Matthias Lilienthal was head dramaturg at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz under Frank Castorf from 1992 to 1999, where he initiated, among other things, the engagements of Christoph Marthaler und Christoph Schlingensief. He was program director for Theater der Welt 2002 in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Duisburg. For the first time he developed “X Apartments” for this festival, a format which by now has been utilized three times in different districts of Berlin, and has been adapted for Caracas, Istanbul, São Paulo, Warsaw, Johannesburg and many more. From 2003 to 2012 he was artistic director and manager of the HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) in Berlin. The directors’ collective Rimini Protokoll has continuously presented and elaborated productions at the HAU. Lilienthal’s initiative to deal with the peculiarities of the Kreuzberg/Neukölln district has been reflected in the program series “Beyond Belonging” with stagings by Nurkan Erpulat, Neco Çelik, Tamer Yiğit, and others. Quite a stir was caused by the two major final projects “Unendlicher Spaß”, a 24-hour tour through the utopian west and “Die große Weltausstellung”, a cooperation with raumlaborberlin where the Tempelhofer Feld served as venue. From September 2012 Lilienthal lectured as resident professor for ten months in the home workspace program at Ashkal Alwan Beirut. He was program director of Theater der Welt 2014 in Mannheim.

Starting with the 2015/16 season Matthias Lilienthal is working as director of the Münchner Kammerspiele.