AMY STEBBINS
WRITER-DIRECTOR
BIO
Amy Stebbins is an American writer and director, living and working in Germany. Her theater lies at the intersection of performance, opera and new media. She has received commissions from institutions such as the Bavarian State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Augsburg State Theater. Among her collaborators are Hauke Berheide, Michael Einziger, Oksana Lyniv, Belén Montoliú, Sir Henry, and Richard Whaling. Her artistic training took place at the Berlin Volksbühne where she interned/assisted artists like René Pollesch, Sebastian Baumgarten, and Chris Kondek. Residencies and fellowships include: the Academy for Theater and Digitality, the German Chancellor Fellowship (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation), the Akademie Musiktheater heute, and the Fulbright Assocation.
In addition to her artistic work, Stebbins' is also the author of multiple publications addressing topics in theater studies, race and performance, creative arts therapy, and contemporary opera. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Seminar, Critical Social Policy, The Arts in Psychotherapy, and she has chapter in the upcoming anthology Theatre and Internationalization (Routledge, 2020). She has also written on the intersection of US-American new plays, identity politics and the culture industry for Zeit-Online, and has served as co-editor of Music-Theater Now's triannual publication in 2016 and 2019.
Stebbins has also dedicated significant energy to pushing for institutional reform in new work development in both spoken theater and opera. She has convened multiple Transatlantic exchanges for artists and arts administrators from institutions such as Steppenwolf Theatre Company, The Goodman Theatre, The Münchner Kammerspiele, and the Gärtnerplatztheater. Together with Hauke Berheide she is the co-founder of New Opera Dialogues, an artist-led platform to promote international dialogue about aesthetics and best institutional practices for contemporary opera.
Stebbins holds a Ph.D. in Germanic Studies and Cinema & Media Studies. Her dissertation "Theater against the Turn: Acting Dialectics at Frank Castorf's Volksbühne" considers acting practices and their conceptual implications at the Berlin Volksbühne in the 1990s. She also holds an M.A. in Germanic Studies from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University.
CONTACT: amycarolynstebbins@gmail.com
"BREATHTAKING
MUSIC-THEATER!"
- Das Orchester
"AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE BAVARIAN STATE OPERA, WHICH PATH TO FOLLOW IN THE PRESENT DAY."
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Berheide and Stebbins
nearly create a model for contemporary opera."
- Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
"ÜBER-FUNNY, RAZOR-SHARP PUNCHLINES."
- Tagesspiegel
"Amazing and extreme - a wild experience."
"A grandiose ... exciting, intense, and informative evening."
"A revolutionary evening of music-theater."
- Bachtrack