Kathi Maurer

New York City in the final months of the Obama Presidency. While the writer Toby Darling feverishly awaits the premiere of his play, his partner Eric Glass spends time with his acquaintance Walter. His conversations with the 55-year-old take Eric back to a past which as a gay man in his early thirties he only knows from hearsay: the devastating AIDS epidemic that rocked the LGBTQ community at the beginning of the 1980s. 

New York City in the final months of the Obama Presidency. While the writer Toby Darling feverishly awaits the premiere of his play, his partner Eric Glass spends time with his acquaintance Walter. His conversations with the 55-year-old take Eric back to a past which as a gay man in his early thirties he only knows from hearsay: the devastating AIDS epidemic that rocked the LGBTQ community at the beginning of the 1980s.

One stormy night in 1836, Hans Christian Andersen arrives uninvited at the home of his childhood friend Edvard Collin, who is to marry his fiancée Henriette the next day. Andersen has travelled through the wind and the rain to once again confess his love for Edvard. The family provide a frosty reception and the groom himself is out celebrating his last night as a bachelor. Only Henriette feels attracted to the unconventional charm of their guest, who lives in a fantasy world continually surrounded by characters from his own fairy tales. He magically transforms a sober room into a sparkling underwater landscape and castles of otherworldly beauty. And he starts telling his friend’s fiancée the fairy tale of The Little Mermaid: burning with love for a Prince, she wishes to become human and is willing to sacrifice her voice and her home to do so – risking her life.

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?

Yasmina Reza, the celebrated author of hit social comedies such as «The God of Carnage» and «Life x 3» and bestselling novels – most recently «Serge» – has written a new play that incisively dramatises the profound problems of understanding that increasingly dominate relations between generations.