Esther Bialas

Esther Bialas was born in 1969 in Hamburg, where she also completed her studies in costume design at the Fachhochschule für Gestaltung (now: University of Applied Sciences). Since 2004, she has taught stage design at the Lerchenfeld University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. Bialas has a long-standing collaboration with director Nicolas Stemann. She designed the costumes for Stemann's productions of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" at Schauspiel Hannover, Jelinek's "Das Werk" at Burgtheater Wien or Schiller's "Die Räuber" at Thalia Theater in Hamburg. She has also worked closely with directors such as Stefan Herheim, Martin G. Berger, Daniel Kramer, Sigrid Strøm Reibo and Christiane Pohle. She has been named costume designer of the year several times by the magazine "Theater heute" and her work has repeatedly been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. Bialas is also a stage designer, for example for Stefan Müller's production of "Werther" (Massenet) at the Lucerne Opera or as part of "Biographies 36 37" by the LaborLavache collective and for several works by Christiane Pohle. She designed sets for the Theater Basel, Vienna Burgtheater, Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Deutsches Theater Berlin, the Schauspielhaus Zurich, for opera productions in Lucerne and Basel, and for film, among others. She has also worked with the director and artistic director of the Komische Oper Berlin, Barrie Kosky, on several occasions, including for Strauss' "Die schweigsame Frau" at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and at the Komische Oper she developed the costumes for "Die sieben Todsünden" (Weill), "Ball im Savoy" (Abraham) and "West Side Story" (Bernstein), among others. For the successful production "The Magic Flute" (Mozart) Esther Bialas developed the costume design.