Since 1983, Michael Simon has been designing spaces for drama, musical theatre and dance for choreographers such as William Forsythe and Jiří Kylián, and directors such as Christopf Nel, Peter Greenaway and Pierre Audi, whether in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Beijing or Tokyo – his designs create spaces in which movement, music and images come together in extraordinary ways.
In 1990, he staged the project NEWTONS CASINO for the first time in collaboration with Heiner Goebbels at TAT Frankfurt. From 1993 onwards, he staged his own productions for opera and theatre in Basel, Berlin, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Hanover, Karlsruhe, Munich, Paris and Vienna. In Beijing, he worked with director Li Liuyi at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in 2017/18 on stage designs for KING LEAR and HAMLET. In Zurich, his most recent work was the set design for ÄRGER IM PARADIES by Stephan Müller at the Schauspielhaus in 2018 and the set designs for WINGS OF WAX and STEPPING STONES by Jiri Kylian at the Opera House in 2019. At the Brussels Opera House, he created the stage designs for Richard Wagner's SIEGFRIED and GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG in Pierre Audi's production in 2024/25. From 2008 to 2021, Simon was professor of stage design at the ZHDK. In 2022, his illustrated book ‘Fertig gibt's nicht’ (There's no such thing as finished) on stage design processes was published by Theater der Zeit.
