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Responsibility. Make it visible. Make it happen.
Theatre is more than art.
Not in the spotlight. But behind the scenes. Not on stage. But where what later becomes visible is made possible.
Structures. Processes. Attitude. Responsibility. Collaboration.Not as buzzword bingo, but as lived practice.
We are looking for theatres and teams that show how responsibility in theatre really works – concrete, visible, effective, and beyond glossy mission statements.
FAQs
Why participate?
Because good work deserves to be seen.
- Prize money of €2,500 for the winning team or institution
- Visibility as an international best practice example for the theatre sector
- Relevance beyond your own house
- Publication of the best submissions on our website
Who can apply?
Theatre institutions or teams from Germany, Austria, or Switzerland who no longer just talk about how things could be better, but have already taken concrete steps.
We are looking for initiatives that have noticeably improved working conditions, communication, or organizational culture in your theatre.
Not sought:
- Mission statements. Guiding principles. Artistic projects.
- But what actually works in daily practice.
What will be recognized?
- Improved workflows, clear communication, effective collaboration
- Internal measures promoting diversity, equality, and inclusion
- New decision-making or process structures
- Prevention, health, or care measures; strengthening team culture and responsibility
- Sustainable changes that do not depend on individual people
Ongoing initiatives can also be submitted – if they are already having an impact.
How will submissions be evaluated?
The jury will assess entries based on five criteria:
- Practical relevance: understandable, realistic, implemented
- Impact: visible or measurable changes in daily work
- Responsibility: clear accountability, transparent decisions
- Courage: level of innovation, handling of mistakes, friction, and learning
- Transferability: inspiration and usefulness for other theatres
Timeline & Procedure
- Call is opened.
- Submission deadline: 26 March 2026
- Winners announced: end of the season, June 2026
All submission details will be published here.
Form Submission
Please send the following form completed to
team@daszeitgemaessetheater.at
The Jury
The jury brings together extensive experience from a variety of theatrical contexts, genres, and institutional realities within the performing arts.
Decisions are made independently and solely on the basis of all formally correct submissions.
Annette Dasch (born in Berlin in 1976) is a German soprano of international renown. While still studying singing at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, she won three international singing competitions. She thus began her career as a freelance artist at an early age and quickly established herself with a wide-ranging repertoire in both concert and opera.
She gained international attention in 2007 with her debut at the Salzburg Festival in the title role of Christof Loy’s Armida, and in 2010 at the Bayreuth Festival as Elsa in Hans Neuenfels‘ legendary Lohengrin.
Annette Dasch is particularly known for her powerful portrayals of central female characters in works by Mozart, Wagner, Janáček, and others. She regularly performs at leading opera houses and renowned festivals worldwide.
In 2008, she launched her own successful format, the Annettes DaschSalon, which has been thrilling audiences ever since. She has been closely associated with the Vienna Volksoper since the award-winning production Die Dubarry and will take over as artistic director of the Young Ensemble there from the 2026/27 season.
Prof. Karoline Exner, PhD – Head of the Acting Department and Dean of the Faculty of Performing Arts at MUK Vienna
Born in Celle, Lower Saxony, in 1972, she studied German language and literature and philosophy at the University of Cologne and the Free University of Berlin. She then studied directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna in the class of Univ.-Prof. Achim Benning. In 2005, she received her doctorate in an interdisciplinary program at the Max Reinhardt Seminar and the University of Vienna under Univ.-Prof. Dr. Peter Roessler and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Konrad Paul Liessmann.
She staged her first productions in Cologne and Vienna while still a student. During her doctoral studies, she also worked as a freelance production dramaturge. From 2005 to 2008, she was dramaturge at the Landestheater Niederösterreich, where she supervised several playwright competitions and staged her own productions. In 2009, she worked at the brunnenpassage in Vienna, a community arts project. From 2009 to 2013, she moved to the Theater St. Gallen as senior dramaturge. During this time, she worked with Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson, Stephan Müller, Wolfgang Mitterer, and Milo Rau, among others.
She headed the playwriting competition at the theaters in St. Gallen and Konstanz. She was a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, giving public lectures.
