Dual leadership at the Lucerne Theater
From the 26/27 season, a dual leadership team will take over the directorship of the Lucerne Theater: Katja Langenbach and Wanda Puvogel will jointly succeed Ina Karr.
According to the theater's press release, Katja Langenbach and Wanda Puvogel have been part of Ina Karr's artistic management team as acting and dance directors respectively since the 21/22 season. From the coming season, they will jointly take over the directorship of the Lucerne Theater. They will hand over their current division managers to internal staff. The teams of the two divisions will be restructured and in some cases supplemented by new staff. The two co-directors will continue to actively accompany and support their current divisions. Ina Karr is leaving the Lucerne Theater at the end of the 25/26 season after five years. She was appointed General Director of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein last June.
As before, the complex opera division, which is the largest in terms of personnel, will be jointly managed by Opera Director Ursula Benzing and Music Director Jonathan Bloxham. Teresa Rotemberg remains director of the Junges Luzerner Theater.
Katja Langenbach studied dramaturgy and directing in Munich and New York. After working as an assistant at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and at Bayerischer Rundfunk, she has been working as a freelance director since 2005. Since 2021, she has been acting director at the Lucerne Theater, where she most recently directed the production "Hard Land".
After completing her violin studies, Wanda Puvogel moved backstage and has now been working in very different contexts in the dance sector for three decades. For three years, she was responsible for tour planning and organization for major international dance companies at the Norddeutsche Konzertdirektion Melsine Grevesmühl. In Switzerland since 2007, she worked from 2008 as dramaturge and manager of the Bern Ballet, directed by Cathy Marston. From 2014, as a member of the professional association Danse Suisse, she campaigned for a better anchoring of dance in Switzerland and good working conditions for dance professionals. Well-connected nationally and internationally, she worked as a dramaturge for the Migros Culture Percentage Dance Festival Steps from 2015 to 2020. She has been dance director at the Lucerne Theater since 2021.
