Tanju Girişken directed his first Austrian production, KRI, at the 2026 Salzburg Festival and opens the 2026/27 season at Theater Trier with Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth (Wir sind noch einmal davongekommen). Since 2022, he has worked as a theatre director, staging productions including Wolf by Saša Stanišić at the Residenztheater Munich, Leonce and Lena at Deutsches Theater Göttingen, the world premiere of The Bridge of the Golden Horn, adapted from the novel by Emine Sevgi Özdamar, at Theater Osnabrück, The Feast of Sacrifice by Ibrahim Amir at Stadttheater Gießen, the world premiere of the devised production Zero Sugar at Schauspiel Dortmund, the world premiere of the devised production Mother Tongue (Mutter-dili), exploring multilingual upbringings, at Nationaltheater Mannheim, and The Taxman (Der Fiskus) by Felicia Zeller at Theater Trier. In 2023, his production Temporary / Forever(befristet / für immer) at the Bavarian Theatre Academy August Everding received the Audience Award at the Körber Studio for Young Directors in Hamburg.

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Girişken studied acting at the State Conservatory of Istanbul University from 2008 to 2012 and later completed a master’s degree at Kadir Has University. After his first professional work in Istanbul’s independent theatre scene, he became an ensemble member of Istanbul City Theatre from 2014 to 2018, appearing in productions including Cyrano de Bergerac, The Glass Menagerie, Treasure Island, and Macbeth. In 2017, he moved to Germany and performed at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin in Nurkan Erpulat’s production Le Grand Bal Almanya. From 2021 to 2023, he completed a master’s degree in Directing for Music and Spoken Theatre / Performative Arts at the Bavarian Theatre Academy August Everding.

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His artistic practice is shaped by themes of migration and resistance, employing contemporary forms of storytelling and multilingualism. In his productions, Girişken combines political and documentary material with performative approaches and collaborative working methods.