Professor Karoline Exner has been head of the Institute of Drama since 2013 and dean of the Faculty of Performing Arts since 2014. Since then, she has served on numerous juries, including for the City of Vienna’s drama scholarship and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Constitution and Media. She is also the deputy director of the Elfriede Jelinek Interuniversity Research Network. This role has led to publications and invitations to international symposia in Vienna, Montpellier, Tokyo, New York, and São Paulo, among other places. In 2025, she was elected deputy chair of the Standing Conference on Drama Education (SKS).
Murali Perumal is a German actor of Indian descent who was born in Bonn in 1978. After graduating from high school, he studied acting at the renowned Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna from 1998 onwards and has since appeared in numerous roles in film, television, and theater. He has appeared in over 86 films from five countries, including US productions such as “Big Game,” “Counterpart I&II,” “Charly’s Angels,” “Head Full of Honey,” “Bumper in Berlin,” and “TAR.” He has appeared in 18 feature films with Oscar winners Costa Gavras, Stefan Ruzowitzky, and Todd Field, as well as directors such as Til Schweiger, Elisabeth Banks, and Randa Chahoud. In 2014, he was named Best Actor at the Snowdance Film Festival in Landsberg. His best-known role to date is in David Schalko’s ORF two-part series “Aufschneider” alongside Josef Hader. He has performed in theater at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Volkstheater Wien, Schauspiel Köln, Schaubühne Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele, and in the independent theater scene in Munich and Vienna.He has been a member of the German Film Academy since 2020. He was also appointed to the main jury of the German Acting Award 2021, was a juror for the Federal Competition of German-Language Acting Schools in 2022, and a juror for the best children’s films at the German Film Award 2023.
For 17 years, he has been a diversity consultant, pioneer, Greenactors ambassador, and activist for artists of color and other marginalized groups, and is committed to promoting diversity in film, television, theater, and literature. He regularly appears in newspaper articles, radio reports, and interviews on the subject and has spoken at numerous diversity panels, including at the Munich Film Festival.
His commitment is aimed at equal participation, the representation of all Germans, and peaceful coexistence in Germany. He also teaches at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich and will next be seen in the film adaptation of the novel “Identitti.”
Julia Riedler, born in 1990 in Salzburg, where she also grew up, is an actress, radio play narrator, and director. She studied at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater. In her final year of study, she was hired on a permanent basis by the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg and received the Boy-Gobert Young Talent Award in 2013 for outstanding acting achievements. She was a permanent member of the ensemble at the Schauspiel Köln and from 2015-2020 at the Münchner Kammerspiele, where she received the Förderpreis des Vereins zur Förderung der Münchner Kammerspiele 2015, the AZ-Stern des Jahres as best actress in 2016, and the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis 2017. Since 2020, she has been working as a freelancer, including at the Thalia Theater Hamburg, the Schauspielhaus Zürich, the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, and in Vienna at the Volkstheater and Burgtheater, where she was nominated for the Nestroy Theater Prize for best supporting role in 2021 and won the Nestroy for best actress in 2025 with her solo performance “Fräulein Else.” She was also voted Actress of the Year by “Theater heute” and invited to the Berlin Theater Meeting. She has appeared in various film and television productions, such as Tatort (2022 Frankfurt, 2025 Cologne), the ARD series “30 Tage Lust” (2024), and the French feature film “Conann,” which premiered in Cannes in 2023. In 2025, she was a visiting professor at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater. In 2026, she will direct Hamlet at the Theater Freiburg.
Terms and Conditions – Open Call “Contemporary Theatre of the 2025/2026 Season”
Terms and Conditions – Open Call “Contemporary Theatre of the 2025/2026 Season”
Organizer
The non-profit association das zeitgemäße Theater (dzth) aims to make positive examples of good workplace practices in theatre organizations visible. To this end, a prize is awarded.
Competition Subject
The competition focuses on projects, initiatives, or internal optimization processes in theatre organizations that aim to sustainably improve working conditions, collaboration, or organizational culture.
