Münchner Kammerspiele, 29 September, 1922, was the premiere of “Trommeln in der Nacht” (Drums in the Night). After years of captivity, a man returns to Berlin to find the city in a state of revolution. His first stop is a visit to his former lover. There, in her parents’ living room, he finds out that his beloved has just engaged another man, a war profiteer, who will one day modernise her father’s factory. In disappointment and anger, the man joins the socialist battles taking place on the streets and becomes an important figure in the Spartacist Uprising against the conservative government. The violent occupation of the newspaper district by insurgents is imminent. At that point, his beloved comes to her senses and leaves her new fiancé to woo back her former lover. Faced with the choice between his lover and the uprising, he hesitates briefly before making a decision: he chooses to desert the insurgency and go home with his lover. After “Der Spieler”, “Hamlet” and, most recently, “Miranda July’s The First Bad Man”, Christopher Rüping, the in-house director at the Kammerspiele, stages Brecht’s story that is set in a turbulent era. The fact that the premiere took place at the Kammerspiele almost 100 years ago is no more than a footnote.
At the premiere, the protagonist chose to go with his lover and deserts his fellow insurgents. But even while Bertolt Brecht was writing this play, and throughout his life from then on, he struggled with his ending of “Trommeln in der Nacht”. Should the war veteran opt for the revolution instead of his own personal happiness? In this production, Christopher Rüping poses the question: What would have happened if...?

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

The version by Bertolt Brecht will be shown on: December 20, 2018 and February 20, 2019

The version after Bertolt Brecht will be shown on: January 25, 2019

Tip: Scroll to the bottom of the page in order to obtain the programme as PDF.

“To find out what holds the world together at its core,” is Faust’s mission as he sets out on a quest of intoxication, rejuvenation, sex and wizardry. “I want to gain more in this hour than in a year’s monotony.” Faust abandons all reason (or at least tries), relinquishes control and hopes to understand the world at last by living in the fast lane. Director Leonie Böhm says: “I am Faust” and, together with the actors Annette Paulmann, Julia Riedler and Benjamin Radjaipour, she excavates real emotions in the old Faust text. Just as the cloud rappers nowadays add a “young” to their artistic names, indicating not only their literal youth, but also their fresh way of relating to the world and relationships within it, “Yung Faust” wants to reclaim the vulnerable immediacy of the much-too-often recited sentences of the powerful old wise man (Goethe). Real quotes, real encounters: “My breasts are starting to burn!”

Tip: Scroll to the bottom of the page in order to obtain the programme as PDF.

This evening turns the view to the audience away from the stage. Which relationships are established in theatre with the audience? Starting point of this evening is Weiss’ “Viet Nam Discourse”. Its politically agitational staging in 1968 at the Munich Kammerspiele was aimed directly at the audience: What does it mean to attend a political theatre show? Taking the demands of the play literally, at the end of the performance the actors collected money for the Vietcong. This was followed by a veritable showdown between the directors Peter Stein and Wolfgang Schwiedrzik as well as the artistic director August Everding. Fifty years after the conflict, Mroué explores the role of the audience on the same site – in the former workshop of the Kammerspiele. Can there still be an audience when theatre turns into the street, into a place of open political debate? In his reflexion Mroué is not asking what should happen on the stage, but inquires which relations between stage and audience are hereby produced. “Kill the Audience” is Rabih Mroué’s third production at the Münchner Kammerspiele. After “Ode to Joy” (2015), “Rima Kamel” (2017) celebrated its premiere as part of the director’s retrospective at the Kammerspiele.

Tip: Scroll to the bottom of the page in order to obtain the programme as PDF.

Private function.

Life is fleeting. One false move – and it could all be over. For Eurydice, for example, who is being led from the underworld by her lover Orpheus. Both know that if he turns around to look at her, they can never be together again. Or for the roses, lovingly tended by a gardener who is fully aware that their blossoms are fragile and temporary. Or for the protagonist of the evening, who has already experienced so much and now looks forward to entering the third stage of life. While the first work by the American choreographer Trajal Harrell at the Münchner Kammerspiele chose youthful death as its theme in “Juliet & Romeo”, the end of life is one eventuality in his new piece “Morning in Byzantium”. But then at the end, the choice is clear – for life!

This evening turns the view to the audience away from the stage. Which relationships are established in theatre with the audience? Starting point of this evening is Weiss’ “Viet Nam Discourse”. Its politically agitational staging in 1968 at the Munich Kammerspiele was aimed directly at the audience: What does it mean to attend a political theatre show? Taking the demands of the play literally, at the end of the performance the actors collected money for the Vietcong. This was followed by a veritable showdown between the directors Peter Stein and Wolfgang Schwiedrzik as well as the artistic director August Everding. Fifty years after the conflict, Mroué explores the role of the audience on the same site – in the former workshop of the Kammerspiele. Can there still be an audience when theatre turns into the street, into a place of open political debate? In his reflexion Mroué is not asking what should happen on the stage, but inquires which relations between stage and audience are hereby produced. “Kill the Audience” is Rabih Mroué’s third production at the Münchner Kammerspiele. After “Ode to Joy” (2015), “Rima Kamel” (2017) celebrated its premiere as part of the director’s retrospective at the Kammerspiele.

Tip: Scroll to the bottom of the page in order to obtain the programme as PDF.

After “Point of No Return” at the Kammerspiele, the Israeli director Yael Ronen returns with a production that examines our origins, the book where life supposedly started: the First Book of Moses –Bereshit in Hebrew and Genesis in ancient Greek – describes the creation of the world. It first turns to God, the director and creator of the world (Gen. 1,1 – 1,3). The mythic allegories of Genesis are interpreted frequently and controversially, and at the same time they form the roots of Western culture. In metaphors and symbolism, Genesis tells, for example, how woman was made from the rib of man. Is this the root of a patriarchal world order? And why is God generally perceived as a male being? Together with the Kammerspiele ensemble, Yael Ronen explores individual fragments of Genesis to explore how biblical images have influenced us and what they mean to us today. While Genesis, like many other myths, was read to provide orientation and identity in archaic cultures, Yael Ronen’s production is based on the perspective that we take up on individual topics – and what has become of the world which God gave people at the beginning of Genesis. Many current topics can be traced back to the Bible: control over nature, the gender debate, themes of jealousy and violence, all the way to the question of whether humanity, with its love of technological progress, is in the act of reaching for forbidden fruit. Yael Ronen and the ensemble’s version of Genesis proposes a new perspective on individual themes in the book and continues to write the story of the people – the people on stage.

Tip: Scroll to the bottom of the page in order to obtain the programme as PDF.

Life is fleeting. One false move – and it could all be over. For Eurydice, for example, who is being led from the underworld by her lover Orpheus. Both know that if he turns around to look at her, they can never be together again. Or for the roses, lovingly tended by a gardener who is fully aware that their blossoms are fragile and temporary. Or for the protagonist of the evening, who has already experienced so much and now looks forward to entering the third stage of life. While the first work by the American choreographer Trajal Harrell at the Münchner Kammerspiele chose youthful death as its theme in “Juliet & Romeo”, the end of life is one eventuality in his new piece “Morning in Byzantium”. But then at the end, the choice is clear – for life!

TAM TAM is a regular dance event. In February, the evening show begins with a silent movie, set to music by the band Ton, Bilder, Scherben. Then they pass the baton to Standbein of Ehe of Love, who play lying down. Finally, Jason Arigato, a leading light in the Munich music underground, sings sad, slow songs before M. Bluse and Hardy Funk spin discs until deep into the night.