Kerstin Lenhart

Kerstin Lenhart has been directing the Youth and Expert House at Theaterhaus Jena since 2011. In her directing work, she explores the relationship between individual and universal demands. This is also reflected in her work with non-professional performers of all ages. How can diversity, freedom, and inclusion be practiced and expanded in a world whose political consensus has fragmented into particular individual interests? Her projects have taken her to venues such as Hebbel Theater Berlin (HAU), Maxim Gorki Theater, Sophiensaele Berlin, Städtische Bühnen Heidelberg, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Theater Bielefeld, Theater Oldenburg, and Brut Wien.

In Das Deutsche wäre eine Makrele (2011) at Maxim Gorki Theater, 15 young people with refugee backgrounds from various countries collaborated with five professional artists to play and reflect on their perspectives of Germany and the peculiar behavior of its citizens. At the Zadar Snova Festival of Contemporary Theatre (2018) in Croatia, she developed, together with performer Željko Marović and seven residents of a senior residence, the biographical kaleidoscope Ich und ich und die Welt, which explored the possibilities of peaceful coexistence.

Kerstin Lenhart studied criminology, theater studies, and social pedagogy. Internships took her to Volksbühne and Berliner Ensemble. In 2000, she worked at the Theater der Welt Festival under the direction of Mathias Lilienthal and later assisted at Schauspiel Frankfurt, where she presented her first directing work Hund Frau Mann by Sybille Berg in 2004. Her production of Felicia Zeller’s Bier für Frauen was invited to the Nachwuchsfestival Freischwimmer in 2005. In 2009, she was a fellow of the International Forum of the Berliner Theatertreffen.

Since 2011, she has been working at Theaterhaus Jena, where she rebuilt the theater youth club teenpark. Together with set and costume designer Mirella Oestreicher, she develops many productions in a collective process with young and older participants of diverse identities. Her production 80 über Nacht was invited to the Federal Meeting of German Theater Youth Clubs in Oldenburg. Most recently, she co-directed the German-Iranian transcultural research project World WoMen*, conceived by Mirella Oestreicher, which was presented in 2022 at the International Performing Arts Festival HighFest in Armenia.