As the founding director and former professor of the “Applied Theatre Studies” program, Andrzej Wirth created a course of studies in Giessen with a focus that is unique, not just in Germany. Artists such as René Pollesch, Rimini Protokoll, She She Pop, etc., are all graduates. The award makes reference to the life achievement of theatre maker Wirth and also to the roots of a performative theatre in Germany that is now very successful on many national and international stages.

Andrzej Wirth has conveyed theatre concepts by Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Müller, Robert Wilson and Jerzy Grotowski to the world and to the minds of the next generation. He took up theatre artists’ ideas, enhanced and extended them in the broadest sense and passed them on. In Andrzej Wirth’s life work he postulated theatre as being something that could be permanently re-invented; in the process he infected artists on a worldwide scale with this virus.

The prize in the form of a certificate will be presented at the Theater der Welt festival in Halle (Saale). René Pollesch will give the laudatory speech. During the award ceremony the ITI will show the essayistic video performance „Las Venice“ by Andrzej Wirth and Thomas Martius. 

Laudatio von René Pollesch: Der gehörlose Sohn des Musiklehrers

Dankesrede von Andrzej Wirth: Ein Kuckuck kann keinen Preis erwarten