Michael Billenkamp

Ulrich Rasche stages «Agamemnon» - the first part of Aeschylus' famous «Oresteia» - as a visually stunning cycle of revenge. With Rasche, language, music and acting become an overall experience, making the power and topicality of the ancient material all the more vivid.

After a quarter of a century, Brandner Kaspar returns to the Residenztheater - and how! Based on Franz von Kobell's dialect tale, Franz Xaver Kroetz tells the story of the stubborn Bavarian who won't even bow to death in the flesh, the Boanlkramer, in a very honest and touching, yet completely unsentimental and humorous way. Günther Maria Halmer also returns to the Residenztheater as Kaspar Brandner and, together with Munich film, theatre and opera director Philipp Stölzl, they will bring the «Gschichtn vom Brandner Kaspar» to the stage as a «big picture book, because the play is of course a fairy tale».

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?

When Goethe set «Götz von Berlichingen» down on paper in 1771 in a true writing frenzy, the 22-year-old writer was still a complete unknown. This came to an abrupt end with the publication of «Götz», as suddenly the young poet was being talked about everywhere. Goethe’s early work is a powerful stage epic with over fifty locations, several plots running in parallel and a huge cast of characters. What is more: Goethe dispensed with all the customary conventions that 18^th century drama had been using up to that point.

Imagine that you haven’t been born yet. And imagine too that your whole life so far is unimportant. Just like all the opportunities you might have missed or bad decisions you might have made. Leave it all behind you. In «Now or Never» we are going to make a completely fresh start!

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.

The French frigate «Medusa» is shipwrecked two days' voyage from its destination. For author and director Alexander Eisenach, the events that follow symbolise a society in which the values of communal coexistence have lost their validity.

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.