Shows with English Surtitles

In his historical miniatures, Stefan Zweig brings together brilliant achievements in European history that tell of unbreakable vitality as well as human weaknesses. In Thom Luz' poetic and musical production, they become archive material that is explored, sung about, brought to life in brief moments and also set in relation to Stefan Zweig's own biography and his journey into exile in Brazil.

Maria Stuart, the deposed queen of Scotland, seeks asylum in England but soon finds herself imprisoned in a fortress as her aunt, the English queen Elisabeth Tudor, begins to investigate her. When she was seventeen, Maria was allegedly involved in the murder of her husband – that is the official charge, but there are also rumours of a plot to seize the crown right now. Schiller portrays neither of his female protagonists in a particularly flattering light: Maria is an impulsive seductress, Elisabeth is a jealous and indecisive monarch.

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».

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.

After the death of his wife, Richard lives in seclusion in a gated community. He wants his only daughter Helen to look after him, as he is increasingly in need of care. There has been a long period of silence between father and daughter, but there is more that separates them than unites them. Richard respects neither Helen's idealistic view of her profession as a lawyer nor the choice of her husband, a black intellectual. Helen, in turn, accuses him of evading the challenges of a changing society. «How should we live together?» asks the most-performed Dutch playwright Lot Vekemans in her new play, striking a chord with the times. In the German-language premiere, Juliane Köhler plays alongside Manfred Zapatka.