Foto: Diar Nedamaldeen
Dr. Nélida Béjar (born 1979) is a Spanish composer based in Munich, Germany. Nélida studied Music Theory and Music Education at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and Composition with Wilfried Hiller at Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich. In 2012 she received a Ph.D. in Music Composition at Trinity College, Dublin, where she studied with Donnacha Dennehy. Nélida founded the undercoverfiction ensemble for contemporary music and music theater in Munich, along with theater director Björn Potulski. In this team, she has created music theater productions, working with casts that are linked to the theme of the respective project, such as “Perpetual Peace – A Swan Song” (2009) with contemporary witnesses of World War II from Poland and Germany and a children’s chorus, and "This New Ocean" (2013), an opera about globalization, in cooperation with various airlines, where the cast consists of crew members scattering all over the world after each rehearsal. Nélida teaches Music and Media at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich.
Björn Potulski (born 1976) is a German theater director based in Munich. Björn holds a Master Degree in Theater Studies as well as in Political Science and in Letters from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. After having staged in Munich numerous classics such as Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Kleist’s “Penthesilea” and Büchner’s “Leonce and Lena”, Björn specialized in developing new work. “The Lights are going out all over Europe – A Danse Macabre” (2004), a play about the breakout of the Great War in July 1914 successfully toured Munich, Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Washington, D.C., Boston and New York City. In 2007, Björn moved for a period of two years to the Mediterranean island of Malta to develop a series of theater productions exploring ancient sources of Western Civilization. For “EXODUS” (2008), he brought on stage a number of men who risked their lives while dealing with the idea of Promised Lands; among others an African refugee who almost drowned at sea, a seaman of the Maltese Navy who rescued him and his fellow boat people and a veteran of the 1998 Kosovo War. In 2009, Björn started his ongoing cooperation with composer Nélida Béjar (see above).