Dominik Breuer is a german director and author. He developed both premieres and adaptations of classical texts projects for the stage as well as concepts for public and unusual spaces, receiving several awards. 2011 he also founded the award-winning BRACHLAND-ENSEMBLE
During the following years his interest in the fields of political education, social sciences and ecology grew. Research took him to Tanzania, India, Syria, Japan and the Ukraine, among other places, and culminated in various documentary productions. He experiments with a wide variety of media and platforms and developed a growing interest in participatory methods that enable an audience to manipulate scenic processes. In 2025, he initiated the launch of pARTicipation – a Europe-wide program that uses artistic methods to counter growing populism. He presented the concept for the first time at the European Parliament in Strasbourg as part of the European Youth Event EYE 2025, commissioned by the Human Rights Action Council. A detailed CV you may findHERE.
In addition to his work as an director and author, Dominik Breuer works also as an actor, speaker and teacher for role study, voice, movement and stage combat. For more about this part of his work you may visit his other homepage and click ONSTAGE
Dominik Breuer lives in Brussels and Cologne.
The question "How is our society developing?" cannot be answered without the question "Who is involved in this development? But how can we reach different people so that they can participate with their individual skills in a way that is orientated towards the common good? How do you reach people emotionally without going down the (wrong) path of populism?
The Brachland Ensemble addresses these questions in an international Think Tank with referents from science, economy, politics, education and culture. Read More
The world holds its breath.
For the first time in history, the true nature of human rights is to be unveiled — in a ceremony broadcast across the globe. To make this miracle possible, two visionary engineers have created a walkable Human Rights Circuit: a living structure capable of both calculating the long-awaited answer and generating the power needed to transmit it. Yet there is a catch: the circuit can only come to life if, at every junction, the inner core of a human right is released and awakened. This feat demands extraordinary skills — skills the two inventors themselves do not possess. Just over one hour remains until the transmission begins — and time is running out.
BARricades is an artistic-participatory intervention in bars, cafés, and pubs with the goal of making pluralism tangible through play. The Federal Association of Socioculture and the Brachland Ensemble artists' network are training citizens in North Rhine-Westphalia and across Germany to become "game changers" who unobtrusively encourage social dialogue in their neighborhoods with specially developed games. A digital "Effective-Show" suitcase ensures sustainability and nationwide transferability.
In 2023, Belgian researcher Pierre* committed suicide. Eliza, a personalized AI chat bot that he classified as a sentient being ("ELIZA effect"), encouraged him to kill himself after he suggested sacrificing himself if Eliza would save humanity from climate change. Are we, as an emotionally vulnerable society, ready for a technology that already reaches deep into our privacy? Read More
How to deal with church spaces? How can preservation and reprogramming be found? What processes are needed to value churches and find a new use? The Brachland-Ensemble answers this question by supporting an interactive video-installation with interactive elements.
A dark and ugly evil is reaching for power in the country with unwashed claws: sinister creatures seduce people with tempting promises, cheap entertainment and completely under-complex answers to the most difficult questions. Since then, lies and forgetfulness have spread and threatened to destroy everything that once flourished so promisingly. Sent by the High Council, a group of steeled and heroic Media Magicians (they are also very attractive, by the way) set out to find the legendary Media Magica, an object of immeasurable power. Read More
Based on the Humanotop project, which was created in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University and Münster University of Applied Sciences, the Brachland ensemble developed a participatory audio walk that enables viewers to rethink the future of their city based on scientific data. In addition, an interactive online-game was created from the content to reach a wider audience. Read More
A little mind game: It's 5 past twelve. Despite all the social and ecological challenges, mankind has managed to turn the tide and get the system back on track. How could they have done it? Scientists from the future are racking their brains over this question in a laboratory. But to find the answers, they need the active support of other experts. Read More
Due to a controversial commercial and an accompanying global shitstorm, the white, male, inheriting, powerful, from an academic family, healthy, privately insured, heterosexual, Catholic, married and graduated CEO Peter decides to use the commission from an ominous client to produce a commercial to rehabilitate the image of the advertising agency. Diverse, to the point, the egg-laying wool-milk sow of the open society message.
Four groups in four different cities each control a game character and compete in a live online role-playing game against three actors from the Brachland ensemble to land the job. At any price? May the better ones win. Read More
The play is based on more than 100 interviews with members of the European Parliament in their favorite bars in Brussels. Together with the audience, the Brachland ensemble embarks on a journey: What if the power of the European Parliament was transferred to the patrons of a pub? Will they lead Europe to a better future? Or to its downfall? Either way, every decision will have a tangible impact on the evening. Read More
If your town were a single man, what would he be like? Would he be funny? Would he be healthy? Would he be old or young? What visions would he have, what did he play, what did this man laugh at? What experiences would he have had and what would have moved him? What outraged him and how did this person see the future? Read More
A gives B commands
In the course of the performance, the pleasure of commanding and the self-evident nature of obedience is intensified with a simple theatrical exercise: A gives B commands, which B immediately executes. When does the theatrical play stop and a real humiliation perhaps begin? Read More
The Brachland-Ensemble created a interactive digital Paper case for a live-conference on work adventure. In the truest sense of the word, an experimental roadmap is provided of how citizen participation can be rethought using the means of art and applied in an activating way in interactive face-to-face and online formats. Read More
Actions to create dialog
As part of the NRW 2022 state elections, the Brachland-Ensemble once again accompanied the "Live Democracy!" tour of the NRW State Center for Political Education with activities in public spaces in over 20 cities.
