Antagon team
A theater and a big family
Bernhard Bub
Bernhard Bub founded antagon in 1990. Autodidact theater studies, film and television studies. He acquired his practical training in cooperation with initiators of the free theater movements such as Julian Beck, the Living Theater and Ariane Mnoushkine, who revolutionized theater in the 80s. Bernhard feels connected to a theater tradition that experiences and reflects on it as a mean of communication in a constantly changing society. As a visionary, he stands for the process of experimental theater development. He is not only the artistic director of antagon theaterAKTion, a choreographer, an actor, a musician, a performer and a stilt acrobat. He is also a bus driver, a carpenter and a set designer.
Josha Erker
Josha Erker is the technical director of antagon theaterAKTion and of the 3 festivals of protagon Kulturgelände.
He is living in the antagon ensemble since his first day touring the world and giving his power and strenght to make the free culture possible.
Barbara Luci Carvalho
Barbara Carvalho is an actress, a performer and a lecturer in theater and dance. She is part of Antagon since 2010. She has a degree in theater education from the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil, and is doing her M.A. Choreography and performance at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen.
She develops educational and artistic projects with Afro-Brazilian and contemporary dance, performance, stilts and physical theater, mostly in public spaces in cooperation with Protagon e.V - friends and sponsors of free theater action. She works on the basis of body theater, feminist theater of the oppressed (after Barbara Santos and Augusto Boal), and the production and use of theater masks, body awareness and physical education. She was a lecturer at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences and Heidelberg University.
For ten years she has also been the coordinator of the socio-cultural Brazilian-German exchange project "Escuna Criativa" and is curator of the artistic program team at Sommerwerft - Internationales Theater Festival am Fluss. She directs the International Women * Theater Festival in Frankfurt/M since 2017.
Lucas Tanajura
Lucas Tanajura is part of antagon since 2014. He graduated from the Federal University of Bahia. He is performer, clown, acrobat, theater director and technician, yoga teacher, musician, singer and video maker. He worked for eight years in Amsterdam with theater, acrobatic and dance groups and toured with them in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. Lucas gives yoga and acrobatics lessons at antagon and is jointly responsible for the rehearsals and open trainings. He also takes care of the music and video editions for the productions.
Ruben Wielsch
Ruben Wielsch is part of antagon since 2013. As a musician and lighting designer, Ruben was self-employed for some time. Also working in the film industry as a lighting technician, lighting designer, director, film editor and set designer, he gained some experience before he came to antagon. Here he is an actor and performer, musician, composer, tool keeper, cleaning fairy, passionate cook, set designer, decorator and chauffeur - and enjoys being active. Recently, his main and creative area has shifted to composition and production management, or musical management of the theater. This includes recording, creating overall musical concepts, training and coaching new musicians and composers.
Benedikt Müller
Performer, musician and stage designer. Firmly convinced of working, learning and living in a collective, he dedicates himself to his career in antagon since 2019. From the beginning, he wants to find ways to engage with theater outside of intuitions and take responsibility for his development. Among his teachers, besides antagon, he counts Carolina Pizarro (Odin Teatret, DEN), Nelson Zanga (Coletivo Sileni, BOL), Ivan Nogales (Fundacion COMPA, BOL), Anton Adassinsky and Elena Yarovaya (derevo, GER/RUS). In search of his artistic expression, he finds inspiration in nature and is guided by his political vision of life in the collective and interdependence, somewhere between Butoh, stilt acrobatics and contact dance.
A first result of his independent artistic work is the duo "caMARá" (2021) with Lucas Tanajura.
Lauren Boissonnet
Lauren Boissonnet started theatre alongside her main studies of languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian and Arabic). Very impacted by her first theatre teacher Borja Maestre in the Lycée français de Madrid, one of her pillars on stage consists in the actor’s sincerity. Born in a difficult family background, she aims at passing a social message and a political opinion through her work. This is in what we could call the “search for a way to express the unsayable” that she then discovers physical theatre at antagon, which has become a big challenge to her: How to express a message without possibly using words?
Effi Bodensohn
Effi Bodensohn has always loved to create her surrounding with and for others. Her dream is it to fill the public spaces with art and culture and to make it availible for everyone. Thats why she contributed in pedagogical and artistic, cultural institutions and programs in Europe and collected a lot of experience. Amongst others at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Art Across The City Festival in Swansea/UK. Since this year she is Early Years Educator. For a long time she expressed herself as painteress visually, now also through physical theater. She has been volunteering for Sommerwerft Festival since 2014, and from spring 2021 she is part of the ensemble of antagon theaterAKTion where she is performing and creating costumes, stage such as the living- and culturalspace of the collective.
