About

Franziska Werner, Artistic Direction
Joshua Wicke, Dramaturgy

Armin Leoni, Production Management
Melissa Müller, Production
Pascal Jung, Assistance Team + Production
Rika Sakalak, Production Dramaturgy “Via Regia”
Christine Koschel, Production “Neues Forum der Töne”

Nino Petrich, Technical Direction

Nassrah-Alexia Denif, Head of Communications
Mara Kriegeskotte, Assistance + Social Media 

Theresa Heußen, Accessibility + Visitors programmes

Alice Ferl, University co-operations/Outreach

Anthea Petermann, Ticketing

Patricia Maurer, Editor-in-chief
David Tushingham, Translation

Cordula Körber, Venue Design

Anna Busdiecker, Franz Thöricht, Design
Santiago W. Duque / Squareclouds Design, Web Development

The jury for the 2025 Showcase selection included:
Ida Daniel, Corinne Maier, Isabel Lewis, Anta Helena Recke**, Sandra Umathum and, for the Impulse team, Franziska Werner and Joshua Wicke.

The jury was supported in its screening work by the scouts Anna Bründl, Anna Donderer, Yeşim Duman, Peter Faßhuber, Mike Dele Dittrich Frydetzki, Alexander Kirchner, Elke aus dem Moore, Ysaline Rochat, Rika Sakalak, Bernhard Siebert and Gunda Zeeb.

**Anta Helena Recke was not involved in the voting for the showcase productions ‘Ich nehm dir alles weg - Ein Schlagerballett’ and ‘blue nile to the galaxy around olodumare’ due to her involvement in these works.

Ida Daniel studied choreography and performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen and lives in Hesse. As an author, performer and dramaturge, she works in the fields of performance and extended choreography. In her work, she explores structures of collaboration, drawing on feminist practices and cultures of non-conformity. Ida is one of the initiators of the Implantieren'24 festival and co-thinker, dreamer and host of the Imaginative Choreographic Centre. In 2009 she co-founded the Association for Independent Performing Arts in Bulgaria (ACT), of which she was the first director.

Isabel Lewis is an artist and researcher and teaches dance and performance. Her work, which is based on an expanded understanding of choreography and generates physical experiences that engage all the senses, is shown internationally at biennials and in solo exhibitions as well as at music, theatre and dance festivals and in public spaces. Since 2021, Lewis has headed the Performative Arts class at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig and will take over the co-directorship of Tanzquartier Wien together with Rio Rutzinger in 2025.

Corinne Maier is a director and cultural mediator and lives in Basel. She has performed in various lecture performances, including on Hannah Arendt's political theory. She later developed plays as a director, which began with extensive research and encounters with the protagonists, such as ‘Like A Prayer’ (2015) with six nuns from a convent in central Switzerland. Most recently, she realised ‘Die Zufügung/Über das Altern und den Tod hinaus’ (2020) and ‘YES!YES!YES!’ (2023). She is a co-founder of the magic garden collective, with whom she has realised several works.

Anta Helena Recke works as a director, dramaturge, conceptual artist and author. She was voted up-and-coming artist 2018 in the critics' survey by Theater heute; in 2019 she received the ITI Prize and in 2020 the Tabori Award. Her directorial works ‘MITTELREICH’ and ‘Die Kränkungen der Menschheit’ were invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. She is a co-founder of the German Museum for Black Entertainment and Black Music and works as an artistic collaborator and production dramaturge with Joana Tischkau and Jeremy Nedd.

Sandra Umathum is a performance scientist and dramaturge. She deals with the illnesses of bodies, systems and landscapes and is co-editor of the book series ‘Corporeal Matters’. She is currently working on a project about shooting. Sandra was co-initiator of ‘Dirty Debut’, a platform for emerging performance artists in Berlin. After 30 years and most recently a theory professorship at the HZT Berlin, she left the university. She has lived in Vienna since 2023, where she is a member of the Board of Trustees for Theatre, Dance and Performance.

Dramaturge and curator Franziska Werner was born in East Berlin in 1975 and grew up in Weimar. She studied Theatre Studies/Cultural Communication, Art History and European Ethnology at the Humboldt University in Berlin and Études Théâtrales at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. After her studies, she worked as a freelance dramaturge, curator or production manager for various artists in Berlin as well as for festivals and venues throughout Germany. From 2011 to 2023, she was Artistic Director of Sophiensaele Berlin, where she co-curated the festivals ‘The Future is FEMAL*E’ (2017), ‘Das Ost-West-Ding’ (2019), ‘Coming of Age’ (2021) and ‘Leisure & Pleasure’ (May/June 2023), among others. Franziska Werner's curatorial interests lie in questions of work ethics and accessibility, the link between humour and queer feminism, performativity and everyday life as well as body politics and questions of origin. She pays particular attention to so-called ‘East German themes’, as these often spill over into pan-German and international discourses as well as global issues and systemic questions. Franziska Werner was and is active on various juries and committees, such as the advisory board of the Goethe-Institut's theatre/dance department, the board of LAFT Berlin e. V., as a mentor for LAFT Berlin e. V.'s PAP, on the board of trustees of Fonds darstellende Künste e. V., the Berlin Council for the Arts and the German Cultural Council's mentoring programme ‘Women in Culture & Media’. Franziska Werner has been Artistic Director of the Impulse Festival for Performance, Theatre & Dance since September 2024.

