On April 10, 1927, Andrzej Tadeusz Wirth was born in the small town of Wlodawa, now located on the border between Poland and Belarus. He says: You can't choose that. Wirth then lived in Warsaw, New York, London, Berlin, and Venice, seemingly always being in the right place at the right time when it came to new theater. He witnessed Brecht's Berliner Ensemble, the beginnings of Grotowski in Poland, was present when Peter Handke lectured the Gruppe 47, and followed the rise of Robert Wilson from the basements of Manhattan. In 1982, Wirth founded the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen, the training ground - Gerhard Stadelmeier referred to it as a forge of misfortune - of postdramatic theater. A term that Wirth coined as early as the early seventies in New York, but which no longer resonates with him today, as practically everything has somehow become postdramatic.