The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region is the largest metropolitan region in Germany, with over ten million inhabitants. A polycentric conurbation with several major urban concentrations, the region covers an area of 7,110 square kilometres (2,750 sq mi), entirely within the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region spreads from the Ruhr area (Dortmund-Bochum-Essen-Duisburg) in the north to the urban areas of the cities of Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, Leverkusen, Cologne, and Bonn in the south. The location of the Rhine-Ruhr at the heart of the European Blue Banana makes it well connected to other major European cities and metropolitan areas such as the Randstad, the Flemish Diamond and the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region.
Recklinghausen is the northernmost city in the Ruhr-Area and the capital of the Recklinghausen district. It borders the rural Münsterland and is characterized by large fields and farms in the north and industry in the south. Recklinghausen is the 60th-largest city in Germany and the 22nd-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Peter Stein is a German theatre and opera director who established himself at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, a company that he brought to the forefront of German theatre.
Ralf Rothmann is a German novelist, poet, and dramatist. His novels have been translated into several languages, with Knife Edge, Young Light, Fire Doesn't Burn, To Die in Spring and The God of that Summer being translated into English. The main subjects of his work are the bourgeois and proletarian realities of life in the Ruhr area as well as Berlin, with an autobiographically colored focus on alienation, the attempt to escape these situations, and common solitude. With the major novels Im Frühling sterben, Der Gott jenes Sommers and Die Nacht unterm Schnee, Rothmann goes back to the time of the Second World War and explores the horrors for the individual. The four volumes of short stories Ein Winter unter Hirschen, Rehe am Meer, Shakespeares Hühner and Hotel der Schlaflosen complete the author's extensive oeuvre.
Andrea Breth is a stage director. From 1999 to 2019 she was in-house director at the Burgtheater in Vienna and also directed for the Salzburg Festival.
Horst Gläsker is a German artist. His work is a symbiosis of music, dance, theatre, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and architecture.
Daniel Warr, also known as Mon Oncle le bossu or DADO, is a Canadian street performer, magician and clown. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta.
Fritz Schwegler was a German painter, graphic artist, sculptor and musician.
Musiktheater im Revier (MiR) is the venue for performing opera, operetta, musical theatre and ballet in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. It opened on 15 December 1959; it is listed since 1997 as a protected cultural monument.
Louise Fribo is a Danish singer, actress and dancer.
Rahim Burhan is a Macedonian theatre director.
The International Impulse Theater Festival presents productions of the independent theatre scene of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The Festival was founded in 1990 by Dietmar N. Schmidt and directed by him until 2006. It shows remarkable productions of the independent theatre in the German-speaking world and since its foundation in 1990 has become an important platform for independent, experimental theatre.
Jacqueline Macaulay is an English actress who mainly works in Germany.
Jens Harzer is a German stage, film, and television actor. He began his career at the Munich Kammerspiele, and has been a member of the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg since 2009. He has appeared at the Salzburg Festival regularly since 2000. Harzer received prizes for roles on stage, in film and on television. He has been the bearer of the Iffland-Ring since March 2019.
Samuel Finzi is a Bulgarian-German actor. Since his start in the late 1980s, he has hundreds of film, television, and theatrical credits. Between 1993 and 2011, he received ten acting awards.
Marietta Piekenbrock is a German art curator, dramaturge, author and a cultural manager. Her projects combine theatre, dance, performances and music with cultural history, architecture and everyday life. As an artistic manager of the Cultural Capital of Europe RUHR.2010 and Istanbul.2010, and for the Ruhrtriennale 2012-14, she invited international artists and curators to collaborate with the local cultural participants and players on developing new artistic projects in areas of radical social change. Her programmes of events and initiatives made a strong case for sustainable cultural practice. Her 2012 series of events "No Education" promoted a new discourse on the relationship between art, children and education.
Peter Schwickerath is a German sculptor.
Jutta Lampe was a German actress on stage and in film. She was for 30 years a leading actress at the Schaubühne founded in Berlin by her husband Peter Stein, where she played both classical theatre such as Alkmene in Kleist's Amphitryon, and world premieres including Robert Wilson's Orlando for one actor, and roles that Botho Strauß created for her. She was also engaged at the Vienna Burgtheater and the Schauspielhaus Zürich. She appeared in more than twenty films from 1963, including lead roles in films by Margarethe von Trotta. Lampe was named Actress of the Year by Theater heute several times. Other awards included the Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring and the Joana Maria Gorvin Prize for her life's work.
Endre M. Holéczy is a Hungarian-American-Swiss theater director, actor, and writer currently living in New York City.
The Alfred Fischer Hall (Alfred-Fischer-Halle) is a multi-purpose event venue in Hamm, Germany. It was built after design by Alfred Fischer as the machinery hall of a coal mine in 1912. After the mine was closed in 1976, the hall was transformed into a venue for conventions and concerts, among others. It has been a listed historic monument from 1989.
