Julian Hetzel

Julian Hetzel works as a performance maker and visual artist. He creates performative experiences with a political dimension and a documentary approach for theaters and galleries internationally. Born in the Black Forest (Germany), Hetzel is currently based in Utrecht. He studied at the Bauhaus University in Weimar with a focus on visual communication and graduated in 2013 from DAS Arts Amsterdam, an artistic research laboratory for new forms of theatre and performance art. In 2017, his performance The Automated Sniper won the VSCD Mime Prize. Between 2018 and 2023, Hetzel has been working closely with CAMPO arts center in Ghent. Their first collaborative production, All Inclusive (2018), was selected for the 2019 Nederlands Theater Festival, followed by Mount Average in 2021. In 2019, Hetzel presented three works during the Venice Theatre Biennale. The performance installation SELF was selected as the Dutch entry for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial. Last year, two productions from Studio Julian Hetzel were showcased at the Dutch Theater Festival: Diarrhea is My Favorite Color, for which Willemijn Zevenhuijzen won the Golden Cricket 2024 for the most impressive stage performance in youth theatre, and SPAfrica, which won the Directing Prize 2023-24 season. Since 2021, Studio Julian Hetzel has received structural funding from the City of Utrecht and the Netherlands’ Performing Arts Fund.