Martin Butler is an award winning interdisciplinary artist, creative concepter and stage director.
During his international career, Butler has established himself as a highly versatile and innovative artist, working across a range of disciplines and styles and through this interdisciplinary approach his work explores the new dramatic that the combination of different genres facilitate.
Butler’s direction is characterised by its attention to detail, strong visual sense, and ability to create immersive, multi-sensory experiences for audiences. Butler has worked on a range of productions, from large-scale spectacles to intimate, experimental works.
He was trained in Drama at Manchester University, and then later Choreography and Performance at the SNDO, in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.
He was founding member and later artistic director of the Liminal Institute from 1997 to 2012. Since 1996 he has been creating performance work, at various theatres and festivals internationally. He is known for his collaborative approach to theatre-making, bringing together artists from different disciplines to create new works.
His new media and installation work has been shown in the Palais de Tokyo, Istanbul Modern, Beijing Design Week, European Media Arts Festival in Osnabrück, Los Angeles Design Festival, Fundación Telefonica in Lima, Photokino, Köln, Øsknehallen, Copenhagen, San Pau Modernista, Barcelona, Istanbul Design Biennale, Wiels Museum, Brussels, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Seattle Design week, Amsterdam Museum, Pixxelpoint Festival in Slovenia, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Olympus Photography Playground, Berlin, Kasteel Keukenhof, the Netherlands, the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, Marres, Maastricht, Salon Amsterdam, and Mediamatic, amongst many others.
From 2004-2014 he worked as artistic consultant for Mediamatic, Amsterdam, developing exhibitions and events, including the Amsterdam Biennale and the IK, IK, IK series of exhibitions dealing with self representation.
In 2010-2012 he collaborated as researcher and co-writer, for a project of Delft University and European Institute of Technology led by Prof. Caroline Nevejan, examining performance presence and trust in the internet age, the book ” Witnessing You” was published in November 2012.
Since 2003 he has also been working as a creative concept developer and installation designer has collaborated with Harman/Kardon, Diesel, Diesel Black Gold, LEE, Santoni, Wrangler, ELLE, ID&T, Moschino, Invista, Balich Wonder Studio, Harmont & Blaine, MCQ, See by Chloe, Aliveshoes, Netflix, Camel Active, Mercedes Benz Dutch Fashion Awards, FOX, Johan Cruijff, FILA, And Beyond, Gianni Versace Retrospective and Andrea Crews, amongst many others.
Butler’s operatic work includes stage direction and scenography for Perseus & Andromeda with the Italian ensemble L’Aura Rilucente, an interdisciplinary production combining opera, baroque music, shadow play, and performance for young audiences. In 2016, he developed and directed GIANNI, a new opera based on the life of Gianni Versace, created with Brandt Brauer Frick for the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2019, he staged a new production of the comic opera Die Schwäbische Schöpfung (1796) in Swabian dialect, in collaboration with Ensemble Société Lunaire and the Festival Alte Musik am Bodensee. Recent works include Speculum Maius: Liber I (2022), premiered at Oper Bonn / Kunstmuseum Bonn, and Necromancy for Beginners (2022), created with the TACETi Ensemble and presented at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.
He worked as dramaturgist for the international award winning opera/ dance film “Symmetry” by director Ruben van Leer in collaboration with the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN), CTM Pictures and NTR Podium.
He continues to develop immersive works that explores the impacts of multi-sensorial design and performance, including “The Sin Eaters”, “Dinner of the Damned”, and “The Chromatic Dinner” . “The Chromatic Dinner” has been presented at Mediamatic, Amsterdam, LA design festival, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Vienna Design festival, Seattle design Festival, Waterman’s Art Centre in London, Vicenza, Dubai and Beijing Design Festival where it won the prize for food and innovation.
Recently he worked as the creative director of “UFFRUR! on the Road….”, a new large scale touring production with over 20,000 visitors. The project based upon the 500 year anniversary of the German Peasant War was in collaboration with the Landesmuseum Stuttgart.
He is a fixed collaborator with Ensemble Société Lunaire with whom he premiered “Die Wilde Jagd” and “Dodo”. Currently he is developing the OPERN WAGEN with them that brings mobile opera productions to rural areas in Southern Germany for Summer 2026.
Martin Butler 