News

STORIES FROM THE VIENNA WOODS based on Ödön von Horváth and Johann Strauss

Director: Rieke Süßkow
Stage design: Mirjam Stängl
Costumes: Sabrina Bosshard
Composition and Musical direction: Philipp C. Mayer

Butcher Oskar loves Marianne and wants to marry her. But even at the engagement party, disaster strikes: Marianne falls head over heels in love with the rogue Alfred, breaking up with Oskar and her old life. It quickly becomes clear that her hopes for a new, grand and, above all, completely different world will not stand up to reality. The initially exciting relationship is followed by social decline. Erich Kästner called his fellow writer’s work ‘a Viennese folk play against the Viennese folk play’.

The premiere will take place on 12 December 2025 at 7.30 p.m. at the Volkstheater Wien.

 

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde

Direction and Stage Design: Ran Chai Bar-zvi
Costume Design: Belle Santos

Oscar Wilde’s classic about the (im)mortality of beauty and hidden desires is supplemented and continued with texts by playwright Marcus Peter Tesch, who traces the history of bodies and body images in his writing and brings them into the present. Ran Chai Bar-zvi’s visually powerful productions approach even existential subjects with great lightness, without trivialising their serious core. With ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Ran Chai Bar-zvi celebrates his debut at Schauspiel Frankfurt.

The premiere will take place on 12 December 2025 at 8 p.m. in the Kammerspiele at Schauspiel Frankfurt.

 

SILENT OBSERVERS

DE/BG, 96 min, 2024
Director, screenplay, editor: Eliza Petkova
Director of photography: Constanze Schmitt
Production: Red Carpet, Wood Water Films, rbb

With the decline of the population, a traditional way of life is coming to an end in a remote Bulgarian village: the camera follows the last remaining residents from the perspective of domesticated animals. Did the neighbour punish her violent son and turn him into a donkey? Is the cat possessed by a vampire? The villagers’ affection for the animals contrasts with the matter-of-fact way in which they treat them. With great attention to detail and for her four-legged protagonists, Eliza Petkova succeeds in creating a fascinating and mysterious portrait of a village.

Tickets and further informationen

SABOTAGE

Written and directed by Yael Ronen
Translation and artistic collaboration: Irina Szodruch
Music: Yaniv Fridel and Ofer (OJ) Shabi

Jewish documentary filmmaker Jona Lubnik wants to shake up the complacency of his German fellow citizens with a provocative film. He has long avoided political issues, but now he feels compelled to act because he is convinced that the past must never be used as an excuse to remain silent about the present. His wife is a successful neurologist and fears that his film project could turn into a political scandal that would damage her career and the entire family.

In her latest play, Yael Ronen takes a sharp look at the mechanisms of (self-)sabotage and exposes them through comedy.

The premiere will take place on December 4, 2025, at 8 p.m. at the Schaubühne Berlin.

 

The Kurt Hübner Directing Award from the German Academy of Performing Arts and the City of Bensheim goes to Fritzi Wartenberg for her production of Werner Schwab’s radical comedy VOLKSVERNICHTUNG ODER MEINE LEBER IST SINNLOS at the Burgtheater in Vienna. “Fritzi Wartenberg’s approach to directing is fearless and incredibly smart,” explains juror Almut Wagner.

The award ceremony is expected to take place in March 2026 at the Parktheater Bensheim as part of the Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring award ceremony.

Additional performance dates at the Burgtheater: December 3 and 21, 2025; January 10 and 17, 2026.

DIE ALLERLETZTEN

Written and directed by Marco Damghani
Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin
Part of 7th Berliner Herbstsalon ЯE:IMAGINE: THE RED HOUSE 

WAR AND PEACE. A stage essay about Russia, Ukraine, and compulsory military service
by Calle Fuhr in cooperation with CORRECTIV

In his new stage essay, Calle Fuhr addresses the question of what a contemporary security policy might look like. Does Germany need conscription again? Or is the new armament simply excessive? In search of answers, he examines the history of Vladimir Putin, the corruption surrounding the Nord Stream pipelines, and Russia’s strategies to harm Western democracies.

The world premiere will take place on November 22, 2025, at 7 p.m. at Depot 2 of Schauspiel Köln.
Additional performance dates: November 27, December 3 and 14, 2025.

The Peter-Weiss-Preis of the City of Bochum goes to Yael Ronen!

The jury unanimously selected Yael Ronen as the winner in the “Theater” category. In her work, “theater becomes a place of debate, collective self-questioning, and the possibility of empathy, without smoothing over the contradictions of the present.” Many of her plays “deal with trauma, resentment, and discrimination, with fears and moral ambivalence, often against a backdrop of extreme violence, war, and displacement. It is the same dark terrain that already preoccupied Peter Weiss. Like him, she takes a critical stance in her theater work—from a position that is deeply oriented toward life and dialogue,” the jury said in its statement.

NORA. EIN THRILLER

A play by Sivan Ben Yishai, Henrik Ibsen, Gerhild Steibuch and Ivna Žic
With translations by Tobias Herzberg and Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel

Director: Matthias Köhler

Almost 150 years after the premiere of Ibsen’s NORA, Matthias Köhler stages the bourgeois theater thriller in an adaptation by authors Sivan Ben Yishai, Gerhild Steinbuch, and Ivna Žic, who create a powerful field of tension between modern and past voices, also addressing Nora’s privileged situation and the perspectives of the children.

 

Die Premiere findet am 1. November 2025 um 18 Uhr im Antoniushaus des Theaters Regensburg statt.

 

CALL ME PARIS by Yana Eva Thönnes
a co-production of Schaubühne Berlin
and Biennale di Venezia – 53. International Theatre Festival

The world premiere took place on June 1, 2025, at the Biennale di Venezia in the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, and now CALL ME PARIS is finally coming to Berlin!

The play is about the traumatic memories of two doppelgängers from the noughties. The famous It girl Paris Hilton unwittingly becomes the star of a sex tape posted online by her ex-boyfriend, entitled “1 Night in Paris”, while in Bergisch Gladbach, a young girl nicknamed Paris finds herself in her own version of this video. To regain control over her image and ultimately over herself, Paris embarks on an eerie journey into the past. How did she become “Paris”? Where is the tape now? And if what we see is only a copy of the original, who is the girl on the screen?

The premiere at the Schaubühne Berlin will take place on October 29, 2025, at 8 p.m.