About Us
Story
What happens before an association is founded?
What precedes the founding of an association? People who are missing something, who want to make a difference toward one or more common goals. So, what were these people missing when they founded protagon eV in 1999?
The seven initiators from various disciplines were driven by the vision of transforming public space into a cultural space and countering increasing privatization. The goal was to create spaces for theater culture in public spaces and to create joy and lightness in everyday places through theater and performances – while always critically addressing the questions and themes of the day and expressing them through the means of the performing arts.
The people who decided to found protagon eV were familiar with this form of theater and cultural work from other countries, where theater and art in public spaces often enjoy a long tradition and can be the true locus of politics. They wanted to revive this lost function of both theater and public space in general in Germany: to be a place for negotiating social processes, for encounters and dialogue. Even today, this goal remains paramount in all our projects.
The diversity and now also the size of the projects are due to the persistent, passionate and goal-oriented work of many committed people in recent years.
Self-image
Collective
The association's work is based on collective structures that have developed over many years. We strive for a horizontal organization as much as possible and make important decisions together. Through collaborative work on vibrant cultural projects, a spirit of community and solidarity develops. Thus, even after more than 20 years, the cultural association's original vision remains alive: a place that sees theater culture as an important part of the social process; a place to breathe deeply, marvel, and be inspired; ultimately, a place that draws attention to life.
Sustainable
Our projects have been guided by the principle of sustainability long before the advent of CO2 certificates and "climate-neutral" air travel. Our productions and events are designed for longevity and minimize resource consumption through reuse, recycling, and integration into local cycles. Our team has many years of experience organizing professional projects with minimal resources. And we're a little proud of that.
International
Not only have the association's projects long transcended national borders, for example, in important EU projects like Erasmus+ and Creative Europe, in which protagon has been collaborating with partners from across Europe for many years, or in the socio-cultural education project Escuna Criativa in Brazil, but an international spirit is also blowing at the cultural grounds in Frankfurt and at the festivals. The core team already combines several nationalities, and during major projects, several dozen different native languages can be seen. This situation strongly influences our theater work and ensures decentralization and fresh perspectives, even outside of the dominant Western culture.
Decolonial
In this sense, we also understand our work as decolonial. For us, this primarily means giving space to marginalized voices and perspectives, continually seeking dialogue, striving for equality, and addressing colonial and racist patterns of thought and action not only in our projects, but also reflecting on them in our daily work and in our teamwork.
Low-threshold & inclusive
Our events are open to everyone and accessible, including financially. We thus play a key role in ensuring that the idea of broad participation can be concretely realized and experienced. This is a principle we have remained true to since the association's founding, and one that goes hand in hand with our mission: Culture for All. We are aware that fixed admission prices are a reason for many people to stay away from an event. But we also know that culture has value, that artists deserve fair pay, and that many visitors are happy and willing to give something. That's why our events operate on the principle of admission by donation or solidarity collection.
For us, inclusive also means focusing on the kind of art and culture that is relevant and understandable to a broad audience. All too often, theater remains behind closed doors, conceived and performed for an exclusive audience. We bring it to where the people are: to the streets and squares of the city and rural areas.
Cultural education
We are certain of one thing: theater can change the world. And if not the whole world, then at least the world of each individual, leading to empowerment, awareness-raising, and growth. We therefore see our socio-cultural education projects as grassroots movements toward a larger transformation. Over the years, we have worked with many target groups and in many places: with women*, refugees, children and young people, the elderly, and people with disabilities; in Frankfurt am Main, the urban periphery, and rural areas, Germany, Europe, and beyond.
protagon - an inventory
Our team
Our projects are organized by our team of people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
Artists, actors, academics and experts from various fields work together to take on all the tasks involved, from administration, management and financial management to program curation and press and public relations.
To carry out our large-scale projects, the core team expands from ten to 40 to 50 people. External experts and the antagon ensemble, along with many volunteers, help to organize the festivals. Our team brings together many different nationalities and languages.
