Photo: Christine Tritschler
Born in Cologne in 1960, Uwe Eric Laufenberg was active as actor and director at Schauspiel Frankfurt, Schauspiel Köln (1990-1993), the Schauspielhaus Zurich, and subsequently as senior director at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin from 1996 to 2000. As from 1993, he guest directed at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the Residenztheater in Munich and Vienna’s Burgtheater, amongst others. He has mounted opera productions at the Landestheater Linz (“Der Ring des Nibelungen”), the Vienna State Opera (“Elektra”), Dresden’s Semperoper, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona ("Der Rosenkavalier"), Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Komische Oper Berlin and the Hamburg State Opera. From 2004 to 2009 he was Artistic Director of the Hans Otto Theatre in Potsdam and from 2009 to 2012 at the Oper Köln.
With the start of the 2014/2015 season, Laufenberg took up the reigns as Artistic Director of the Hessian State Theatre of Wiesbaden. He inaugurated his tenure with new productions of Richard Strauss’s “Die Frau ohne Schatten” and Bartók's “Bluebeard's Castle”, while in the drama division he directed Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks”. He also adapted his production of Mozart’s “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” – which has been on stage in Potsdam, Cologne and Iraq (Sulaymaniyah) – specially for Wiesbaden. He has since directed the operas "Otello", “Così fan tutte”, Wagner's complete "Ring" cycle, "Tannhäuser", "Arabella", a Mozart double-bill consisting of "Idomeneo" and "La Clementa di Tito", "Carmen", "Le nozze di Figaro", "Il trittico", "Tristan und Isolde", "Pique Dame", "Don Carlo" and "Die lustige Witwe". In addition, he has directed the dramas "Hedda Gabler", "Don Karlos", the German premiere of Tom Stoppard's "The Hard Problem" and Houellebecq's "Unterwerfung, "Der zerbrochne Krug", a Beckett Trilogy, "König Lear", "Drei Schwestern" and "Tartuffe". As actor, he has appeared in productions such as "Dr. med. Hiob Prätorius", "The Antigone des Sophokles", "My Fair Lady" and "Michael Kramer".
In the 2023/24 season, he directs new productions of Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte", Verdi's' "Falstaff" and Shakespeare's "The Tempest".