Jan Philipp Gloger becomes the new Volkstheater director

In September 2022 he made his Volksoper debut with Millöcker’s “Die Dubarry”, and in autumn 2023 he staged “The Side Effects” by Jonathan Spector, a play about a mumps epidemic in the USA, in the Burgtheater.

Of all places, the current acting director in Nuremberg, who has also worked in Bayreuth, has not yet staged at the Volkstheater.

“The Austrian capital is closer to him than the German one,” said the critic of the “Nürnberger Nachrichten”, who went to the Café Tirolerhof with the director the day after Gloger’s Burgtheater premiere. “And if you can get the notoriously complaining and spoiled audience in Vienna on your side, then you’ve somehow made it.”

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Gloger’s career

Born on December 14, 1981 in Hagen, Gloger studied applied theater studies in Gießen and directing at the Zurich University of the Arts. During his studies he worked as a stage musician, sat in on Johan Simons and assisted the group Rimini Protocol. He has been working as an acting director since 2007 and has directed, among others, the Bavarian State Theater in Munich, the Deutsches Theater and the Schaubühne in Berlin, the State Theater Dresden, the National Theater Mannheim and the state theaters in Wiesbaden, Karlsruhe and Mainz, where he was director from 2011 to 2013 was a director in the drama.

Several premieres of plays by Philipp Löhle, Elfriede Jelinek’s “Das Licht im Kasten” at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus or the German-language premiere of Ayad Aktar’s “Junk” at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg demonstrate his interest in contemporary drama. As a director, Jan Philipp Gloger hasn’t left a bad impression in Vienna so far. In “The Side Effects” he skilfully worked with changes in mood and the audience’s emotions and was not afraid to allow intimacy and pathos to arise. At the opening of Lotte de Beer’s Volksopern direction, he took a fresh look at a rather dusty work with “Die Dubarry”, relied on deconstruction of the genre and offered an evening that was as humorous as it was lively.

He has been staging operas since 2010, for example at the Zurich Opera, at the Semperoper Dresden, at the Royal Opera House in London, in Frankfurt and Amsterdam as well as at the Bayreuth Festival, where he staged Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” in 2012. He will be releasing Verdi’s “Un ballo in maschera” at the Cologne Opera on April 14th. At the upcoming Bregenz Festival he will stage Rossini’s early work “Tancredi” in the Festspielhaus (premiere: July 18).

“Great perspective”

Jan Philipp Gloger has been acting director at the Nuremberg State Theater since the 2018/19 season. On the occasion of the extension of his contract until 2028, Gloger was pleased in 2022 about the “great prospect (…) of being able to continue making theater for such an inspiring city, whose history and stories are far from being told.” Gloger has now found a new, even greater perspective ahead of time.

Gloger recently enjoyed an unprecedented success as acting director: With Rieke Süßkow’s production of Werner Schwab’s “Overweight, unimportant: Unform”, the Nuremberg State Theater was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen for the first time in its history. But Gloger also knows what failure feels like: In his last Nuremberg production to date, Schiller’s “Wallenstein”, which he premiered at the end of January, he has the general and his entourage buried under a huge stone slab that hangs threateningly at an angle from the start become. Anyone who doesn’t shy away from danger seems prepared for popular theater.