Bernhard Bub
Founding member, board member
Bernd Abraham
Founding member, board member
He came to Frankfurt in 1984 for love and to study architecture. After completing his studies and landing his first job as an architect, he realized a long-held dream: a trip to West Africa lasting several months. This was followed by trips to Brazil and Costa Rica. With drummer friends, he organized the Grand TamTam on the Zeil for several years and subsequently made a name for himself with the samba-reggae group Bloco FunkOForte—loud, danceable, and lively.
Rehearsals took place in the rooms of the antagon theater group, where he met the future mother of his two sons. And from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, he took over management of the theater group. A wild time touring Europe and the world. It quickly became clear that a cultural association needed to be founded to meet the demands of public institutions. So the association was founded in 1999. A few years have passed since then. As an architect, he has designed spaces; as a club member, he is interested in how to fill them with life. He likes projects that surprise and are sometimes a little out of the ordinary. On the association's board, he can combine both: structure and spontaneity. And he really enjoys continuously developing the topic of culture and theater in public spaces with an incredible number of committed people from all over Europe and the world, and in collaboration with municipal institutions.
Joscha Erker
Technical Management
Bàrbara Luci Carvalho
Barbara Carvalho is an actress, performer, and lecturer in theater and dance. She has been working in Frankfurt am Main since 2010 and is part of the antagon TheaterAKTion collective. She previously studied theater pedagogy at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil. Since 2018, she has been pursuing an MA in Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen.
She develops educational and artistic projects with Afro-Brazilian and contemporary dance, performance, stilts, and physical theater, mostly in public spaces in collaboration with Protagon eV - Friends and Supporters of Independent Theater Action. Her work is based on physical theater, Feminist Theater of the Oppressed (following Barbara Santos and Augusto Boal), and the production and use of theater masks, body awareness, and physical education. She has taught at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences and Heidelberg University.
For ten years, she has also been the coordinator of the socio-cultural Brazilian-German exchange project "Escuna Criativa" and is the curator of the artistic program team at Sommerwerft - International Theatre Festival on the River. For four years, she has directed the International Women's Theatre Festival in Frankfurt am Main.
Ruben Wielsch
Curator, Management (Sound technical staff), Decoration, Childcare
Ruben Wielsch has been part of Protagon eV since 2013 and lives on the cultural grounds of this internationally active association as an artist in residence, in an organizing and supervising role for group processes, and as a father of two. He is responsible for the board of trustees of the Winterwerft music program and the Unterwegs festivals. He also serves in an advisory capacity for the Sommerwerft, organizing the sound technicians for the festivals as well as an in-house childcare center for artists with children. He also aims to create his own cultural atmosphere through decoration, in which everyone feels welcome at the festivals and events. He firmly believes in the political impact and importance of a collective reality that creates and shares an existential space for us, in which control and empowerment come from within and in which transparent, consensual communication takes place.
Lucas Tanajura
Theatre educator, curator of Queer Night, accommodation organization
Lucas Tanajura is a performer, artist, and theater teacher from Salvador, Brazil. He has been involved with theater and body art since early childhood. Since 2003, his artistic career has been dedicated to physical theater, which he first encountered as a performer at the KNTC in Amsterdam.
As a trained sports teacher, he worked in South America, Africa, Europe and Asia as an actor, musician, theater educator, assistant director and yoga teacher before starting his collaboration with antagon theaterAKTion and protagon eV in Frankfurt am Main in 2014.
In addition to his artistic work as an actor and director, socio-cultural projects with young people and adults in the periphery of Frankfurt, Brazil, and Hungary play a major role in his career. Since 2021, he has curated Queer Night and, since 2022, reconqueer, both projects that give visibility and a platform to artists from the LGBTQI* community and their themes in the heart of Frankfurt society.