Joshua Wicke is a curator and dramaturge and works in the fields of performance, dance and theatre. Most recently, he curated the series ‘Poetics of Refusal’, which examined artistic and political strategies of withdrawal, non-performance and negativity, the symposium ‘Risking Repetition’ on the aesthetics of “surviving” sexualised violence and the closing festival ‘Tune In Drop Out’ at the Gessnerallee Zurich. As a dramaturge, he has worked with Moved by the Motion, caner teker, Carolina Mendonça and Alexander Giesche, among others. For several years, he co-hosted the platform for emerging performance artists ‘Dirty Debut’ in Berlin. Joshua Wicke has taught at the Zurich University of the Arts, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the Free University of Berlin and Castro Projects Rome, among others. After working as a dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, he was a curator at the Gessnerallee Zurich until summer 2024.

For more than 30 years, the NRW KULTURsekretariat's Impulse has been one of the most important festivals for the independent theatre scene in the German-speaking world. Impulse has often reinvented itself and thus also reflects developments in the independent performing arts. What remains constant: The festival presents noteworthy productions of the year from Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH region) and thus gives visibility to the outstanding works of the independent theatre scene. It invites a broad audience to encounter innovative and transdisciplinary working methods and aesthetics in performance, theatre and dance and thus reflects contemporary developments.

In September 2024, dramaturge and curator Franziska Werner took over as festival director. The festival name has been changed: From 2025, Impulse will operate under the name Impulse Festival for Performance, Theatre & Dance, thus taking into account the close connection and often blurred boundaries between the artistic genres in works by the independent scene.

With the first festival edition in 2025 under new artistic direction, the Impulse Festival for Performance, Theatre & Dance will also undergo a restructuring of its programme architecture: between 18 June and 6 July 2025, each of the three Impulse cities of Mülheim an der Ruhr, Cologne and Düsseldorf will host a dense programme of productions selected by a jury for the Showcase and the Post-West programme focus, alternating on a weekly basis. Post-West focusses on the exchange between East and West and creates spaces for encounters between the independent scenes and artists of the host region NRW and East Germany. A third programme area Impulse meets... includes discursive formats, workshops and parties in collaboration with local partners and friends of the festival.

The Impulse Theatre Festival, founded in 1990, presents outstanding productions of independent performing arts created in German-speaking countries. The founding idea of the festival was to promote solidarity among independent groups and to provide opportunities in the field of independent theatre. Mainly organised by the NRW KULTURsekretariat, it has developed into the most important nationwide platform for independent theatre productions in German-speaking countries.

Up to and including 2011, independent juries - sometimes together with the artistic directors - selected the participating productions for the festival. In addition, specially compiled award juries assessed the works shown during the festival. Until 2005, the Impulse Festival was shown in eight cities in North Rhine-Westphalia under the direction of Dietmar N. Schmidt. From 2007 to 2011, Tom Stromberg and Matthias von Hartz were responsible for two (biennial) editions as artistic directors.

With the appointment of Florian Malzacher as Artistic Director (2013-2017), the idea of a competition was replaced by a curatorial concept. Instead of a jury, an open call and an artistic advisory board supported the programming. The programme was presented in parallel in four (2013 with Bochum) or three (from 2015) cities over the entire festival period.

From 2015, the festival was once again held annually as the Impulse Theatre Festival and has an independent board of trustees. The cities of Düsseldorf, Cologne and Mülheim an der Ruhr are co-organisers. The Forum Freies Theater (FFT), Ringlokschuppen Ruhr and studiobühneköln are permanent partner venues.

Haiko Pfost took over as artistic director of the festival in 2018. He based the programme on three programme pillars: SHOWCASE, ACADEMY and CITY PROJECT. These rotated annually between the venues in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Dramaturge and curator Franziska Werner has been the artistic director of Impulse since September 2024. The showcase productions will no longer be presented alternately in just one city each year. Instead, from the 2025 edition of the festival, a programme of showcase productions selected by a jury will be presented in each of the three Impulse cities of Mülheim an der Ruhr, Cologne and Düsseldorf for a long weekend, alternating on a weekly basis. In addition to the showcase works, the new artistic team will focus on the exchange between East and West and create spaces for encounters between the independent scenes and artists from the host region of North Rhine-Westphalia and East Germany with the Post-West programme line. The new Impulse meets... programme area combines exchange formats and discourse, workshops and parties.

The change in the festival name is also new: From 2025, Impulse will be known as the Impulse Festival for Performance, Theatre & Dance.

The Impulse Festival 2025 is organised and funded by NRW KULTURsekretariat together with the cities of Mülheim an der Ruhr, Cologne and Düsseldorf and in co-operation with Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, studiobühneköln and FFT Düsseldorf.

The festival is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Kunststiftung NRW and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media.

Organised by

NRW KULTURsekretariat
Dr. Christian Esch (Direktor), Christina Dath, Stv. Geschäftsführerin
Imke Arends, Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
E-Mail: info@impulsefestival.de
www.nrw-kultur.de

with the cities of Düsseldorf, Cologne and Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Funded by

Project partners

Funding for projects and guest performances by

Event partners

International visitors programmes

Media partners