Das Rote Sofa: Karl Kneidl & Frank M. Raddatz

In the organizer's words:

The Red Sofa is the TMD's long-standing discussion format. Guests from Düsseldorf's culture and art scene take a seat on an actual Red Sofa. There they chat with Sascha Förster, the director of the TMD, about their careers, biographical anecdotes and current projects. In May, Karl Kneidl, stage designer and former stage design professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, will be a guest on the Red Sofa to coincide with our current annual exhibition Szenenwechsel. Frank M. Raddatz, publicist and dramaturge, will also be a guest.

His book Grammatik der Bühne - eine Gespenstergeschichte by Karl Kneidl will be published in May 2025 and will be presented to the public for the first time at this Red Sofa. The long-time professor of stage design at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf invites you on a wild odyssey through half a century of German theater history, on a journey to productions by Pina Bausch, Peter Palitzsch and Peter Zadek, Matthias Langhoff, Emine Sevgi Özdamar or Lore Stefanek, to name just a few beacons in this rich universe from the heyday of director's theater. The publication is not based on the conventional categories of a linear chronology and its rigid coordinates of space and time. Rather, its pulse is directed towards central materials that have repeatedly been used in the most diverse constellations in order to reveal their open and hidden sides. Against the horizon of half a century of theater history, numerous sketches and drafts, photos of rooms, letters, book excerpts, explanations and commentaries create a labyrinth that allows the reader to become an explorer.

At the Red Sofa, the author Karl Kneidl and the editor Frank M. Raddatz of Grammatik der Bühne - eine Gespenstergeschichte will talk to Sascha Förster about the creation process and what the ominous subtitle is all about.

Guests of the Red Sofa can visit the Szenenwechsel exhibition free of charge before the event.