Author: CO International

FINITE
A music theatre piece by Asia Ahmetjanova and Franziska Angerer

World Premiere on May 10, 2026, as part of the Munich Biennale in Munich
A co-production of the Munich Biennale and Deutsche Oper Berlin

Stage & Light Design: Mirjam Stängl
Costume Design: Sabrina Bosshard

Following its world premiere in Munich, the music theater production FINITE is now coming to Berlin. It explores our relationship with death and how we deal with our own decline. Through a group of elderly people, the audience is confronted with the reality of their own mortality and old age, with all its associated connotations. Through poetic imagery, a communal ritual emerges—somewhere between mythology and performance—that seeks a joyful surrender to this ultimate consequence of life.

The Berlin premiere will take place on May 22, 2026, at 8 p.m. at the Tischlerei at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

As part of the official opening of the PLUG & PLAY Theater Festival for Young Directors on May 14, 2026, the Carl Zuckmayer Work Scholarship from the Ministry of Family, Women, Culture, and Integration was awarded for the third time at the Staatstheater Mainz.

She is receiving the scholarship—which aims to promote contemporary European drama and honor the memory of the political playwright Carl Zuckmayer—for the concept of a new play titled Pech entkommt man nicht. Ein Aufstiegsmärchen (loosely based on Frau Holle). The new play will be presented to the public in a reading during the next PLUG&PLAY Festival.

“With Lola Fuchs, this year’s recipient of the Carl Zuckmayer Work Scholarship is a young playwright, actress, and director who impresses with her great artistic independence and a keen sense for social issues,” said Minister of Culture Katharina Binz in her tribute to the award winner.

As part of the WORLD VOICES Festival at the Martin E. Segal Center in New York, there will be readings of texts by Penda Diouf and Marius von Mayenburg, each followed by a discussion with the authors.

4:00 pm (EDT): Penda Diouf – JULIUS
English Translation by Amelia Parenteau

7:00 pm (EDT): Marius von Mayenburg – ELLEN BABIĆ
English Translation by Daniel Brunet

Veranstaltungsort: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA

ANFÄNGE (Beginnings)

Concept & Direction: Ayla Pierrot Arendt

In her interdisciplinary musical-theatrical three-part work, which she developed and produced with a team of European and international artists for the KI Festival at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, Ayla Pierrot Arendt explores the conditions and meanings of a beginning—as a promise, as a rupture, and as a consequence. In three acts, we experience three dystopian (or utopian?) worlds that confront us with the end of the world as well as with the question of a new beginning. What does paradise actually look like? What awakens hope in us? Does every ending also hold a beginning?

The premiere takes place on May 16, 2026, at 7:00 p.m. at the Staatstheater Darmstadt (Großes Haus).

Additional performance on May 28, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.

Die österreichische Autorin Lisa Wentz ist mit einer Lesung ihres neuen Stücks DER ABEND VOR DEM DANACH zu Gast beim WORLD VOICES Festival am Martin E. Segal Center in New York.

DER ABEND VOR DEM DANACH (THE NIGHT BEFORE THE LIFETIME AFTER)
von Lisa Wentz
Englische Übersetzung von Daniel Brunet

A dinner party at a wealthy financier’s villa becomes the stage for a slow-burning reckoning: Luca, an ambitious young banker, arrives with his wife Irene to celebrate a career-defining deal with his boss Gabriel — but Gabriel’s mysterious new girlfriend Alexandra turns out to be a woman Luca raped five years earlier. Over the course of the evening, as pleasantries curdle into confrontation, Alexandra methodically dismantles the men’s world of denial, money, and mutual protection, while Irene — caught between loyalty, fury, and self-preservation — ultimately cannot or will not act.

Die Lesung des Stücks findet am 11. Mai 2026 um 18:30 Uhr im Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA) statt. Followed by a talk with Lisa Wentz and Frank Hentschker and reception.

For more information about the event, click here.

