Nuran David Calis
Speaker
Nuran David Calis was born in Bielefeld in 1976, the son of Jewish Armenian immigrants from Turkey. From 1996 to 2000 he studied direction at the Otto-Falckenberg School in Munich. During this time, he was an assistant at the Munich Kammerspiele Theatre and at the Zurich Playhouse (Schauspielhaus). In 2003 his first play, entitled Dog Eat Dog – Out of Baumheide, premiered at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. He has been regularly directing his own plays ever since: Urbanstories (at the Hannover Playhouse), Homestories, Café Europa (at the Essen Playhouse), Black and One of Us (Thalia Theatre in Hamburg). He has also directed works by other playwrights at the Hannover Playhouse (Spring Awakening, Cabal and Love) and at the Vienna Volkstheater (The Robbers, Macbeth). In 2006 Calis was awarded the Bavarian Arts Prize (Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis), and in the same year he received the Nestroy Prize for “Best Young Director” for his production of Schiller’s The Robbers at the Vienna Volkstheater as well as the “Federal Social State Prize” (Bundespreis Soziale Stadt) for his production of Homestories at the Essen Playhouse. In addition to plays, Calis also wrote and directed his first feature film, which appeared in cinemas in 2007 under the title My Mother, My Brother and I! In 2010 he filmed Wedekind’s play Spring Awakening for the television stations ZDF, ARTE and 3 SAT. In 2011 his semi-autobiographical novel The Moon is Our Sun was published.