Submissions may include completed or ongoing initiatives, provided there is a clearly described starting point and concrete changes have already been initiated in daily work.
The competition explicitly targets non-artistic contributions. Artistic productions, projects, or reinterpretations of theatre practice are excluded.
Eligibility
Eligible participants are all theatre professionals, teams, or organizational units in theatre institutions from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, aged 18 or older, regardless of role, hierarchy, or contract type.
Both completed and ongoing projects may be submitted.
Board members of dzth and their family members are excluded from participation
Participation Requirements
- By participating, entrants confirm that their theatre institution or team is based in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland.
- Submissions must be sent exclusively by email to team@daszeitgemaessetheater.at.
- Deadline: 26 March 2026
- Announcement of winners: expected June 2026
- Language: German or English
- Maximum file size: 200 MB
The following documents must be submitted in full:
– Completed submission form
– Description of the starting point and intended change
– Description of implemented measures, target groups reached, and changes achieved
– Lessons learned and their (planned) integration into standard operations
– Images are optional but enhance the visibility of the Submission
Important:
No videos or external materials.
No participation fee is paid.
Any taxes, fees, or additional costs incurred by the winner are the responsibility of the winner.
Evaluation / Jury
The evaluation consists of two stages:
Formal quality check by dzth
Verification of completeness and compliance with the competition subject. Submissions that fail to meet formal minimum requirements or lack traceable implementation will be excluded from jury evaluation.
Content evaluation by the independent jury – The jury assesses submissions according to the following criteria:
- Concreteness & practical relevance
- Actual change in daily work
- Responsibility taken
- Courage
- Transferability & exemplary effect
Each category is scored 1–5 points, plus an optional bonus point per submission (maximum 26 points).
Threshold: submissions scoring fewer than 10 points will be excluded from further consideration. If no submission meets the threshold, the prize may not be awarded.
Artistic activities are explicitly excluded.
Award
The winning institution or team will be notified personally via email and receives a freely disposable cash prize. By accepting the prize, winners consent to the publication of their name, submission, and submitted images.
The prize is non-transferable.
The amount of the prize will be determined and announced by the organizer.
Legal recourse regarding jury decisions, including any civil claims against the jury decision and prize allocation, is excluded.
Rights to Submitted Projects
By participating in the competition, entrants grant the organizer a non-exclusive, unlimited right in terms of time, geography, and content to document, publish, and use the materials submitted as part of the competition (e.g., texts, images, graphics) for the purposes of the competition and for public relations activities of the project “Das zeitgemäße Theater”, with credit given to the authors.
Copyright remains with the respective authors.
Participants further agree that their submitted materials, as well as any supplementary contributions, may be published permanently as best-practice examples in connection with the award and may be used for the project’s public relations activities.
Names, logos, and image material of participants—particularly of prize recipients—may be used in connection with the announcement of winners and reporting on the competition.
Data Protection
Personal data of participants will be processed exclusively for the purpose of conducting the competition, communicating with participants, and public relations activities.
Participant data (name, institution, project description) may be published and shared with media outlets.
The provisions of the GDPR and applicable national data protection laws apply. Participants have the right to access, rectification, deletion, restriction of processing, and data portability.
To exercise these rights, please contact: team@daszeitgemaessetheater.at
Disclaimer
The organizer is not liable for technical problems, data loss, or transmission errors.
Liability of the organizer and its agents and officers is limited to gross negligence and intent. Typographical and printing errors are reserved.
Liability for damages arising from participation is excluded to the extent permitted by law.
Exclusion Criteria
The organizer reserves the right to exclude participants, particularly if:
the submission does not meet participation requirements
false or misleading information has been provided
there is a breach of the terms and conditions
justified doubts exist regarding the integrity or honesty of the submission, particularly if legal regulations or public decency are violated.
Miscellaneous
The organizer may amend the terms and conditions for valid reasons and reserves the right to cancel the competition.
Should individual provisions be invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions remains unaffected.
Participation does not establish a contractual relationship beyond the conduct of the competition.
Jurisdiction: Vienna
Contact: team@daszeitgemaessetheater.a