Metatheater

In the page's words:

The Meta Theater was founded in 1980 by the architect and urban planner Axel Tangerding. Axel Tangerding received essential impulses for the conception and aesthetic orientation during his years of active participation with the great theater avant-gardists Ellen Stewart and her La Mama Theater in New York and Jerzy Grotowski and his Teaterlaboratorium in Wrozlaw, Poland. Another role model was the Bauhaus with its specific form of merging architecture, craftsmanship and all artistic genres. The theater building created by Axel Tangerding also contains many references to Bauhaus architecture, both conceptually and aesthetically. As a result, the Meta Theater sees itself as an experimental, cross-border theater laboratory for the exploration and expansion of new methodological, dramaturgical and aesthetic forms of contemporary theater practice.

For 40 years, the Meta Theater has received great resonance and recognition in professional circles in Germany and in many European countries with its strongly visual theater projects characterized by language, music and movement. International guest performances have taken the Meta Theater to Canada, the USA, India, China and Japan.

As one of the few venues in Europe, Meta Theater has also explicitly cultivated encounters with non-European theater traditions, with a focus on cultural mediation and theater anthropology (early examples include: Amos Hetz, Jerusalem, 1980 "Animals", Ann Bogart, New York, 1982 "Grid-Szenen eines Hauses", Yoshi Oida, 1984 "Über den Berg kommen", and the intercultural projects such as 1992 "Gilgamesh", 1999 "Bablyon" and 2016 "Enuma Elisch").

In 2018, Meta Theater hosted the international network meeting "IETM Munich 2018 - Res Publica Europa" for cultural professionals and theater makers from Europe in Munich and the region.

The appreciation of Meta Theater's work is reflected in numerous publications and press releases, but also in the awards that honor Axel Tangerding's achievements: 2002 Federal Cross of Merit in recognition of his intercultural and international artistic commitment, 2012 Tassilo SZ Culture Prize for sustainable, successful commitment to interdisciplinary art, 2017 Hausenstein Award for his services to cultural mediation and 2018 admission to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.