Mervan Ürkmez, born in 1994, studied Theater Studies and Journalism at the Freie Universität Berlin and acting at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. He has worked at the Thalia Theater Hamburg, Theater Dortmund, Schauspielhaus Graz, Schauspielhaus Wien, and Münchner Kammerspiele, as well as in film and radio productions and exhibition contexts.
He regularly develops his own theater works, often at the intersection of performance and visual arts. He has also worked on projects within the international independent scene, including at the Kyoto Arts Center, the Xi'an Museum of Urban Image, Rotterdam Art Week, the Rijksakademie Amsterdam, and Tanzhaus NRW. In 2022, his project KLITTERN (aesopica) by Lennart Boyd Schürmann won an award at the Körber Studio for Young Directors. In 2024, he was nominated for the Nestroy Theatre Award as Best Actor and received the Nestroy Theatre Award for Best Off-Production for his project development Nestbeschmutzung from the Institute for Media, Politics and Theatre.