Direc­tor, Writer

Bio­graph­i­cal Notes:
Uwe Men­gel was born in Bergen/Ruegen, a city on an Baltic Island.  He stud­ied The­ol­o­gy at „Friedrich Schiller Uni­ver­si­taet“, Jena, East Ger­many.  After his escape to West Ger­many, he con­tin­ued his stud­ies at „Freie Uni­ver­si­taet“ Berlin-West and „Max Rein­hardt Sem­i­nar“ in Vien­na. He grad­u­at­ed (MA) in Dra­ma, The­ol­o­gy and Phi­los­o­phy.  In 1980 he emi­grat­ed to New York and since 1998 he lives in Berlin and New York.

Uwe Men­gel began writ­ing and direct­ing inter­ac­tive cross- media projects in East Ger­many, among them the per­for­mance „Vere­in zur Ver­bre­itung des Erd­flach­heits­gedankens“ („Asso­ci­a­tion for the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the notion that the earth is flat“) which was banned after the first show­ing. He cre­at­ed per­for­mances all over New York, from emp­ty store fronts  in the South Bronx, to the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art, to a land­fill on the Hud­son Riv­er, all the way to Bat­tery Park City in Low­er Manhattan.

He cre­at­ed his unique par­tic­i­pa­to­ry per­for­mances at many The­ater Fes­ti­vals, like Melbourne/ Aus­tralia; Zuerich/Switzerland; Berlin/Germany; San Antonio/ Texas. For Ger­man radio and TV he wrote and direct­ed award win­ning radio plays, as well as TV documentaries.

He was invit­ed for lec­tures and work­shops at: „Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty“, New York; „New York Uni­ver­si­ty“, New York;  „Freie Uni­ver­sität“, Berlin;  „Monash Uni­ver­si­ty“, Mel­bourne; „Inter­na­tion­al Som­mer Acad­e­my“, Frankfurt/Main;  „Inter­na­tion­al The­ater Insti­tute“, Switzer­land;  „Goethe Uni­ver­si­ty“, Frankfurt/Main;  Sum­mer Acad­e­my of the “Nation­al The­ater of Greece”, Athen;  Hochschule für Schaus­pielkun­st  „Ernst Busch“, Berlin.