About

Franziska Werner, Artistic Direction
Alina Buchberger, Dramaturgy (since January 2026)
Joshua Wicke, Dramaturgy (until Jan. 2026)

Armin Leoni, Production Management
Melissa Müller, Production
Pascal Jung, Assistance Team + Production
Annegret Debitz, Production Post-West
Laron Janus, Christine Koschel, Steven Sander, Production Support

Nino Petrich, Technical Direction

Nassrah-Alexia Denif, Head of Communications
Mara Kriegeskotte, Assistance + Social Media 
Elise Radeke, Marketing + Ticketing
Julia Martel, Editorial
Penny Black, Translation

Alice Ferl, University Co-Operations/Outreach + Accessibility + Visitors Programmes

Carina Hommel, Venue Design

labor b designbüro, Dortmund, Design CI & Website 2026 (Further Development)
Santiago W. Duque / Squareclouds Design, Web Development
Anna Busdiecker, Franz Thöricht, Berlin, Design CI & Website 2025 (Development)

And many more people who collaborate with us during the festival.

The jury for the 2026 Showcase selection included: Ida Daniel, Yara Dulac Gisler, Akiko Okamoto, Anta Helena Recke, Sandra Umathum as well as Franziska Werner and Joshua Wicke for the Impulse team.

The jury was supported in its screening work by 10 Impulse scouts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland:
Lotta Beckers, Anna Donderer, Marten Flegel, Elke aus dem Moore, Alex Kirchner, Ysaline Rochat, Rika Sakalak, Barbara Schmidt-Rohr, Bernhard Siebert and Paula Thomaka.

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.

Yara Dulac Gisler is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural worker based in Zurich. Her practice spans film, sound, performance, and installation, all the while exploring themes such as intimacy, identity, and emotion. Dulac Gisler curated the 2024/2025 music program at Gessnerallee Zurich alongside David Jegerlehner and Tapiwa Svovse and was part of the curatorial team of the festival Les Urbaines Edition 2025. Furthermore she serves as a member of the Zurich Dance and Theater Commission, bringing her curatorial perspective to various panels.

Akiko Okamoto studied film and television studies at Ruhr University Bochum and completed the course ‘Curating in the Performing Arts’ at Paris Lodron University Salzburg. She lives in Düsseldorf and works for and on projects in North Rhine-Westphalia and internationally. Since 2013, she has been curating the programme series ‘Nippon Performance Nights’ at the FFT Düsseldorf, where she presents current works from Japan as well as by Japanese artists living in Europe and Germany. In addition, she regularly works as a project coordinator – both for individual projects by various artists and for institutions and festivals.

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. He worked as a dramaturge for the Impulse Festival from 2025 until January 2026.

Alina Buchberger (she/they) has been working as a curator for Impulse Festival since 2026. After studying literary, linguistic and cultural studies in Giessen, Dijon and at Paris-Sorbonne, they completed their Master’s degree in theatre studies at Paris-Nanterre and worked briefly in publishing. From 2016 onwards, Alina worked at Kampnagel in Hamburg, where she curated local and international programmes in performance, dance, literature and discourse and worked as a coordinator for artistic accessibility. Alina was appointed gender equity officer and local project manager for networks such as ‘Europe Beyond Access’ and the ‘Programme for Inclusive Art Practice’. Together with Pajam Masoumi, they developed the formats ‘Das Kritikable Queertett’ and ‘Die Performative Buchmesse’. Recently, Alina has been working on research on forced labour and resistance in the former Kampnagel factory. Central themes of their work are queer feminist, anti ableist and anti racist practices in the performing arts, activist knowledge transfer and institutional change.

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 also underwent 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 hosted 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 and Eastern Europe. A third programme area Impulse meets... includes discursive formats, workshops and parties in collaboration with local partners and friends of the festival.

This programme architecture was to be continued in future festival editions. In 2026, Bochum was added as a further Impulse city, with PRT Bochum joining as a partner institution.

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. From the 2025 Festival Edition onwards, each of the Impulse cities (2025: Mülheim an der Ruhr, Cologne and Düsseldorf) presented a programme of jury-selected showcase productions for a long weekend on a weekly rotation. In addition to the showcase works, the new artistic team places the focus on the exchange between East and West and, through the Post-West programme line, creates space for encounters between the independent scenes and artists of the host region of North Rhine-Westphalia as well as East Germany and Eastern Europe. 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. Starting with the 2026 edition of the festival, Bochum will once again join the ranks of Impulse cities.

The Impulse Festival 2026 is organised and funded by NRW KULTURsekretariat together with the cities of Düsseldorf, Bochum, Mülheim an der Ruhr and Cologne and in co-operation with FFT Düsseldorf, PRT Bochum, Ringlokschuppen Ruhr and studiobühneköln.

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
Vera Schöpfer, Directorate
Christina Dath, Deputy Management
Imke Arends, Press and Public Relations
E-Mail: info@impulsefestival.de
www.nrw-kultur.de

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

Funded by

Project partners

Funding for projects and guest performances by

Event partners

Visitors programmes

Media partners