Three people: A painter, a school principal and a young mother. A schoolyard. A merry-go-round. Nine months, three seasons, no summer. The work of the Iranian playwright and director Amir Reza Koohestani enriches and inspires the international theatre scene with great subtlety and precision. His plays carefully unearth the stories of men and women – and this time children too – in modern-day Iran. They reveal what lies between the lines, what springs from the power of silence, in a minimalist and sophisticated way. His latest production premiered in spring at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and can now be seen at the Münchner Kammerspiele. The plot of “Summerless” centres on a girl’s primary school in Tehran where an exciting everyday drama develops. In the set designed by the visual artist Shahryar Hatami, Koohestani shows that he is a true master of what can’t be put into words and, with the contributions of his outstanding performers, the piece takes on a truly universal dimension.

With Mona Ahmadi, Saeid Changizian & Leyli Rashidi and on video Juliette Rezai Text and direction Amir Reza Koohestani Scenography Shahryar Hatami Video creation Davoud Sadri and Ali Shirkhodaei Light creation Xavier Lauwers Sound creation Ankido Darash Costumes Shima Mirhamidi Director’s assistants Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh, Mohammad Khaksari set workshop Kopspel vzw, Antwerp Supertitles translation Sima Djabar Zadegan

Production Mehr Theatre Group Coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Festival d’Avignon, Festival delle Colline Torinesi / Fondazione TPE, La Bâtie – Festival de Genève, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, Théâtre National de Bretagne, Münchner Kammerspiele, La Filature - Scène nationale de Mulhouse, Théâtre populaire romand - Centre neuchâtelois des arts vivants, La Chaux-de-Fonds

Three people: A painter, a school principal and a young mother. A schoolyard. A merry-go-round. Nine months, three seasons, no summer. The work of the Iranian playwright and director Amir Reza Koohestani enriches and inspires the international theatre scene with great subtlety and precision. His plays carefully unearth the stories of men and women – and this time children too – in modern-day Iran. They reveal what lies between the lines, what springs from the power of silence, in a minimalist and sophisticated way. His latest production premiered in spring at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and can now be seen at the Münchner Kammerspiele. The plot of “Summerless” centres on a girl’s primary school in Tehran where an exciting everyday drama develops. In the set designed by the visual artist Shahryar Hatami, Koohestani shows that he is a true master of what can’t be put into words and, with the contributions of his outstanding performers, the piece takes on a truly universal dimension.

With Mona Ahmadi, Saeid Changizian & Leyli Rashidi and on video Juliette Rezai Text and direction Amir Reza Koohestani Scenography Shahryar Hatami Video creation Davoud Sadri and Ali Shirkhodaei Light creation Xavier Lauwers Sound creation Ankido Darash Costumes Shima Mirhamidi Director’s assistants Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh, Mohammad Khaksari set workshop Kopspel vzw, Antwerp Supertitles translation Sima Djabar Zadegan

Production Mehr Theatre Group Coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Festival d’Avignon, Festival delle Colline Torinesi / Fondazione TPE, La Bâtie – Festival de Genève, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, Théâtre National de Bretagne, Münchner Kammerspiele, La Filature - Scène nationale de Mulhouse, Théâtre populaire romand - Centre neuchâtelois des arts vivants, La Chaux-de-Fonds

Thomas Melle invites you to an evening lecture on instability. But who is speaking and what is his agenda? For “Uncanny Valley”, Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll) made a copy of Thomas Melle (“Die Welt im Rücken”) in the form of a humanoid robot. What happens when a person is copied? Does the original person get to know himself better through his electronic double? Technology is taking over all sorts of menial work, and is now being tested on stage: What if a humanoid robot performs the lecture instead of the writer? Would the robot become a performer whose facial expressions, gestures and language trigger empathy – but then, empathy with whom? With Melle himself, who is not there, or with the robot? Whose voice is heard in the Uncanny Valley? Thomas Melle gives up control. The humanoid robot takes over and asks himself every night: what does it mean for the original when the copy takes over? Does he become more or less invisible?

An English translation can be provided on request.

Head of Robot Project and Puppetteering: Chris Kunzmann
Lead Robot Construction: Andreas Mattijat
Lead Robot Programmer and Puppetteering: Stefano Trambusti
Assistant Robot construction: Jonathan Noormann
Robotcontrol and programming support: Daniel Stiber
Steuerungstechnik: WeiglControl
Electronic support: Hendrik Donner
Moldmaking and galsfibertec: Niko Weber
FDM Print Construstion cleanup and 3D Print assist: Delia Kunzmann

In 1887, Strindberg’s “The Father” premiered in Copenhagen. This play was not the first in which the Swedish playwright expressed his scepticism about an emerging feminist movement, which in his eyes was too far-reaching in its demands. He places a father at the centre of the action: first of all, as master of the house, who by law and tradition rules over the family finances, but also the education of his daughter. But towards the end, he loses out the most, worn down by women’s demands on him and those of a (patriarchal) society on his existence as a man. Finally, his wife’s (alleged) conspiracy drives him to madness. Today, despite all its mastery of inner drama, Strindberg’s play about the apparent dawning of the end of patriarchy, or rather a patriarch at the end, seems at first sight to be reactionary. Or it appears to be the delusion of a playwright who has fallen into a new role and is helplessly overburdened by the movements of the times. 2018 - “Angry white men” are everywhere. Broad swathes of society are challenging emancipatory movements that had appeared up until now to be irreversible. It has become socially acceptable to badmouth “obsession with gender,” or to denounce discriminated identities and forms of existence as “decadent establishment,” as well as inciting action to “take back control”. But the fact is that countless feature articles in serious newspapers explore the notion of men as the weak and disadvantaged sex, or even report on the vast majority of suicides, or conversely, assassinations and killing sprees committed by men. Against this contemporary backdrop, what — in terms of truthfulness — can Strindberg’s “The Father” offer? Can this play be approached without prejudice and put to the service of a common, open-minded— or even disturbing and unsettling meditation—about what it means to be a human being in these times?

With English surtitles. For our seating recommendations please click here.

He was only 17 when he turned his back to the world. He started reading books and withdrawing from his friends, he changed his eating habits and began to provoke the women in his surrounding. Eventually he blamed his parents and all the other grown-ups for the degeneration of a world that could only be saved by its own destruction. He made this his personal task. – In these or in similar words Hamlet’s story could be told if it happened today. Uncompromising and calculating – this is how Hamlet prepares his holy war. If man is not good enough, man has to go. If there is no hope left in this world, the world must go.
Starting in the season 2016/17, Christopher Rüping is an in-house director at the Kammerspiele. He presents his interpretation of “Hamlet” – Shakespeare’s work about a young radical, too intelligent to fall prey to desperation while his cold anger gives way to destruction – in Kammer 2.