Lukas Rüppel

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».

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!

A prince of fashion and a fairy-tale king. A bird of paradise and a cult figure. A Munich original and a philanthropist. During the course of his lifetime, Rudolph Moshammer was given countless of these nicknames and soubriquets. Everyone recognized him as an eccentric with his dog Daisy on his arm, a talk show guest and man of society. Like his role model, Bavaria’s fairy-tale king Ludwig II, he loved glamour, opulence, and excess. In his appearances as an actor and in advertisements, as a singer in the preliminary round for the Eurovision Song Contest and with books like «Mama und ich» (Mama and Me), he became a cult figure and his fashion boutique «Carnaval de Venise» in Maximilianstraße became a cult address and place of pilgrimage for Mosi fans.

«Peer, you’re lying!»: Henrik Ibsen immediately highlights the key theme of his dramatic poem  in its opening line – the blurred boundary between illusion and reality. Because Peer, whose youth is shaped by the poverty of his farming background, continually reinvents himself with the aid of stories, lies and the arts of fabulation – as a cosmopolitan, a colonial master and even an Emperor.

In June 1816 the «Medusa», the fastest frigate of its time, sets to sea. Its destination is Saint-Louis in Senegal. There are two hundred and forty people on board – besides the sailors, most of them are soldiers, but they also include the colony’s Governor and his family together with priests, teachers, doctors and engineers. Two days’ journey from their destination the ship runs aground on a sandbank and splits. As there is not enough room for everyone in the lifeboats, a raft is cobbled together for the lifeboats to tow on shore. But as soon as they set off, the rudderless and heavily overloaded raft is left behind by the boats on which the dignitaries are rescuing themselves. Of one hundred and seventeen men only fifteen will survive. Many of them will fall victim to their own comrades because the few goods they were able to save – barrels of wine, sodden biscuits, a few weapons and valuables – are as heavily fought over as the power the make decisions about possible rescue measures.

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.

The coup d'état has succeeded, the old government has been swept away. Henry and his followers rule the country like a king. But the king is old and ill and there is no suitable successor in sight. In Mrs. Flott's pub, however, business is going extremely well. John Falstaff spends his nights there with his intimate friend Harri - a mismatched pair, united by their shared desire for sharp-tongued speech and plenty of beer. However, when Harri receives an immoral offer from the center of power, it sheds new light not only on the future of the state, but also on John's friendship with Harri. Austrian playwright Ewald Palmetshofer's new adaptation of Shakespeare's history play, in which royal drama and comedy join hands, is both linguistically polished and crudely comic.

In her new work, the director Claudia Bauer, who has been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen four times and is renowned for her work with fast and furious acting ensembles, now tackles someone who typifies Munich, the brilliant comedian Karl Valentin. In her usual, opulent stage language she will devise a homage to the Bavarian whose anarchic approach to language led the critic Alfred Kerr to invent the term «Wortzerklauberer», someone who steals words and tears them to pieces.

In Beckett's 1948 classic of absurd theatre, the main characters wait in an open field, torn between a mood of optimism and resignation, for the ominous Godot. In laconic language, Beckett creates one of the most famous and ambiguous pairs of comedians in theatre literature, reinterpreted by in-house director Claudia Bauer.