Felicia Chin-Malenski

Dr. Ruth Wolff is a celebrated doctor and agnostic Jew. When she refuses a Catholic priest access to a young patient in a terminal condition, the incident soon has major repercussions and Ruth finds herself at the centre of a media shitstorm that threatens her entire way of life.

The writer and director Robert Icke has transposed Arthur Schnitzler’s play «Professor Bernhardi» (1912) vividly into the present. The «Times» of London described «The Doctor» as being «as slippery, muscular and complex as a human heart, more intricate the deeper his dissection goes.»

In her artistic work, Marion Siéfert searches for theater in the depths of our increasingly digitalized reality. She uses the stage and its long tradition of playing with identity to create a world in which reality and fiction blur into one another, but at the same time brutally collide. In this gamified parallel world, she encounters dozens of players who increasingly cast a spell over her. Among them is twenty-seven-year-old Julien, who invites her to try out the newly released game «Daddy».

Following Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, in the second half of the season another we hear from another master storyteller. A narrator who tells us to call him Ismael walks onto the Residenztheater stage in seaman’s garb. What follows is a genuine monster of a story: Ismael is hired on the «Pequod», an old whaling ship, and goes to sea on board this floating blubber factory.

At Whitsun the lion king Nobel invites his subjects to his court for an early summer celebration. The entire animal kingdom gathers – ranging from the crane to the wolf and the bear. Only one animal is missing: the fox called Reineke. As soon as his name his mentioned, the mood of harmony vanishes. One angry accusation follows another and Reinike the fox is charged in his absence with a series of incredible crimes. The cockerel, for example, complains of losing his wife and children – Reineke ate them for supper. When he is eventually put on trial, the accomplished liar – an animal equivalent of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt – manages to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes – man, woman or creature – and slip his neck out of the noose. Eventually he even acquires a whole crowd of followers and is elected Chancellor.

The moral of the story is that not everyone with foxy cunning and a talent for oratory puts those gifts to benevolent use – on the contrary! But how can we tell the difference between truth and lies? How can we avoid being taken in by the peddlers of fake news? How can we remain faithful to our own opinions and values?

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.