Marko Japelj

Marko Japelj studied architecture in Ljubljana and created his first stage in a professional context in 1987, for a production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters in Maribor. This was followed by numerous commissions for drama, opera and dance. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the masterclass in stage design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna as a visiting professor, succeeding the late Axel Manthey. He first collaborated with Edward Clug in 1998 on Tango at the Slovenian National Theatre (SNG) in Maribor; this was followed there by Lacrimas (2002), Radio and Juliet (2005), Architecture of Silence (2006, a co-production with the National Theatre in Ljubljana), Prêt-à-Porter (2008), Gledati druge/Watching Others (2010), Le Sacre du printemps (2012), Peer Gynt (2015), and Kekec (2018). Several of the Maribor productions were also staged by other companies – Radio and Juliet, for example, in Augsburg, Birmingham, Brno, Bucharest, Halle an der Saale, Oklahoma City and Perth; Architecture of Silence in Essen; and Peer Gynt in Vienna, Milan, Warsaw, Riga and Novosibirsk, amongst others.
Marko Japelj also designed the sets for numerous works by Edward Clug for other companies, notably for Hill Harper’s Dream (Zurich Ballet, 2013), Les noces (Royal Flemish Ballet, 2013), Hora (Dortmund Ballet, 2017), Proof (Nederlands Dans Theater 1, 2017), Petrushka (Bolshoi Ballet, 2018), Patterns in ¾ (Stuttgart Ballet, 2019), Carmina Burana (Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, 2019), APERTURE (Nederlands Dans Theater 1, 2019), Source (Stuttgart Ballet, 2021), The Master and Margarita (Bolshoi Ballet, 2021), Coppélia (together with Nika Zupanc, Theater Basel, 2023), Don Juan (Ballet de l’Opéra national du Capitole, 2024), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Staatsballett Berlin, 2025) and Castor et Pollux (Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2026).

(Information as of September 2026)