The choreographer, theater director, stage designer and performer Martin Zimmermann (b. 1970), grew up in the small Swiss village of Wildberg and, after an apprenticeship as a set designer, graduated from the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC) in Paris. For more than 25 years, he has been inventing, choreographing and staging visual and physical theater without words, whose mixture of contemporary circus, dance, theater and spectacular stage installations inspires a large audience. Making art accessible to all and campaigning for more inclusion and diversity are issues that are particularly close to his heart. For his plays, he creates bizarre and strange worlds in which everyday objects are shifted into parallel, often absurd worlds. He breaks with convention, reveals the invisible, makes the improbable appear true and encourages the audience to think in new ways. The core of his work is the dialogue between the human body and objects with a life of their own, which allows them to meet and interact with each other in unstable and threatening environments. The human being in all its complexity is at the center of his interest. In 2021, Martin Zimmermann received the highest Swiss theater award, the prestigious Grand Prix Darstellende Künste / Hans-Reinhart-Ring 2021.