Bobby Packham
Bobby Packham is a theatre technician and musician from London, he specialises in lighting and joined antagon after several years of working at the Southbank Centre - Europe’s largest arts centre. At antagon he provides technical support, plays live music for shows and fixes the bikes. In his free time you might find him building a guitar, singing about porridge or sleeping in the sun.
Max Büttner
Max encountered theatre during his studies of language education in Cuenca (ECU), Bremen (GER) and Portsmouth (UK), when he found himself more and more drawn towards deeper and more personal forms of human interaction. As his experiences led him to believe that emancipation of the individual is the basis for broad societal transformation (and vice versa), he turned to theatre as a way towards this change. After intense learning periods in communal living in France, contemporary circus in Freiburg, theatre pedagogy in Heidelberg and peer-led journey education on the road he joined antagon in 2021. He is deeply interested in the dynamics of theatre-work based on a process of collective living and the potential
for societal and personal change in both. At antagon he likes to employ his body as a performer on stage and his mind as a craftsman of language and text.
Edith van den Elzen
Edith van den Elzen is a video artist who finds inspiration and material in nature, ranging from close-ups of the little details to wide landscapes. She often collaborates in collectives, and works together with musicians, performers and other visual artists, using improvisation as an important role. She's experienced in making and editing videos or photos, a skill she uses in antagon helping with live streams, making creative visuals and videos. She documents creative theatre processes or workshops with a quiet and observing eye, using music and soundscapes that are taken in that moment and finding the story with images rather than with textual explanation.
Edith graduated at the art academy in film and video art, where she also experimented throughout this path with painting, photography and conceptual art. Recently, she is connecting performance more with the creative process.
Anna D'Errico
Anna D’Errico is a performer, author, smell expert and neuroscientist.
She did her studies on dance-theater and dance alongside her studies in neurobiology. Those two sides of her work were always in connection crossing each other multiple times. The science: neuroscience and neuroaesthetics – finding out how our brain perceive beauty, embodies, and senses the external world.
The art: her background comes from physical theater and dance-theater mainly; she merges elements from traditional dances, Butoh (school of Atsushi Takenouchi) and theoretical studies from theater anthropology and dance-theater.
In between: the smell – Anna is interested in, and works with odors, and odor perception, in connection with movement and the performance space.
She loves the smell of sea, and of soffritto.
(On IG @perfectsenseblog - It/En).
Patsch Katrin Hailer
After studying inclusive education, Patsch set out to find ways of learning, living and sharing knowledge with the whole body and in community. In contemporary circus she found a first way into collective creations with the artistic language of acrobatics, slackrope walking and clowning. There she also worked with children and young people. Now she is part of Antagon to continue working, learning, searching and sharing with others.
Solal Phan Mazet
Solal has been developing their theater practice from a young age and got acquainted with different styles ranging from classical, naturalistic, contemporary, improvisation, clowning, dance and physical theater. Throughout their studies, they realized that what captivates them the most about any theater practice is working as a group and collective. Having always felt that there was more to learn from the chaos of life than academia, they chose to travel the world, volunteering in several communities in Europe. They found joy and passion in sharing diversity of knowledge and experiences, with the open mind of a child. They met antagon on their way in 2022 and joined the group shortly after, to strengthen their belief in the extensive experiment with both theater and communal practice.
At antagon, Solal working to develop as a performer, writer, improvisation teacher, woodworker, moderator and non violent communication facilitator.
Michael Schmidt
Michael is an actor from Chile, graduated from "Fernando Gonzales Theater Club" and with experience in several theater productions. Something that he came to continue exploring in Germany, always looking for the space to explore his creativity, social justice, his technique in physical theater and his good sense of humor; something that Antagon has offered him since the beginning of 2023 in a very good way. You will always see him with a smile looking for the smiles of others, whether in the kitchen, on stage or in everyday life.
Darío Lozano
After leaving school at the age of 15, Darío, in an autodidact way, has undertaken a long and remote path in the discovery of the very essence of humanity and life, through the world of art and expression, as he describes in his book "Sendero azul".
Actor, performer, professional chef, musician, kundalini yoga practitioner, musical composer, writer of novels, poems and short stories. Finalist in the poetic novel contest "Poetas Nocturnos" Diversidad Literaria, Madrid, 2016. Darío also has his own restaurant in the Riviera Maya, México.
In 2023 he began this path with Antagon, as an actor, musician and the cook of the family.
Francesca Jouaux
Since her childhood Francesca is amazed by the possibility of jumping into roles, telling stories and touching people through theatre and music play. Of forgetting her self for an instant and expressing something, others can find themselves in. Finding connection.
She lived in a small community in Leipzig for a while, where she pursuied her big questions for authentic expression, human connection and communication, then tried out other realities, for example in a farm and also in the office; always open for another experience and not yet ready for setteling down.
She joined Antagon in 2024 as a performer, musician and „student“.
Here her passions for living in community and artistic expression meet.