MICHAEL SIMON - BIOGRAPHY

stage and light designer, director

Michael Simon, born in 1958, studied scenery design in Stuttgart from 1978 until 1981. In 1982 he started to collaborate with choreographer William Forsythe. For Forsythe's Ballet Frankfurt he designed Gänge ,LDC, Isabel's Dance, Impressing the Czar and Limb's Theorem.

1987 marked the beginning of his artistic relationship with Jirí Kylián (Sint Joris) which was followed by Kaguyahime , Stepping Stones, Whereabouts Unknown , Tiger Lily , Perfect Conception, Wings of Wax, Arcimboldo, Indigio Rose, One of a kind and Doux Messonges for the Paris Opera Ballet and in 2008 Zugvoegel at the Munich opera. 2008 marked the beginning of his collaboration with the Chinese Choreographer Fei Bo at the National Ballet of China with The Peony Pavillion and in 2017 Dunhuang.

From 1990 to 2011 Simon designed operas for the director Pierre Audi in Amsterdam among them are Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria,  L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Orfeo, Mozart's Mitridate Rè di Ponto, Puccini's La Bohème and Gluck’s Iphigenie. 1999 the opera Writing to Vermeer by Peter Greenaway and Louis Andriessen opened in Amsterdam and travelled to Australia and the US.

Michael Simon has also been directing theatre projects like Elements of Crime with Nederlands Dans Theater, Newtons Casino and Roman Dogs - together with composer Heiner Goebbels - in Frankfurt followed by contemporary operas in Basel, Die Menschen, in Bremen Moses and Aron. In Bonn he directed 5 operas by living composers, in 2004 Mattias Pintschers L espace dernier at the Paris Opera Bastille, the latest is Olga Neuwirths The Outcast 2012 in Mannheim. Since his debut as drama director with Black Rider 1994 in Dortmund he has been invited to Schaubuehne Berlin, Volksbühne Berlin, Burgtheater Vienna, Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Residenztheater Munich, theaters in Dresden, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Hannover , Basel and Bern.

Since 2008 Michael Simon is head of the stagedesign program at ZHdK Zurich, Switzerland. His latest design for Hamlet directed by Li Liuyi opened in November 2018 at the National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing, China.