Arabian Night

Samuel Weiss was born in Mennedorf in 1967. Fr om 1974 to 1986 attended Waldorf Schools in Zurich, Chur, Yerne (Sweden), Bern, and the school of the Christian Church in New Zealand. He trained in acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna from 1986-90 without graduating. In 1991 he was invited to play the role of Mortimer in the production of "Maria Stuart" at the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt. In 1991-92 he worked at the Landestheater Tuebingen. Since 1993 he is an actor at the Staatstheater Stuttgart. His main roles are: Eben in E. O’Neill’s ‘Desire under the Elms', Leonce in G. Buechner’s 'Leonce and Lena’, Caligula in Camus's ‘Caligula’, Hamlet in Shakespeare’s 'Hamlet'. Since 1997 he has directed: Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, at the Waldorf School in Ludwigsburg, D. Harrower’s ‘Knife in the Hens', 'Arabian Night' by R. Schimmelpfennig at the Staatstheater Stuttgart. Since 2001 he works at the German Drama Theatre in Hamburg.

Roland Schimmelpfennig was born in 1967 in Goettingen. After a long stay in Istanbul he studied directing at the Falkenberg School in Munich. After graduation he was invited to the Munich Kammerspiele Theatre as assistant director. In 1995 he joined the dramaturgy department of the same theatre. Since 1996 is a free-lance author. In 1998 he received the Else Lasker prize for his first play Fish for Fish. In 1998 has spent a year in the USA, wh ere he worked mainly as the translator. Since 1999 he has worked at Theatre "Schubuehne" in Berlin. His plays include: 'Eternal Maria' (1994), ‘AVery Long Time Ago in May’ (1996), ‘From Town to Country, from Country to Town' (1996), ‘A Female Terrorist in a Taxi’ (1997), ‘War of Waves’ (2000). 'Arabian Night’ was written at the request of the Staatstheater Stuttgart in 2000.