Maria Ursprung and Deborah von Wartburg

Foto: Julia Schwendner

Maria Ursprung (*1985) writes plays and radio dramas. She studied Theater Studies and German Studies at the University of Bern and FU Berlin, later pursuing Creative Writing at the Swiss Literature Institute. Her play Schleifpunkt, developed during the DRAMENPROZESSOR workshop for playwriting in 2018/2019, was invited to the 2020 Author Theater Days at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. She was a resident playwright at Theater St. Gallen as part of Stück Labor Basel 20/21, where she wrote the play Die nicht geregnet werden (Those Who Cannot Be Rained). In the fall of 2021, she was a guest in the playwrights' studio at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, where her classroom play Vakuum (Vacuum) premiered at Junges DT. In 2022, she was a fellow at the International Forum as part of the Berliner Theatertreffen and a resident at the Literary Colloquium Berlin. Since 2022, Maria Ursprung has been part of the co-leadership team at the Aargau touring theater, Theater Marie.

Foto: Maximilian Czerny

Deborah von Wartburg (*1991), who grew up in Göttingen (Germany) and Winterthur, discovered and fell in love with theater as a child extra at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen. After finishing school, she spent several years working in local journalism and, since late 2024, has been part of the team at kulturtipp magazine. For her master’s thesis in Cultural Journalism at ZHdK, Deborah wrote her first play, Victory im Sonnengruss. This dystopian democracy science fiction won the 1st Else Lasker-Schüler Prize and premiered at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern. Deborah now aims to further explore how theater texts can uncover societal connections and use storytelling to develop new perspectives on them. She lives in Zurich with her partner and her cat.