Gerrit Jurda

The legendary musical «Cabaret» entices us into the dazzling world of the Kit Kat Club in the 1930s. Every night the enigmatic Sally Bowles thrills the audience with her famous song «Life is a Cabaret», a celebration of decadence and diversity. The young American Clifford Bradshaw is caught up in this intensely sensual world. Yet, at the same time, something dark is becoming an ever-stronger presence in the daily lives of these exuberant fun-lovers.

The Austrian playwright Werner Schwab is regarded as a radical reviver of the folk play and a linguistic virtuoso. For his comedy «Die Präsidentinnen», he created three incomparable female characters in Erna, Grete and Mariedl who try to defend their modest place in life with peasant cunning and a will to survive only to be tripped up by their own vainglorious delusions.  

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.

In poetic images and with moving music, the ensemble of actors, dancers and singers tell a drama about the unfulfilled love of Hans Christian Andersen's unfulfilled love and how the famous fairy tale writer fairy tale poet merges with one of his most famous characters, the the little mermaid. Andersen's escape from reality becomes a touching, visually stunning theatre event.

After a quarter of a century, Brandner Kaspar returns to the Residenztheater – and how! Based on Franz von Kobell's dialect story, Franz Xaver Kroetz tells the story of the Bavarian stubborn man who refuses to bow even to Death himself, the Boanlkramer, in a very honest and touching way, yet completely unsentimental and with a great deal of humour. Munich-based film, theatre and opera director Philipp Stölzl brings the «Gschichtn vom Brandner Kaspar» to the stage as a «big picture book, because the play is, of course, a fairy tale».

Under the indifferent moon of Soho, London’s underworld attempts to arrest Mack the Knife with songs and words that are polished as sharp as his own blade. With »The Threepenny Opera« (world premiere 1928), Brecht, Hauptmann and Weill created an entirely new form of music theatre. A play about a society in which everything is reduced to its monetary value and criminals are citizens – and vice versa.  

»Two souls dwell, oh! in my breast« – with these words Goethe’s Faust describes not only a personal drama, but an experience of modern subjectivity: the ego manifests itself as a texture of contradictory forces.  Goethe’s drama presents modern man as driven by a principle of continuous escalation – caught between self-control, consumerism and destruction. Ulrich Rasche presents these events as an interiorised chamber play. Its characters embody the forces of a conflicted consciousness; Mephisto becomes a dark shadow of the protagonist himself.

When Ann sees her for the first time, Sara is standing on the stage of the Heartship bar - as she does on the last Thursday of every month - and declaring war on the patriarchy with her furious stand-up performance. From that moment on, the rational ophthalmologist and single mum is fascinated by Sara's fearless manner. A connection develops between the two that goes beyond the conventions of romantic relationships or platonic friendships - a heartship.

The Oktoberfest is a place of amusement and welcome distraction, even in the midst of the global economic crisis of the early 1930s. But it is a place that puts the love between Casimir, a redundant chauffeur, and Caroline, an office worker, to the test. In the world of the petit bourgeois, people seek comfort in alcoholic excess as the hour gets late and the chasms between them are revealed.  Horváth’s kaleidoscope of characters, whose monstrosity lies in their banality, shows the people of their time and how they are subject to economic necessity.

Intrigues, conspiracies, political intrigues - Schiller's tragedy depicts the power struggle between the English Queen Elizabeth I and the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart. But what if only chance decides between power and powerlessness? Then the roles could also be «swapped». For each performance, a draw is held to decide which of the two actresses will play the victor or the vanquished.

A UFO in the shape of a weisswurst lands in front of the Bayerische Staatskanzlei: is this a film or reality? The film maker and asphalt cowboy Klaus Lemke embarks together with a group of aliens on a high speed, madcap journey through Munich’s history in search of what the city once was and could perhaps be in future. Albert Ostermaier’s new play is an affectionate homage to the film poet Klaus Lemke, who died in 2022, and both a hymn to and reckoning with his home city of Munich.

Tessa Ensler is a successful lawyer whose supreme discipline is the defence of defendants in sexual assault cases. Then she herself is raped - by a colleague. She reports him and is now on the other side of the cross-examination - as the victim. With «Prima Facie», Suzie Miller gives a voice to millions of women who suffer violence worldwide.

Two provincial housewives arrange to meet two men in animal costumes for anonymous sex in the ladies’ toilets at a motorway service station so that they can unleash their own animal instincts at last. Their husbands find out about it, put on the costumes and instead of having »beastly good sex« the women are left only with the realisation that instead of a bit on the side, they have just had monogamous sex again. With this comedy Elfriede Jelinek wrote a feminist travesty of Mozart’s »Così van tutte«, varying the classic tropes of nature and culture.