Roberto Ciulli

Roberto Ciulli, born in Milan in 1934, studied philosophy and wrote his doctoral dissertation about Hegel. In 1960, he founded Il Globo, a tent theater on the outskirts of Milan, and headed the theater until 1962.

As a theater director, he has worked in Göttingen, Cologne, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Madrid, Istanbul and Tehran, among other places. After a stint as director at Schauspiel Köln from 1972-1979, he founded Theater an der Ruhr in Mülheim together with dramatic advisor Helmut Schäfer and set designer Gralf-Edzard Habben in 1980.

Ever since its founding, Theater an der Ruhr has been committed to doing international cultural work. It seeks out and promotes multicultural encounters, regularly gives guest performances abroad, and brings international troupes to Mülheim.

For the cosmopolitan Ciulli, theater is in and of itself political – a place for dialogue and an instrument to change the world. The local vision of a national or city theater always seemed too limited for this global thinker.

Ciulli has been awarded numerous prizes for his political and intercultural engagement, including the Polish Order of Culture (1990), the Federal Cross of Merit (1990), the Special Prize for Theatre Arts and Outstanding Cultural Understanding in Tehran (1999), the Hiroshima Foundation Prize in Stockholm (2002) and the NRW State Prize (2013).