Roland Schimmelpfennig

Roland Schimmelpfennig is the most-produced living playwright in the German language, and one of the most performed contemporary playwrights in the world. He worked as a journalist in Istanbul and was engaged at the Munich Kammerspiele after studying directing at the Otto Falckenberg School. Since 1996, Roland Schimmelpfennig has been working as a freelance author.

His plays have been performed with great success in over 40 countries worldwide from Vienna’s Burgtheater to London’s Royal Court to Tokyo’s National Theatre. He is the winner (often more than once) of the most prestigious prizes in German-language theatre: the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Dramatikerpreis (the highest prize for Drama in Germany, which he has won twice), the Nestroy-Theaterpreis (an Austrian prize, it honours the best work in German language theatre, he has also won this twice), and the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis.

In 2016, his first novel On a cold, clear January morning at the beginning of the 21st century was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. He has also won the ARD Radio Play of the Year Prize in Germany. Schimmelpfennig has written three dozen stage and radio plays, and continues to write both fiction and drama.

The Village Voice said of him: “Schimmelpfennig connects the everyday with the mythic...and does so with a lightness that is about as German as García Márquez on a sunny day.”