Anna Viebrock
Anna Viebrock knew very early on that she would work in theatres. After philosophy and art history studies and six years of set design at the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf, she joined the Frankfurt theatre as costume and set assistant. It was the beginning of a career that took her to Heidelberg, Bonn, Stuttgart and Basel, working in particular for the director Jossi Wieler. Thanks to the manager of the Schauspielhaus of Hamburg, Frank Baumbauer, she met Christoph Marthaler in 1991 and invented her first "place to act" for him for the play The Lourcine Street Affair by Labiche. Thus began a very close collaboration with this director who discovered in her an artist indispensable to his creation. Together, they proposed anthology shows, Faust Square Root of 1+2, Stunde Null, Kasimir and Karoline by Horváth, before joining the Volksbühne in Berlin to create Mess Up the European! Mess Him Up! Mess Him Up! Mess Him Up! Really Mess Him Up!, which led to the European recognition of this pair's work. Between 2000 and 2004, Anna Viebrock took part in the Schauspielhaus adventure in Zurich, which she left with her friends, when the Zurich noteworthies put an end to Christoph Marthaler's position as director, a year before his contract ended. Also working for the opera, Anna Viebrock is equally a director and regularly signs shows that are halfway between theatre and music, including the latest, Wozuwozuwozu, that she premiered this year at the Schauspielhaus of Cologne. She has not failed to continue her collaboration with Christoph Marthaler, with whom she will invest the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes. She presented with him Groundings, a variation in hope in 2004 and Riesenbutzbach. A Sustainable Colony in 2009 at the Festival d'Avignon.
JFP, April 2010