In conversation: Marco Damghani's year at NIDA

Marco is a young freelance theatre director from Germany. He will soon be graduating from the Ernst Busch Academy in Berlin. For a year, however, he is enrolled at the most well-known Australian College of Theater and Film, the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, for a master's degree.

Marco Damghani Source: Thiago Braga

Together with theatre director Prof. Robert Schuster, also from the Ernst Busch Academy, Marco put on Bernard-Marie Koltes’ play Roberto Zucco, with the final year students of NIDA. Although written in the 1980s, this piece is still totally contemporary, as it deals with the question of how much freedom society is prepared to provide for greater security.

In addition, the play offers a number of bigger parts, and thereby opportunities for many of the young actors to shine.

Marco is very excited about the cooperation of the various faculties in the Australian institution, which teaches not only drama, but also stage design, costume design and all other technical professions that are part of the theatre business.

We talk about the differences between the approaches to theatre studies and the art of directing in Germany and NIDA, where film and television are also included. With a group of students, Marco is also involved in a video production, a collaborative music video for Triple J and Rage, which can soon be seen on television.