Stage Design
Heike Vollmer
Heike Vollmer comes from Lower Saxony and lives in Berlin. She studied literature, costume design and subsequently stage design at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg under Raimund Bauer. Heike Vollmer began her artistic career as an assistant at the Berliner Ensemble, where she worked with Claus Peymann, George Tabori, Achim Freyer, Karl-Ernst Herrmann, Ulrike Ottinger and Jörg Immendorf, amongst others.
As a freelance set designer, she has designed a wide range of productions in Germany, Europe and the USA. Her first roles as a set designer included the Berliner Ensemble, the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, the State Theatres of Braunschweig and Karlsruhe, the Theatre Magdeburg, the Landestheater Linz and the Bühnen Bern. In Eastern Europe, in 2010–11, she worked with the Hungarian director György Vidovsky on István Tasnádi’s »East Balkan« and »The Wave« by Morton Rhue at the Bárka Shinház in Budapest. This was followed in 2018 by »Lord of the Flies« by William Golding at the Teatrul Național Tirgu Mureș in Romania. Together with director Thomas Dannemann, Heike Vollmer has developed several theatre productions, including «Romulus der Große« by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (DNT Weimar, 2015) and »Zersplittert« by Alexandra Badea (Staatsschauspiel Hannover, 2016).
Heike Vollmer enjoyed a long-standing collaboration with the director Philipp Stölzl. Between 2013 and 2023, they worked together on numerous theatre and opera productions: »Frankenstein« based on Mary Shelley (Theater Basel, 2014), »Cavalleria Rusticana / Pagliacci« by Mascagni and Leoncavallo (Salzburg Easter Festival, 2015 / Semperoper Dresden, 2016) as well as Gounod’s »Faust« (Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2015 / Aalto Musiktheater Essen, 2016), »Der Phantast« (Staatsschauspiel Dresden, 2017), »Andrea Chénier« (Bavarian State Opera, 2017), »Frankenstein« (Hamburg State Opera, 2018), »Andersens Erzählungen« (Theater Basel, 2019). This was followed in 2019 by the joint production of »Rigoletto« for the Bregenz Festival and, in June 2023, »Rusalka« by Antonín Dvořák (Dutch National Opera Amsterdam).
In the 2021/22 season, she conceived Carl Maria von Weber’s »Der Freischütz« (Nationaltheater Mannheim) with the artist collective Kommando Himmelfahrt (Thomas Fiedler, Jan Dvořák and Julia Warnemünde), and in 2022/23, Alban Berg’s »Wozzeck« (Aachen Opera). In 2023/24, she worked with director Philipp M. Krenn on the Austrian premiere of Péter Eötvös’s opera »Schlaflos« at Graz Opera. This was followed by Richard Wagner’s »Parsifal« at the Tyrolean Festival Erl in 2024/25.
In collaboration with the director and puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan, »Tosca« was staged during the 2021/22 season, followed by Jacques Offenbach’s »Orpheus in der Unterwelt« in 2023/24 at Dortmund Opera. This was followed in 2024 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s »Die Zauberflöte« in Cleveland, Ohio (USA), with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. In 2025, they jointly staged Johann Strauss’s operetta »Wiener Blut« in Vienna at the Schönbrunn Palace Theatre and at the Aalto Music Theatre in Essen.
Future joint projects will take them to the Vienna State Opera in 2026/27 with Giuseppe Verdi’s »Un ballo in maschera« and to the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam in 2027/28.
During the 2024/25 season, Heike Vollmer collaborated with director Andrea Moses to stage the world premiere of »Adam & Eva«, based on Peter Hacks’ work and composed by Mike Svoboda, for the Schwetzingen Festival, in co-production with the Neues Musiktheater Linz. This will be followed in the 2026/27 season by Henry Purcell’s »Dido and Aeneas« (Staatstheater Wiesbaden).
In January 2026, Heike Vollmer collaborated with the artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat on a production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s »Orfeo ed Euridice« at the Teatro Regio di Parma.
In 2021, Heike Vollmer received a work and research grant from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe for her experimental work in digital formats.
In 2020, the production received the »OPUS – Deutscher Bühnenpreis« for the technical achievements of the set design for »Rigoletto« at the Bregenz Festival.