Lydia Steier (original concept and stage direction)

Lydia Steier
www.lydiasteier.com

Lydia Steier was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She moved to Berlin in 2002 after receiving a William J. Fulbright award.

Recent projects include a new production of Busoni’s rarely performed Turandot, paired with Pagliacci at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar, which earned her directing work the distinction of “new discovery of the year 2009” by Deutschlandradio Kultur. In the season 2010-2011, Steier will direct new productions of Lohengrin for the Los Angeles Opera, Madama Butterfly for Oper Bremen, and Händel’s oratorio Saul for the Staatstheater Oldenburg. She will also return to Weimar in 2011 to direct Die Lustige Witwe.

Over the last few years Steier has also served as choreographer for Calixto Bieito’s Der fliegende Holländer and the Jossi Wieler/Sergio Morabito production of La Juive at the Staatsoper Stuttgart. She also co-directed and choreographed Elektra for the DNT Weimar.

In spoken theater, her original staging of Howard Brenton’s Play for the Poor Theatre for The English Theatre, Berlin, earned invitations to festivals in Dublin and New York. In 2005, she was awarded the HAU 100 Prize for Independent Theater in Berlin for her production of Ionesco’s The Lesson. After winning this honor, the production was invited to tour Hong Kong.

Also a passionate advocate for new music, Steier’s multimedia production of Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King for the International Contemporary Ensemble has been presented in Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Michuacan, Mexico.