Tobias Husemann

Dundu at the Unesco World Youth Festival in front of the Daimler-Benz Museum in Stuttgart

Tobias Husemann (born January 11, 1970 in Stuttgart ) is a German puppeteer and puppet maker.

Husemann became known to a wider audience with the five-meter tall character Dundu, which he created and played by a team of five puppeteers.

biography

Tobias Johannes Ferdinand Husemann was born in 1970 in Stuttgart as the son of the painter, sculptor and teacher Frimut Husemann and his wife, the potter Elwire Husemann. From 1977 he attended the Waldorf School on the Uhlandshöhe. At the age of 12, Tobias founded his first own puppet theater with the support of his parents , with which he also appeared in public. After an apprenticeship as a carpenter from 1987 to 1990 and after completing his community service , he began studying at the Art Academy in Stuttgart in 1991 . As a result of his studies, Tobias Husemann's artistic interest shifted to interior design for a few years, and in 1991 he founded the company Interio Designs - Free Furniture Design . Parallel to his art studies, he designed and produced furniture made of wood and steel with his company, among others for the graphic designer, typographer and author Kurt Weidemann , for the writer Heidemarie von Wedel and for the musician Thomas D.

Husemann parted ways with his company in 1995 and dedicated himself to making and playing puppets. To do this, he went to Jerusalem in 1996 and worked there for six years for the well-known Teatron Hakaron . For the play Elvis new clothes for the theater, the artist also built and played his first major character in the form of Elvis Presley . When building this almost four-meter-high doll, Husemann attached great importance to the execution of Presley's legendary hip swing. With Elvis, the puppet is played with the help of three puppeteers, Husemann celebrated great successes in Israel; among others at the International Puppet Theater Festival in Jerusalem.

In 2002 the puppeteer returned to Germany and went to Bremen for two years. For the city of Bremen's Free Night of Masks event , Husemann built the set and the large mask for Roland von Bremen , which he also played himself. He then went to Berlin for a year in 2004, and then returned to Stuttgart in 2005. Here he designed and built the five-meter-high DUNDU figure. Since then he has also been building and playing large masks and other large characters, mostly for the demonstrations of Campact , the Internet platform for democracy in action . Among other things, Husemann made a large mask for the then head of Deutsche Bahn Hartmut Mehdorn and an SPD puppet for a demonstration by Campact at the SPD party convention in 2007 . The large figure of the Kohlosaurus from 2008 became very well known and popular. The five-meter-high dinosaur in the form of a coal-fired power station was part of the demonstrations of the Climate Alliance Germany against the new plans for the construction and expansion of coal-fired power stations this year. At every demonstration on his city tour across Germany, a cloud of 2,000 black balloons rose from inside the Kohlosaurus. For the demonstrations against the genetic engineering plans of the Federal Minister of Agriculture von Campact - Democracy in Action , Tobias Husemann made a large mask by Horst Seehofer and an oversized corn on the cob in 2009 .

Dundu

DUNDU at the walk act in Rancagua as part of Santiago a Mil 2017

After Tobias Husemann had already built and played all kinds of puppets, from tiny finger puppets to stick puppets, stick puppets and marionettes to very large puppets, he wanted to venture into completely new dimensions of puppet theater with his character Dundu. Dundu should be as tall as possible, but without a scaffold or similar aids to play freely and easily, so that the movements of the doll could appear natural and human despite its size of approximately five meters. It should appear powerful, but still transparent and filigree, but also be able to reflect light. DUNDU stands for YOU UND YOU and is the philosophy of the ambitious art project. The ensemble of puppeteers, actors, dancers and jugglers wants to make a contribution to a better world, and artistic impulses are shared with DUNDU.

These demands on the construction of his new character Dundu could not be met with the usual materials that are used in doll construction. Tobias Husemann had to break new ground, and so materials such as synthetic fibers, carbon fiber rods and high-performance aluminum found their way into doll construction. Together with his project manager Stefan Charisius and a team, Tobias Husemann built his first Dundu, which was finished in spring 2006. The large figure, consisting of a total of 14 parts, passed the first rehearsal, and Dundu was able to play out his entire repertoire without any problems. Tobias Husemann takes the audience with Dundu into a very special poetry of puppetry, whether at the opening ceremony of the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin, at the UNESCO World Youth Festival in Stuttgart or at the Kiel Week . At the beginning of 2013, Dundu started the Peace Walk to Tahrir Square in order to set an impulse for peace and cooperation there.

At the press conference on the occasion of the 10th anniversary in June 2016, Fabian Seewald (managing director of DUNDU and creative dynamo) announced the mission for the future: "Sharing the Light" "Sharing the Light" means for the ensemble that in addition to the emotional show productions Wow factor moves philosophy more and more into the center of performance.

In the meantime, DUNDU has traveled all over the world and in 2017 the team accepted the invitation of the largest theater festival in Latin America in Santiago de Chile : Santiago a Mil.

Web links

• Tobias Husemann homepage
• Dundu homepage
• DUNDU Teambuilding - The Philosophy that enables a Group: workshop concept developed by Fabian Seewald with the small DUNDU figures
• DUNDU video collection on Vimeo

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "Peace Walk"
2. ↑ 10 years of Dundu: Sharing the Light . In: Event Partner . December 8, 2016 ( event-partner.de [accessed February 18, 2017]).