We are bothmeshugga

Claudia S.C. Schwartz, born near Stuttgart in 1983, completed her degree in acting at the renowned Samuel Beckett Centre at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She received a scholarship for the Shakespeare program at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford (UK) and studied movement theatre based on Grotowski and Barba at the DAH Theatre Centre for Research in Belgrade, Serbia.

Since completing her actor training in 2004, she has appeared on stage at theatres in Ireland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Germany, including with the documentary theatre Das Letzte Kleinod and at the HAU in Berlin. In Ireland, where she lived and worked for ten years, she worked as an actress with theatre companies such as Loose Canon, Rough Magic and Making Strange, which have won multiple awards at the Irish Times Theatre Awards and Dublin Fringe Festival Awards for their productions. Claudia has also acted in plays by Shakespeare with male inmates at Dublin’s largest prison for many years. Most recently, she performed in the play Burn or Out at the theatre Brandenburg an der Havel in 2019.

Claudia’s first written piece of theatre, the one-person play Ways Of Making You Talk, in which she played the protagonist, was nominated for a New Writing Award at the 2007 Dublin Fringe Festival Awards. In 2012, her play To Die For premiered in English at the English Theatre Berlin. Claudia’s first book Meschugge sind wir beide was published in June 2017 in German by Eden Books Verlag. The Goethe-Institut and the Frankfurt Book Fair chose her book to represent German literature at the International Book Fair in Jerusalem 2017.

Since 2011, Claudia has been coaching and training for effective communication internationally. On topics such as leadership, presentation, appearance and impact for companies as well as for individuals from different sectors such as business, politics and art & culture.

Claudia is a trained voice over artist (International Voice/ Christian Rode voice over artist school with Carmen Molinar and Academy for Professional Speaking with Katharina Koschny).

The Israeli composer Shaul Bustan was born in 1983 in a small kibbutz in the Negev desert, in southern Israel. He grew up between two worlds, as the child of a Persian mother and an Eastern European father. This not only shaped him personally, but also musically he is a traveler between cultures and genres. Shaul’s tonal language tells of his origins as a studied composer of classical music as well as his virtuosity as a player of the oud, the oriental short-necked lute, on which he improvises effortlessly incorporating elements of jazz into his tonal language. In this way he creates highly original and yet very smooth listening experiences, which clearly bring the connection between Orient and Occident to life.

Shaul graduated from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance with a Masters Degree in Composition in 2009. He has written pieces; from opera to chamber and orchestral music to music for film, theater and dance. Shaul has composed for several international orchestras, ensembles and soloists, including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, EOS Chamber Orchestra Cologne, Tiroler Ensemble für Neue Musik, Meitar Ensemble, as well as for the mandolinist Avi Avital, the Klezmer maestro Giora Feidman and for the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

In the 2023/24 season, Shaul was invited to compose for a special concert for the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra as part of the Uptown Culture project. In September 2023, Shaul played his new piece “Winter” as an oud soloist with the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin in the Great Hall of the Berliner Philharmonie.

Since 2011, Shaul lives in Germany. In addition to his work as a composer in various projects, he is the musical director of Ensemble Flensburg and performs regularly with his trio all over Germany.

He has received several awards for his work, including Best music at the International Film Festival of Ahmednagar (India, 2021), 1st prize at the International Tapiola Choir Choral Composition Competition (Finland, 2020), Avni-Yaddor composition competition (Israel, 2008) and scholarships from the German Music Fund, the German Music Council, the Cultural Foundation of the State of Schleswig-Holstein, the Berlin Senate and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.