Mizgîn Bilmen

Mizgîn Bilmen, born in Duisburg in 1983 and raised in a Kurdish "guest worker" family, is a theater and opera director as well as an author. She studied stage directing at the Folkwang University of the Arts and was supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) from her second year of study until one year after her graduation. In 2017, she received the Götz Friedrich Prize for her production "Charlotte Salomon – Life or Theater?". Since 2016, she has worked as a freelancer, directing plays and operas for municipal and state theaters as well as in independent contexts across Switzerland, Germany, and Kurdistan. She maintains an ongoing artistic collaboration with set designer Sabine Mäder, costume designer Martina Lebert, and musician Nazanin Nori. Her work combines aesthetic inquiry with a political engagement with power, class, and social structures. Bilmen thinks like an artist and observes like a political intellectual.

In the 2026/27 season, Mizgîn Bilmen will direct the world premiere of James Reynolds’ "Die Mitternachtstür" at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.