The Brachland-Ensemble has developed a roadmap for how citizen participation can be rethought using the means of art and applied in interactive face-to-face and online formats in an activating way.
16 partially animated videos form the „Archive of practical possibilism“ on the Homepage of our cooperation partner State Center for Political Education NRW are made available there free of charge as best practice guidelines (not only) for schools and educational initiatives. Read More
Nine animated videos about media manipulation and (self-)perception. Read More
You think, you know the people of Cologne? Then place your bet and clean up. Your stake? Your commitment. We're not betting money, we're betting your skills and your engagement. Win the support of Cologne initiatives and personalities and bet on your willingness to actively participate.
“The Higher Nonsense” or ‘Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense’ is an absurd comedy by Robert & David Goodale based on P.G. Wodehouse.
With workshops, performances and the concluding film competition, the ensemble explored the questions of where in Siegburg the largest social construction sites lie and where unused potential lies fallow.
n the course of the elections to the Council of Europe, the Brachland-Ensemble accompanied the "Living Democracy" tour of the Centre for Civic Education of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with actions in public space. Performers "jumped" into several historical or fictive characters and talked with the audience about actual political topics.
On the occasion of Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier's visit to Krefeld in spring 2019, the Brachland-Ensemble developed an interactive course, a "walk-in agora* ". Read More
Adaptation of Goethe's "Urfaust" and the Frankfurt trial records of the child murderer Susanna Margaretha Brandt.
Everything will be fine! A daring thesis in view of the current world situation? The Brachland-Ensemble pursues it in a worldwide research, in search of visionaries and role models. Within the framework of the documentary production, these are partly switched live - via Skype - onto the stage. An internationally researched play about "practical positivists" and the question: Who in our society gives the impulse to change things for the good?
Nomination for the Innovation-Prize Socioculture 2017
Encounters between German seniors with a personal refugee history and young refugees. The aim of pen friendships was to give young and old people with a history of flight the opportunity to meet each other - with an empathetic view and appreciation for each other. But reality forced the project into an other direction.
Awarded at the Hessian theatre days 2017 in the category "Understanding
Audience-Award Made-Festival 2017
Documentary live radio play based on the CIA torture report in cooperation with Amnesty International.
"The Curiosity of Brain" is an imaginative brain research, a mixture of physical theatre and animated film. With this project based on scientific results from neurology, the Brachland-Ensemble embarks on a journey into the interior of the protagonist's brain.
Two trenches, one slaughterhouse. Two ensembles, one piece of war. Cape versus pick helmet, Facebook versus newsreel. Small versus tall. Above versus below. And you right in the middle of it. Who is a friend? Who is the enemy? And while you wonder which side deserves to loose, propaganda's triumph began.
A study about perception and playing with reality. During the research the team investigated undercover inside of a Scripted-Reality-TV-Show. "I spy, with my little eye" was created in the scope of the residence in the Orangerie Theater im Volksgarten, Cologne.
Nominated for the Kurt Hackenberg Award for Political Theatre, Cologne
People fall ill due to working to much, people fall ill from not having a job, people fall ill working two jobs, still nearly unable to provide for the family. There is discrepancy between performance and pay.
But is pay always synonymous with money? What makes someone leave management level to sell hot dogs, singing? Where does self-fulfilment begin and where self-exploitation? During investigation i.e. in England, Tanzania, and Germany, of course, the Brachland-Ensemble obtained remarkable results.
For the realization of this project, the Brachland-Ensemble developed a catalog of questions on the topic of “empathy”. The Brachland-Ensemble used this catalog as the basis for conducting anonymous interviews with people of different origins, beliefs and affiliations throughout Germany. Over the course of the evening, the Brachland ensemble condenses the insights gained using dance, thus translating scientific facts into emotionality. What is the next evolutionary step towards an empathic civilization? And are we all really as bad as we think?
They live among us, and yet we know nothing about them. Some of them have experienced unimaginable things in their home country and even had to fear for their lives. The video installation “Strangers in Babylon” by the Brachland ensemble provides an intense insight into the lives of 15 to 18-year-olds west-africans refugees and introduces us to their fates. The directors lived under the same roof as the young people for more than a month to get a realistic impression of their situation.
Blinder: Ich was developed in 2012 on the occasion of the Alles-Was-Tanzt festival in Cologne and deals with the question of free will. How much freedom is possible for us? And do we want it?
Blinder is the first realized project of the Brachland ensemble and was premiered at the Stadttheater in Giessen as part of the TanzArt-Festival ostwest. The project deals with people in public space. Does individuality exist, where do we draw boundaries? Where are we prepared to give them up? How can the spectator's powers of observation be sharpened?
Collage consisting of various Shakespeare plays. 28 different roles from eight brilliant comedies are presented by five young people. Add Description Here
A project with pupils of the Hauptschule im Hederichsfeld in cooperation with Junges Theater Leverkusen about potentials and prejudices.
Stage Play by Lutz Hübner. For the production a complete Music-Album was produced.
Stage Play based in Faust II with music by Carsten Gunderman.
Stage Play by Lutz Hübner.
Stage Play based on Goethe's Faust I and a comic by the artist Flix
Musical-Revue about the Highlights of 20th century