Mousonturm is one of the most successful artists' houses internationally and its concept has circled the world as theatre role model for the future. It was opened in December 1988 under the directorship of Dieter Buroch.
The Mousonturm artists' house is domiciled in a monument protected expressionist industrial building, which was reconstructed by architects Speer & Partner according to the technical concept of its Operations Director Karl Krauss. With a height of 33 metres, the tower itself was Frankfurt's first highrise. The declared goal more than 10 years ago was to establish a playing and production facility for freelance artists at international level and to create an organizational model, which differs intensely from municipal theatre structures. Today, however, Mousonturm increasingly takes on a key position as research centre for new theatre forms and innovative production methods, and is continually preoccupied with the theory and practice of international avant-garde.
With its thematic keynotes and project series, Mousonturm creates concentrated phases for artistic and theoretical reflection and thereby forges links to theatre practice. For example, this is initiated by the International Summer Academy - a joint project with the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Sciences at Frankfurt University, as well as by the symposium series Vision Future.
Mousonturm is also a pacesetter in the field of new structural and support models (one example here is the Mouson Award: a prize of € 15,000 for the best choreographic performance of an ensemble during the playing season, or the German Producer Prize for Choreography: a nationwide prize of highest renown for artistic performance) and a pioneer in the field of setting up and expanding a domestic and international network of theatre producers (e.g. by the festival European Production Centres - Marginal Areas of Theatre). The support of young artists has special significance and Mousonturm has created a forum for experimenting, for example, the up-and-coming artists' project plateaux in conjunction with the Culture Foundation of Deutsche Bank.
Theatre makers, visual artists, musicians, authors, composers, producers and choreographs, with self-willed handwriting and at the start of their career, are guests of Mousonturm just as are artists and ensembles working as style-setting for the development of new presentational forms. The house also presents a number of national and international guest performances in the fields of dance, theatre, music, performance and literature. Visual art is represented by the studio programme 2 + 1, by a stipend awarded every two years and by galerie station, with 10 exhibitions per annum. The programme also includes Mouson Productions and Mouson Co-Productions with artists who regularly work with Mousonturm. In 1999, Mousonturm was awarded the greatly esteemed Binding Culture Prize for its interdisciplinary theatre work in a European context.