Brian Michaels, born in London, is an outstanding Jewish director. He studied philosophy at the University of Sussex and has been living and working in Germany since 1973. With a broad repertoire of operas and the foundation of the first immigrant theatre in West Germany, »Il Teatro Siciliano«, he has shaped the theatrical landscape. He develops pioneering projects that cross traditional genre boundaries.

Michaels has produced for various theatres, such as the theatres in Hamburg, Halle, Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Timișoara and New York. Immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, he staged Levin’s »Murder« in Los Angeles. His works have regularly been shown at national and international festivals and, as of now, he has directed more than 70 plays.

One of his most recent works, his production of Aristophanes’ »Lysistrata«, was performed amidst the ruins of the ancient city Paphos. Plays by William Shakespeare, on the other hand, have been a focus of his artistic work for almost two decades and the work with the group »I MACAP«, which he co-founded, is based on a revival of the traditions of the commedia dell’arte. After he worked out a version of Homer’s »Odyssee« with young immigrants from Stuttgart, he staged a number of operas at the Staatsoper Stuttgart. Until today, Michaels has put on more than 40 operas at home and abroad – for example in Nuremburg, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and Vienna.

Among his own plays and performance there is for instance »Osiris – Talking to the Dead«: the ancient Egyptian texts are 3500 years old and have been translated by egyptologist Jan Assmann. In his play »Mixed Feelings« a fictive dialogue between the Palestinian actress Nisreen Faour and a European Jewish director is the focus. In 2019, he presented his play »Searching the Silence« in Łódź, Poland, which concerns the loss of the Jewish world in Poland after the Second World War. Other plays include »MENSCH«, »Walking with Avraham« and »Der mythologische Garten von Elevsis«.

Brian Michaels was a professor for acting and direction at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen until 2013. Today, he is professor for performance at the Akademia Musyczna in Katowice, Poland.