Michael Billenkamp

The cycle of revenge and retribution is endless. Every drop of blood spilt has to be atoned for with more. Everyone thinks they have the law and the will of the gods on their side and this conviction drives them on to commit new injustices. This is the spiral of violence that grips the ruling house of the Atrides in Aeschylus’s «Agamemnon», the first part of his trilogy «The Oresteia».

In June 1816 the «Medusa», the fastest frigate of its time, sets to sea. Its destination is Saint-Louis in Senegal. There are two hundred and forty people on board – besides the sailors, most of them are soldiers, but they also include the colony’s Governor and his family together with priests, teachers, doctors and engineers. Two days’ journey from their destination the ship runs aground on a sandbank and splits. As there is not enough room for everyone in the lifeboats, a raft is cobbled together for the lifeboats to tow on shore. But as soon as they set off, the rudderless and heavily overloaded raft is left behind by the boats on which the dignitaries are rescuing themselves. Of one hundred and seventeen men only fifteen will survive. Many of them will fall victim to their own comrades because the few goods they were able to save – barrels of wine, sodden biscuits, a few weapons and valuables – are as heavily fought over as the power the make decisions about possible rescue measures.

Elisabeth Gärtner, a retired architect, has only one more wish: she wants to die. Her beloved husband died of cancer three years ago and without him life has no meaning for her any more. A drug that would allow her to die of her own volition has been refused her. Now the Ethics Council must make a decision on her case. Expert witnesses from the fields of law, medicine and theology argue over the question:  Does a human being have a right to determine their own death? Are doctors allowed to help someone commit suicide? And who do our lives actually belong to? To us? To the state? Or to God?

It takes the physical pain of cancer to break through Fritz Zorn’s protective shell of a cultivated «insensitivity of the soul». It is not until he is in danger of dying that his resistance awakens against not being allowed to live: «I am young and rich and educated: and I am unhappy, neurotic and alone.» With these words the Swiss author Fritz Zorn opens his reckoning with this background, family and education. However: his contemplation of death is a contemplation of freedom. The art of dying liberates the individual from all subjugation and compulsion and by accepting one’s own finality it offers the possibility of seeing oneself as part of an overarching process of transformation.

Station manager Xaver Bolwieser believes he has found happiness in his marriage to the rich brewery owner's daughter Hanni and their life together in the Bavarian provinces. But Hanni is soon looking for a way out of the monotonous confinement between bed and hearth. She wants to live! In the end, the whole town knows about her affairs - only Bolwieser remains blind to the truth and even perjures himself to protect his wife from the slander. Oskar Maria Graf's precise and trenchant marriage drama is also a portrayal of a society in which Bolwieser - the prototype of a conformist follower - perishes above all because of his unconditional subject mentality. For her production, in-house director Nora Schlocker draws on the screenplay by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who made a congenial adaptation of Graf's novel in 1977 and would have celebrated his eightieth birthday in 2025.

No other play by Heinrich von Kleist inspires quite so many superlatives as «Käthchen of Heilbronn». It is not only the most successful, but also the most romantic, the most fairy tale-like and at the same time the most mysterious play that he wrote.

After fifteen years in exile, Orestes returns incognito to his home city of Argos – the same city in which his father Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus on his victorious return from Troy. However, desire for revenge is not the reason for his spontaneous homecoming – it is the rumour of a mysterious plague of flies. When his sister Electra persuades him to stay, it gradually dawns on him that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are not only cruelly oppressing the people, they have also implicated him in Agamemnon’s murder. Only then does Orestes decide to take action.

After a quarter of a century, the time has finally come: Brandner Kasper returns to the Residenztheater, where it has already been performed over 1000 times! Franz von Kobell's tale has been a cultural treasure with cult status in Bavaria since its publication in 1871. A 75-year-old sprightly locksmith and hunting assistant from Tegernsee is to be called away to heaven. However, Kasper defeats the Boanlkramer, whom St. Peter had commissioned to bring the old man to him, while playing cards and drinking Kerschgeists. «The story of Kasper Brandner» is a poignant play about the deeply human desire to confront one's own transience. Director Philipp Stölzl grew up with the material as a Munich resident and poses the most elementary question of humanity in his new old «Brandner Kasper»: How do I deal with my own mortality?

When Goethe set «Götz von Berlichingen» down on paper in 1771 in a true writing frenzy, the 22-year-old writer was still a complete unknown. This came to an abrupt end with the publication of «Götz», as suddenly the young poet was being talked about everywhere. Goethe’s early work is a powerful stage epic with over fifty locations, several plots running in parallel and a huge cast of characters. What is more: Goethe dispensed with all the customary conventions that 18^th century drama had been using up to that point.

Imagine that you haven’t been born yet. And imagine too that your whole life so far is unimportant. Just like all the opportunities you might have missed or bad decisions you might have made. Leave it all behind you. In «Now or Never» we are going to make a completely fresh start!

The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta is just around the corner. But first Theseus has to help his friend Egeus. His daughter Hermia has fallen in love with the wrong man, Lysander. In order to change Hermia's mind, an effective threat is set up. The lovers have only one choice: to flee into the darkness of a dreamy June night. And here, in the pale glow of the wild setting, reality and reason are transformed into sexual desire and animal lust. «A Midsummer Night's Dream» is not only William Shakespeare's best-known comedy, but also perhaps his most abysmal. Stephan Kimmig stages the creatures from Shakespeare's famous fairy world as real-life eccentrics. Weird, unconventional and dazzling, they radically question what is considered normal.

The team led by director Ewelina Marciniak and author Jarosław Murawski scrutinises Oscar Wilde's drama about the biblical princess and legendary femme fatale Salome from the perspective of the present day and of feminism. They shed light not only on the formerly scandalous self-empowerment of a woman in a man's world, but also on Oscar Wilde's view of the character in the era of the Décadence.