At the Protagon Festivals, he has been organizing accommodations and welcoming artists since joining the association. This role is highly appreciated by him due to his charisma and social skills. He also conducts workshops and helps organize European projects.
Benedict Müller
Curator, Project Manager, Stage Manager and Accountant
A firm believer in working, learning, and living within collective structures, Benedikt has been involved with protagon since 2019. After a 13-month volunteer service with the COMPA theater project in Bolivia, he was determined to use art and culture to challenge the imperialist, capitalist, and anthropocentric narratives in German society and to demonstrate alternatives. His central focus is that theater and culture must be truly freely accessible to everyone.
Growing up in a small town, he firmly believes in the idea of bringing theater and culture to the people, rather than bringing people to institutions.
In addition to (project) accounting, stage management, and much more, he co-founded the unterwegs festivals, is part of the Winterwerft project team, and is active in various European cooperation projects. He is guided by the conviction that only together, in previously unthinkable alliances, can we bring about social change that puts the lives of everyone on this planet at the center.
Lauren Boissonnet
Volunteer coordination international
Lauren Boissonnet was born in 1995 in Alsace (eastern France) and grew up near Ajaccio in Corsica and later on the west coast of France. She studied literature and languages in Bordeaux, Madrid, and León (Spain).
She earned her bachelor's degree in languages applied to law and economics, specializing in international relations. Languages she learned during her studies: French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, and Russian.
Driving license: B, C, CE
Lauren coordinates the international volunteers who come to protagon eV's festivals, including the association's European Solidarity Corps volunteer program.
She also oversees their work schedule and accommodation structure. With her craftsmanship and attention to detail, she is deeply committed to the cultural center's appearance and structure.
Effi Bodensohn
Curation Gallery, Hall Rental, Internship Coordination
Effi Bodensohn has always enjoyed shaping her environment, preferably with and for others. Her dream is to fill public spaces with art and culture and make them accessible and everyday for everyone. For this reason, she has worked and gained experience in educational and artistic-cultural institutions and programs across Europe, including the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Atelier Frankfurt, and the Art Across The City festival in Swansea, UK. She is also a state-certified educator. Effi is a performer, painter, and visual artist, and she created the "Gallery" at Protagon, which she co-curates for Winterwerft and the International Women* Theater Festival. A native of Frankfurt, she worked as a volunteer at the Sommerwerft for many years and now heads the well-known information point there. Since 2021, she has been a member of the Protagon Association and is responsible for hall rental, the conception of children's and family programs, as well as the decoration and visual design of festivals, events and the general cultural and living space.
Anna D'Errico
Anna D'Errico is a performer, author, curator, sensory expert, and neuroscientist. She studied dance theater and dance alongside her studies in neurobiology. She also has decades of experience in social, sanitation, and cultural institutions, as well as nearly fifteen years of experience with the International Red Cross, where she specialized in international humanitarian law and peacekeeping.
All these interests and interdisciplinarity brought her to antagon theaterAKTion and Protagon in 2017. Since then, she has carried out several artistic and cultural projects in the community and with the artistic ensemble. For the ensemble, she worked as a tour manager alongside the main tour office; for Protagon, her main activities include co-curating art gallery projects, writing texts, project management for Erasmus and European projects, and the awareness concept for the festivals.
Bobby Packham
Technical Management
Bobby Packham is a lighting, sound, and video technician from England who completed an event technician training program at the Southbank Centre in London in 2017. Between 2017 and 2020, he worked as a lighting technician at two of Europe's largest arts centers—the Southbank Centre and the Barbican Centre in London—as well as at the UK's largest music festival, Glastonbury, and at the National Theatre in Britain. He has worked as a technician for multimedia art installations, theater, dance, corporate events, and live music, and organized several club nights in London and Lithuania.
