Clemens Bechtel has been working as a director since 1995 and is best known for his research-based work. He has staged productions in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania, as well as in Burundi, Mali and Malawi. His performance Staats-Sicherheiten/State Security at the Hans-Otto-Theater in Potsdam, in which former prisoners talk about the Stasi prisons, was awarded the Friedrich Luft Prize in 2009. Hunger for Trade (2015) at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg was also an important project for him. In this project, theaters from four continents came together to realize eight plays about global food markets. In recent years, Bechtel has staged many performances in East Africa and Eastern Europe, as well as in Wiesbaden, Mannheim and Freiburg. At the German State Theater he directed The Age of the Fish after Ödön von Horváth (2013) and Sidy Thal, a collaboration with the Jewish State Theater in Bucharest, based on a text he co-wrote with Thomas Perle (2023).