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.

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».

The Australian writer and director Simon Stone took Chekhov’s famous play as the starting point for his rewriting – voted «Play of the Year 2017» in «Theater heute» magazine – that combines rapid fire dialogue, subtle character studies and the ambivalence that arises from them while locating the play thematically in the here and now.

With «Success», we journey into the inner workings of a society in which everything is measured in terms of personal career advantage, the demands of embittered contemporaries, hatred of one’s neighbours, anger at those with a different political opinion and one’s own lack of any sense of direction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ostend – the Atlantic coast, driving snow, New Year’s Eve, in the foyer of a hotel whose best days are behind it. This is where Minetti, an old «theatre artist», ends up lonely – and yet surrounded by a group of «madmen». Or are they like minds? Celebrating, wearing masks, drunk … of whom we do not know where they come from or where they are going to – they all pass across the hotel foyer like creatures from another world… Is this a comedy? Or a tragedy?

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.

In Stephan Kimmig's production, the boundaries between Shakespeare's fairy world and the harsh reality of the big city become blurred. Fuelled by Puck's magic, a summer night unfolds in which soon no one knows where love ends and obsession begins.

Based on Oscar Wilde's famous one-act play, Polish director Ewelina Marciniak completely reinterprets the character of Salome. She is no longer a scandalised femme fatale, but a young woman who tries to free herself from the constraints of her surroundings by any means necessary.

Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, who they neither know who he is nor what they actually want from him. With his ambiguous work about waiting and the passing of time, which has been interpreted in all directions, Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett created one of the classics of modernism, which in-house director Claudia Bauer reinterprets.