Janusz Kica (born in 1957 in Wroclaw (Poland) studied theater studies at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow. In the early 1980s he moved to Germany and took courses in theater studies and art history at the University of Cologne. In Germany he initially worked as a director and set designer in various theaters, and from 1986 to 1989 he was a permanent assistant director and later a resident director at Wuppertaler Bühnen, a theater celebrated by Pina Bausch. Since then he has worked mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia.
In addition to his own directorial work, he was also involved as assistant to Andrzej Wajda and as production manager for Peter Stein at the Salzburg Festival.
Janusz Kica is a laureate of many theater awards, mainly in Slovenia and Croatia. The most important of these include the state award for artistic achievements in Slovenia, as well as a number of awards for theatre performances, among them five Slovenian Borštnik Awards (in 1996 for Kafka’s “America”, in 1997 for Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”, in 1998 for Calderon’s “Life is a Dream”, in 2003 for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night's Dream” and in 2005 for Primo Levi’s “La Tregua”). In Croatia he has received several awards for adaptations of classic plays and for productions of new contemporary texts (including William’s “Night of the Iguana” in 2005 in Split and Matišić’s “Man of Wax” in 2019 in Zagreb).
Kica often and willingly produces new theatrical texts, proses adaptations and multicultural projects. For instance, in 2002 he performed the German premiere of Janusz Głowacki’s play “The Fourth Sister” at the State Theater in Mainz. In 2012 he directed a stage version of Thomas Mann’s novel “The Magic Mountain” at the well known Hersfeld Festival. In 2013 he staged the project “Europa” at the ZKM Zagreb Youth Theater in cooperation with the Birmingham Repertory Theater, the Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz and the Staatsschauspiel Dresden.
Janusz Kica has been a regular guest director at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna since 1999. The first of his eighteen productions was Calderon’s “Life is a Dream”. This was followed, inter alia, by “Sappho” (2002), “Liliom” (2003), “Amphitryon” (2005), “Dangerous Liaisons” (2007), “Ghosts” (2009), “Amadeus” (2010), “Professor Bernhardi” (2017). Janusz Kica also directed the world premiere of Daniel Kehlmann’s “The Journey of the Lost”, which opened the 2018/19 season at the Theater in der Josefstadt and the German premiere of Tom Stoppard's new play "Leopoldstadt" (2022) at the same theater.
