationaltheater.

Since 2017, Christian Thurm is the head of the carpentry department at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and has been responsible for the set design for over 60 productions at the Jungen Nationaltheater and Jungen Oper.  In addition, he has done work for the State Theatre Oldenburg, DNT Weimar, Theater Dortmund, State Theater Mainz, JES Stuttgart, dramatic plays and ballet for the Nationaltheater Mannheim, Ranga Shankara Theater Bangalore, India as well as for theater groups in Madrid and Zamora, Spain.

Advisory Board

For the first time in the Festival’s history, an advisory board has been established for Schwindelfrei 2020 to assist with the preparations and program selection. The members of the advisory board represent various fields involved in the cultural and social life in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region. The board is here to advise the artistic direction particularly on sensitive matters having to do with anti-discriminatory methods of dealing with diversity and difference in respect to social inequality, discussing questions of accessibility and supporting local networks for the Festival.
The board members are as follows:


Charlotte Arens / Dramaturgist, Mannheim

Anne-Marie Geisthardt, Joachim Hauff / Kulturparkett Rhein-Neckar
Kulturparkett Rhein-Neckar is an initiative from Mannheim that is committed to ensuring equal access to culture especially for those living in relative poverty and who would be normally prevented from taking part in the cultural life of the city

Sandra Regina de Oliveira e Silva, Melanelle B. C. Hémêfa, Amarachi A. Igboegwu / UMOJA! 
UMOJA! is an intergenerational team of black, African and African-diasporic members who work together as an initiative for the empowerment of black people in Mannheim and in the surrounding area. In addition, the members are committed to the prevention of racism in the arts and culture as well as in political education.

Seda Keskinkılıç-Brück / Author, Artist, Mannheim
as well as a member of the Theaterfestival Schwindelfei team in the area of project management (member of the advisory board since January 2020).


On the photo from left to right: Amarachi A. Igboegwu, Anne-Marie Geisthardt, Joachim Hauff, Seda Keskinkılıç-Brück, Melanelle B. C. Hémêfa, Charlotte Arens, Sandra Regina de Oliveira e Silva