Richard Panzenböck
director / puppet designer and builder
Born in Vienna, Richard Panzenböck studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna and trained in puppetry in London under Nigel Plaskitt (“The Muppets”, “Spitting Image”, etc.).
For seven years, he worked as the lead puppeteer for various ORF productions, including “Franz Ferdinand”, “7 Wunder”, “Kasperl”, “ABC-Bär”, and “Tom Turbo”, and also hosted the show “Team okidoki”. During his time there, he contributed to over 7,800 broadcast minutes that were sold internationally and received numerous awards. He headed the puppet department for these productions for five years and toured Austria with “okidokiLive” shows. Behind the scenes, he worked on ORF productions such as “Dancing Stars”, “Star Mania”, “Contra der Talk”, and the “Eurovision Dance Contest”.
In Germany, he and his colleagues achieved second place in the RTL primetime show “Die Puppenstars” and returned to television for the show’s third season.
His theatre work has taken him to prestigious venues such as the Burgtheater, Akademietheater, Theater der Jugend, Wiener Festwochen, Salzburg Festival, Salzburg State Theatre, Vienna’s English Theatre, Theater an der Wien, Hamakom/Nestroyhof, Prinzregententheater, Theater Drachengasse, and European Shakespeare Days, as well as to numerous festivals. His self-developed puppet production “Paperman” won the 1st Jury Prize at the 17th “Concorso Europeo di Teatro d’Arte varia” and was invited to several international festivals.
He collaborated with Klaus Maria Brandauer and Markus Meyer on world premieres for the “Wiener Stimmung” series at the Burgtheater, which was nominated for the Nestroy Theatre Prize. His most recent production at the Burgtheater Vestibül was “Mein ziemlich seltsamer Freund Walter” by Sibylle Berg.
Since 2019, he has served as resident director for opera productions at the “KlassikFestival Schloss Kirchstetten”, where he also staged the Austrian premiere of Donizetti’s “I pazzi per progetto”.
For the winter semester 2025/26, he received his first teaching assignment at the University of Vienna’s Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies with the course “Agency of Things: Puppets, Objects and Posthumanist Thinking”.
At the Salzburg State Theatre, his directing credits include “The Lorax”, “The Wizard of Oz”, and as puppet designer, builder, and coach for “The Neverending Story”, “Faust I+II”, and “The Little Ghost”. He is delighted to direct “The Mole Who Wanted to Know Who Had Done Its Business on His Head”, a cross-genre production for Young Theatre and Opera.
Website: www.richard-panzenboeck.com | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richardpanz/
Last updated: October 2025