He has been part of Protagon since 2021 and works as Technical Director for our annual festivals. He works closely with artists, programmers, and technicians to ensure the technical requirements for all the performances we host are met. He firmly believes in Protagon's DIY and sustainable approach and is actively involved in the repair and maintenance of our technical equipment, renovating our cultural center, and over the past few years has carried out electrical installations in our accommodation and offices, built signage for our festivals, and maintained our fleet of over 80 bicycles, using recycled and reused materials wherever possible.
Edith Van den Elzen
Photo and video management, curation “Pandora’s Box” and cinema
Edith is experienced in creating and editing videos and photos and organizes the documentation of the various festivals and events taking place on and around the Protagon site. She leads the large team of filmmakers and photographers and acts as a bridge between the artists who receive the material and the social media department. She also curates the feminist video installation "Pandora's Box" at IF*TF, the gallery, the silent film cinema at the Sommerwerft, and other film screenings and events. "Pandora's Box" has existed for five years since Edith joined Protagon eV and offers visibility to new and experienced creators. These works focus on collectivity, activism, environmental issues, experimentation, and giving marginalized groups an additional voice.
Edith completed her studies in film and video art at the AKV St Joost art academy in Breda, Netherlands, where she also experimented with painting, photography and conceptual art.
Julia Nierzwicki
Curation and project coordination Winterwerft, Unterwegs and Kulturfreiraum
Julia Nierzwicki is a theater maker and cultural organizer. Before joining Protagon eV in 2023, she worked as a freelance theater educator and organized events and encounter projects for cultural centers and festivals. Her goal was always to bring people together through collaborative cultural creation and to create spaces for encounters and exchange. At antagon & protagon, she combines practical theater work with her passion for making theater in public spaces accessible to everyone. She is co-responsible for curating the international theater festival Winterwerft, the cultural space at Sommerwerft, and the on-the-go theater festivals, and she handles funding applications, production, and artist care for the festivals. As a cultural studies graduate, it is important to her to bring diversity and variety to the stage as a matter of course.
Francesca Jouaux
SANE Project Management, Coordination of International Volunteers, Social Media, Editing of Programme Booklets
From a young age, Francesca lived in a community setting and organized festivals collectively. Her focus was always on communication, openness, and the ability to cooperate.
Since 2024, she has been a freelance artist in residence at antagon and protagon. Here, she coordinates the international volunteers (together with Lauren and Clémence), manages the socio-cultural, anti-racist SANE EU project (Stories about new Europe), and co-directs its successor project, "Growing Together": a weekly theater course on migration and sustainability for people with and without a migration background.
Before the festival programs go to print, Francesca also looks over them again and puts everything into the right format.
Joaquím Alaña Puente
Program booklet editor, jointly responsible for music stage management at the Sommerwerft, Growing Together Project
Joaquím Alaña Puente, a native of Cologne, is a performer and cultural organizer. Before joining Protagon eV in 2025, he studied biology and worked as a field biologist at the environmental engineering firm NagolaRe in Jänschwalde and in the planning office on renaturation projects in Brandenburg. He devotes his free time not only to music, dance, and theater, but is also involved in several left-wing and environmental activist groups and a contact group for sexualized violence. He is driven by the motivation that theater—especially critical theater in public spaces—is a powerful tool for intersectional justice and collective change.
Hugh Alderson
Hugh Alderson has been a chef for 34 years. His professional journey began in his home country of Australia and led him via England to Germany. Hugh has gained experience in all areas of the hospitality industry, including at the Old Opera House in Frankfurt, in major catering companies, and in a variety of small and large restaurants.
He is the founder of the KüfA (Kitchen for All) collective "Food that's Left." For many years, he has been rescuing food and cooking healthy meals for everyone.
At protagon, he organizes catering for artists and crew at our festivals. His many years of experience in food rescue and catering contribute significantly to the success of large-scale projects like the Sommerwerft and help us meet our sustainability standards. His organizational skills and sensitivity to the needs of our employees and the project as a whole have helped him save many a precarious situation.
Dario Lozano
Cook and Performer.
