Elsa-Sophie Jach

Born in Vorwerk near Bremen in 1991, she studied directing at the Hamburg Theatre Academy and dramatic writing at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her texts have been performed at venues including the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. For productions such as Kleist's «Das Erdbeben in Chili» and «die zukunft reicht uns nicht (klagt, kinder, klagt!)», she was named «Young Director of the Year» by Theater heute and nominated for the Nestroy Prize. Jach regularly directs at the Schauspiel Leipzig, the Theater Münster and the Theater Bremen. Since the 2022/2023 season, she has been resident director at the Residenztheater, where she has staged, among other things, «Herz aus Glas (Heart of Glass)» based on the screenplay of the same name by Herbert Achternbusch, «Die Unerhörten – Technoide Liebesbriefe für antike Heldinnen (The outrageous ones – Technoid Love Letters for Ancient Heroines)» (invited to the Brandhaarden Festival 2023 at the International Theatre Amsterdam), Goethe's «Werther» Kleist's «Das Käthchen von Heilbronn» (shortlisted for the 2023 Theatertreffen), Sartre's «Die Fliegen (The Flies)» and «Die Kopenhagen-Trilogie (The Copenhagen-Trilogy)» based on the novels by Tove Ditlevsen. In the 2024/2025 season, «Eine Zierde für den Verein (A Credit to the Club)», based on the novel of the same name by Marieluise Fleißer, was followed by her production of «Romeo und Julia (Romeo and Juliet)». The creation of this production is documented in the exhibition «making THEATRE – Wie Theater entsteht (making THEATRE – How Theatre is Created)» at the German Theatre Museum in Munich.

Productions

Rainald Goetz, the remarkable multi award-winning author, has entrusted resident director Elsa-Sophie Jach with the world premiere of his latest theatre text. The text is a bold mix of genres: a diary and requiem interwoven with scenes from a crazy screenplay project with Helmut Dietl and Franz Xaver Kroetz, to whom Goetz has dedicated the play. And in it he also pays his respects to his native Bavaria, both to the city of Munich and the foothills of the Alps. Playful, poetic, profound, absolutely undramatic – and, of course, a work of genius.

Lapidarium
Residenztheater, 20.00 o'clock
Sun 22 Feb
7 p.m. Introduction
Residenztheater, 19.30 o'clock
Fri 6 Mar

The Jewish author Anna Gmeyner, rediscovered only a few years ago – she was forced into exile by the Nazis in 1933 – tells the story of the big world in miniature in Automatenbüfett. While Mrs Adam tries to keep her vending machine restaurant running, Mr Adam pursues his supposedly revolutionary economic vision, which is supposed to serve the good of all. However, with the appearance of the unknown Eva, the eternal order of the small town begins to falter.

Automatenbüfett
Marstall, 20.00 o'clock
Sat 21 Feb
Marstall, 20.00 o'clock
Fri 13 Mar
Marstall, 20.00 o'clock
Tue 24 Mar

Copenhagen’s working-class district of Vesterbro in the 1920s has little room for the talent and dreams of young Tove. She leaves school at the age of fourteen and is sent against her will to work as a maid and later as a clerical worker. However, she refuses to give up, publishes her early poems and stories and continues to seek her freedom as a writer. In the «Copenhagen Trilogy» Tove Ditlevsen uses her own biography to tell of an escape from a complicated everyday reality into storytelling, skilfully interweaving fiction and reality. Her first-person narrator, with whom she shares a name, delivers a humorous and laconic account of a personal life that is nevertheless political. 

Die Kopenhagen-Trilogie (The Copenhagen Trilogy)
Marstall, 19.00 o'clock
Thu 26 Feb

During the global economic crisis of the 1920s, a young woman tries out self-realization and yet ends up in a restrictive marriage, confronted with misogyny and male bonding as well as the rise of National Socialism. Elsa-Sophie Jach adapts Marieluise Fleisser's only novel for the stage.

Eine Zierde für den Verein (A credit to the club)
Marstall, 20.00 o'clock
Today
Marstall, 20.00 o'clock
Thu 19 Feb

The «freedom to act» forms the core of Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical thinking. What this freedom means for the individual is exemplified in «The Flies» - Sartre's rewriting of Aeschylus' second part of the «Oresteia». Should Orest, who has returned home from exile, take revenge for the murder of his father Agamemnon? And if so, what price is he prepared to pay?

Die Fliegen (The Flies)

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.

Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (Käthchen of Heilbronn)

Romeo and Juliet set the language of love against the war of their relatives, the language of the dagger. Will they manage to set an example against the irreconcilable enmity that prevails in Verona? In-house director Elsa-Sophie Jach re-stages the world's most famous love story and the dance on the volcano that sweeps its main characters away, with lots of music and hot hearts.

Romeo und Julia (Romeo and Juliet)
Residenztheater, 19.30 o'clock
Sat 28 Feb
WITH ENGLISH SURTITLES
Tickets Save date
Residenztheater, 19.30 o'clock
Thu 5 Mar
WITH ENGLISH SURTITLES
Tickets Save date
Residenztheater, 18.30 o'clock
Sun 15 Mar

In her adaptation, the director Elsa-Sophie Jach has seized on the idea Goethe abandoned and transfers Goethe’s love-sick alter ego to the stage. «WERTHER. A Theatrical Folly» supplements Goethe’s shimmering, astonishingly modern rush of emotion with texts by one of his contemporaries: Karoline von Günderrode.

Werther