The choreographer, theater director, stage designer and performer Martin Zimmermann, born in 1970, grew up in the small village of Wildberg (CH) and, after studies as an interior designer, he graduated from the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC) in Paris.  With the final graduation piece, Le cri du Caméléon, he toured around the world for three years and returned to Zurich, where he began to develop his own visual universe. For more than 25 years, he has been inventing, choreographing and staging visual and physical theater without words, whose mixture of contemporary circus, dance, theater and spectacular stage installations inspires a large audience. Making art accessible to all and campaigning for more inclusion and diversity are issues that are particularly close to his heart. For his plays, he creates bizarre and strange worlds in which everyday objects are shifted into parallel, often absurd worlds. He breaks with conventions, reveals the invisible, makes the improbable appear true and encourages the audience to think in new ways. At the core of his work lies the dialog between the human body and objects with a life of their own, which he allows to meet and interact with each other in unstable and threatening environments. The human being in all its complexity is at the center of his interest. His plays are performed worldwide, including the BAM New York, TOHU-Montréal, Tokyo Metropolitan Theater, Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Barbican à Londres, Sydney Opera House, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, le Hongkong City Hall, Théâtre de Carouge, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Festival d’Avignon, NTGent and the Fondation Beyeler art museum, to name but a few.
Zimmermann’s stage designs have won the Swiss Design Award three times in a row. In 2021, Martin Zimmermann received the highest Swiss theater award, the prestigious Grand Prix Performing Arts / Hans-Reinhart-Ring 2021. Martin Zimmermann is Associated Artist at maisondelaculture de Bourges / Scène Nationale. (Stand: 2024)