In 2008 we’ve received one of those most alarming phone calls. Oliver Reese on the line, the then interims director at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin was becoming the next director of the Schauspiel Frankfurt, he told us, and he was sort of desperate for an agency to develop the corporate design for his new appointment at the Schauspiel. We agreed to meet and learned that he’d already ‘tried out’ a couple of other agencies but was never satisfied with their approach. Ha - no pressure then. We agreed to make up our mind after the very friendly meeting and try to find an angle that would carry for more than one season. It’s always especially difficult to work for theatres when it comes to the point where you get tempted trying to explain theatre as a whole from your own point of view. Not a good idea. We gave it a shot anyway. What we told Oliver before he left that we’d only present something if we’d believe it’ll do the job. Said and done. Finding a metaphor was our task then. We got to the point where it seemed more and more clear to us that this had to be about the relationship between Frankfurt’s society and the Schauspiel Frankfurt (well, hence the name). How to connect them in an intelligent way? We had a close look at the building again and there it was. The Schauspiel Frankfurt is a huge glass structure situated between the central station and the highstreet, the Zeil, opposite of the ECB (the European Central Bank). Looking from inside the theatre at Frankfurt, from the outside looking at the Schauspiel … both want to be looked at and both functioning as a stage in one way or the other … plus, you either enter into Frankfurt, coming from the theatre or you were entering the theatre from the city. Inside out – Outside in - it’s always the entrance to another world.