 

 

3000 EINZELTEILE
by Ádám Császi
based on his film THREE THOUSAND NUMBERED PIECES

In German and Hungarian with German and Hungarian surtitles
Translated from Hungarian by Endre M. Holéczy
Directed by Ádám Császi

A theater director is commissioned by the BURG to stage a play written by and featuring Rom:nja actors. He promptly decides to use the real-life biographies of the participants for his play and has a house from their village dismantled into 3,000 individual pieces to be rebuilt on the stage of the Akademietheater. The audience and press are eagerly anticipating the extraordinary production and hoping for maximum authenticity.
In his scathing satire, Hungarian film and theater director Ádám Császi poses the uncomfortable question of how minorities can be portrayed on stage in a self-determined way and why good intentions so often lead to the wrong results.

The world premiere will take place on May 8, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. at the Akademietheater (Burgtheater Vienna).

 

SIRENS CALL
Directed and Written by: Miri Ian Gossing & Lina Sieckmann

DE, NL | 2025
121′
filmfaust in co-produktion with Schalten und Walten, Elbe Stevens Films (NL) and ZDF / Das kleine Fernsehspiel
World premiere at the Berlinale Forum 2025

A planet on the brink of drying out: a siren inhabiting a human body roams through a post‑modern United States, searching for identity and belonging. Sirens Call—a blend of sci‑fi, road‑movie and documentary—offers a vivid glimpse into queer subculture and body politics.

“Politically and artistically radikal. There is nothing quite like it.” – VARIETY

“The best thing a film about non-normative identities can do.” – CINEUROPA

 

SIRENS CALL hits theaters on April 30, 2026!
The premiere will take place at the Moviemento cinema in Berlin in the presence of the directors.

 

 

DER IDIOT (The Idiot)

loosely based on Dostoevsky
Direction and Stage adaptation: Martina Gredler

For her second production at the Bronski & Grünberg Theater, Martina Gredler has once again taken on a monumental classic: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot”—set within the confines of a Roy Andersson-esque setting—encounters here, above all, a powerful Nastassja, embarrassing rivals, and plenty of champagne.

The premiere taks place on April 30, 2026, at 8:30 p.m. at the Bronski & Grünberg Theater in Vienna.

Additional Performance Dates:
May 10, 12, 20 and 22, 2026
June 2, 3, 16 and 17, 2026

REQUIEM

Text & Inszenierung: Jakab Tarnóczi

REQUIEM is a multigenerational Hungarian family story centered around women: a larger-than-life grandmother, her daughter and daughter-in-law with whom she has a strained bond, and the granddaughter returning home from abroad. We gain insight into three periods of the family’s and their community’s life, defined by the motifs of birth and death.
The production is a joint experiment by Jakab Tarnóczi and his creative team on how theatre can speak about a nation’s state of mind, its nerves, its micro-communities – and whether it is still possible to believe in some kind of shared future.

The World Premiere takes place on April 25, 2026, at Katona Jósef Theater in Budapest.

EINE RUNDE SACHE (AND NOTHING EVER ENDS) based on the novel by Tomer Gardi
Stage adaption and Direction: Noam Brusilovsky

26.04.2026 at 8:30 p.m. at Alter Saal, Theater Heidelberg

World Premiere: September 2025, Schauspiel Stuttgart
“Lively, profound, and utterly absurd” / “A tale of mischief about the experience of being an outsider, which tackles serious themes with audacity and empathy.” – Südwest Presse
“Noam Brusilovsky’s production is every bit as witty as Gardi’s five-person picaresque play and runs like clockwork, ….”– Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung

***

ELISABETH! by Mareike Fallwickl
Direction: Fritzi Wartenberg

01.05.2026 at 8:30 p.m. at Marguerre-Saal, Theater Heidelberg

World Premiere: April 2025, Burgtheater Vienna
“An evening that will leave no one unmoved.” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“The script is outstanding. Stefanie Reinsperger and the directing team’s interpretation is brilliant. Cheers, ovations, and no end in sight.” – DrehPunktKultur