On the hunt for the next piece

Which stories deserve a place on stage, and when does a play become a success? For over 15 years, Thomas Guglielmetti has been putting together the programme for the Theater Winterthur in his role as artistic director. In doing so, he relies on experience, curiosity – and sometimes on a stroke of luck.

One story that particularly captivated Thomas Guglielmetti is Franz Kafka’s *The Metamorphosis*. The programme director at the Winterthur Theatre has read countless plays that recount the fate of the giant beetle. Yet no version captivated him quite like that of the author Philipp Löhle. “Löhle’s version is exactly the opposite. You experience the plot from outside the room, from the perspective of Gregor’s family, the three lodgers and the maid,” says Thomas. “It’s astonishingly fascinating.” The manageable number of protagonists unexpectedly gave him an idea. Instead of a play, the 63-year-old envisaged an opera. Using money from the lottery fund, which, according to Thomas, the Winterthur Theatre “receives once in a blue moon for exceptional projects”, he set up a project with Löhle, the composer Gordon Kampe and the Augsburg Theatre. The result was staged on 18 September to mark the start of the 2026/27 theatre season.

“To be honest, I have to say that 90 per cent of it is experience.”

– THOMAS GUGLIELMETTI

But this is “a stroke of luck”, he says, as Thomas normally commissions ready-made plays. He sums up his work as follows: “We have a cultural mandate that must be fulfilled.” But how does the curator find the productions he brings to the stage? On the one hand, he reads a great deal – not just plays, but also novels and other genres. On the other hand, he requests scripts for plays he is not yet familiar with. He also keeps an eye out for stories that haven’t been performed in Winterthur for a long time. Then there are theatres that regularly bring their productions to Winterthur, such as the Magdeburg Theatre, the Detmold State Theatre or the Burgtheater in Vienna. He gives these priority. And, of course, he occasionally takes a peek at what the competition is doing: “If a play appears two or three times in the programmes, I take a closer look at it.” Although Thomas is often able to read the scripts, he doesn’t usually see the entire production in advance. Ballet productions in particular sometimes come from overseas. Does he simply rely on his intuition in such cases? He’d love to answer ‘yes’ to that question, but instead he laughs: “To be honest, I have to say that 90 per cent of it is experience.” And he has plenty of that. He has been programme director at the Theater Winterthur – Switzerland’s largest touring theatre – since 2010.

Text: Nina Cascioni is a journalist from St. Gallen. When she’s not writing an article, she’s on her yoga mat, dancing at a party or losing herself in a good book.
Photos: Nils Lucas Mund is a photographer and picture editor at Coucou.

This article appeared in issue 148 of Coucou Magazine (August 2026).