Ensemble

Vita

Stage Designer, Industrial Designer, Producer and Managing Director

Oliver Proske studied industrial design at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg under Dieter Rams and at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 1998, together with Nicola Hümpel, he founded the music theatre ensemble NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS at the Bauhaus Dessau. Since then, he has been responsible for all of the ensemble’s stage designs and also serves as its managing and technical director.

With more than 350 performances in over 80 cities worldwide, Proske has significantly shaped the international presence of the ensemble. He has been directly involved in all productions and performances of NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS.

His creative work also includes stage designs for the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau, the Puppentheater Halle, as well as various exhibitions and installations – including the sound art installation Cicadas (2012) and the exhibition Dinge der Welt as part of Theater der Welt (2008).

A central theme in his work is the connection between analogue stage space and digital technologies. Since 2019, he has been developing innovative stage technologies in close collaboration with scientists and programmers – particularly in the fields of augmented reality, camera tracking and artificial intelligence. For the project Verrat der Bilder (2019), 60 Magic Leap AR headsets were used simultaneously in a theatre performance for the first time in Europe. In collaboration with the HTW Berlin, a AI-driven camera tracking system was developed, enabling real-time automated video direction on stage.

In addition to his artistic work, Oliver Proske regularly lectures and gives workshops on scenography. From 2015 to 2021, he was a board member of the German Association of Scenographers. In 2011, he received the George Tabori Awardtogether with Nicola Hümpel. A lamp he designed is part of the current collection of the Bauhaus Museum Dessau.