According to surveys by the Japan Family Planning Association, sex no longer matters to half of all Japanese couples. What’s more, almost 50% of 18 to 24-year-olds have never had sex. “I’m attracted to some of my girlfriends, but I’ve learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are just too complicated. I’m not into that,” as an article in The Guardian quotes one young man as saying. “People seem to have concluded that the satisfaction they get from sex is lower than the effort required,” says Masahiro Yamada, Professor of Family Sociology in Tokyo. Is this state of affairs a systemic failure, or is it driven by a fear of real-life intimate moments with an actual counterpart — something that seems much simpler in the virtual world? Are relationships just another stress factor for people exhausted by long working hours, or does this version of “I would prefer not to” embody a subversive act in the face of a male-dominated culture of desire? Director Toshiki Okada and his theatre group chelfitsch celebrated their first international success in 2004 with the play “5 Days in March”, in which two young people flee from the outside world into a ‘love hotel’, primarily to have sex for five days. In his third production at the Münchner Kammerspiele following “Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech” and “Nō Theater”, Toshiki Okada now narrates the tale of young and not-so-young people, who sing love songs in a karaoke bar without physically touching each other.

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

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

The version after Bertolt Brecht will be shown on: December 1, 2018

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

The new dance piece by Munich choreographer Anna Konjetzky stages fragile and inefficient bodies and thematises our social interaction with them. As if in a game, five dancers compete against each other. They test their limits, work against muscle cramps, struggle with losing their balance, get out of step, fall, give up and start again. Inspired by Youtube videos depicting stumbling drunks and weakened marathon runners, the ensemble takes the subject of falling out of context, while analysing and commenting on its own physical progress.

Dance Sahra Huby, Sooyeon Kim, Maxwell McCarthy, Quindell Orton, Robin Rohrmann Choreography, Space Anna Konjetzky Music Brendan Dougherty Video René Liebert Light Wolfgang Eibert Dramaturgy Sarah Israel Production Management Rat&Tat Kulturbüro

A production by Anna Konjetzky in co-production with the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Argekultur Salzburg. With the kind support of the Cultural Department of the City of Munich. With backing from the BLZT (Bavarian National Association for Contemporary Dance) from funds of the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Cultural Affairs, Science and the Arts, and the Performing Arts Foundation e.V.. The production was invited by Tanztendenz Munich e. V.

Up to now, the employees in the department for passports and residency documents at Lake Constance’s regional office (ZVdBR) had shrugged off the unexpected onrush as a temporary situation. They remained calm and matter-of-fact, even when the disturbing rumour of a “Day X” started to circulate. But when the date was officially confirmed, the offices were suddenly abandoned and the staff disappeared, briefly involved in an unknown mission. Enigmatic cases like these are known on the shores of Lake Constance as a “Tiefer Schweb” (deep dive), in reference to this deepest, most uncharted area of inland sea. Because here, in the area where the borders of Austria, Switzerland and Germany are so close together that you can visit all three countries in the space of a few seconds, civil servants and their relatives have retreated to a secret place: here, they meet out of the public eye and prepare for the inevitable moment of truth.
Christoph Marthaler, who knows how to captivates audiences with his idiosyncratic, poetic music-theatre shows, returns to Munich after a long absence.

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

For her first work at the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Polish director Marta Górnicka presents the world premiere of a libretto she herself arranged. It is a compilation of excerpts from theoretical texts, quotes from current political events, advertising blurb and new texts by the playwright Katja Brunner. Górnicka evokes images of our present in words by gathering up all the social “trash” blowing our – and her – way. Górnicka puts her libretto in the context of global inequality. In her production, this is formulated as a deeply ingrained imbalance that has arisen from history.
Not only is the existent inequality between men and women broached as a topic, but also the patriarchal world order as a structural problem. In Górnicka’s opinion, none of the feminist manifestos that are partly cited in the production have changed anything to date. On the other hand, everything outside the patriarchal order is excluded and declared as ‘other’ or ‘foreign’.

Gornicka believes that these mechanisms and tendencies towards social exclusion are becoming stronger, and through the choir as the voice of society, she examines forms of social expression. Trump makes an appearance in the production as a sad, comic clown and, at the same time, a symbol of world order to be taken seriously as it is the driving force behind right-wing parties and reactionary thinking.

The production’s title “To Each His Own” stands for the danger of fascist mechanisms which, albeit in a different form, either still exist or are threatening to build up again.
The original phrase, which dates back to antiquity, was used in the field of jurisdiction and is based on the concept of justice; however, it was corrupted by the National Socialists' misuse. It appeared (in German “Jedem Das Seine”) above the entrance to Buchenwald concentration camp, turning the original meaning on its head to manifest one of the interpretations of National Socialist ideology: namely, the dehumanisation of people. The term “to each his own” was twisted into a cynical interpretation meaning “to each his lot” – a brutal justification of the injustice perpetrated against those persecuted under the Nazis.
Marta Górnicka takes up the ambivalence and ambiguous cultural nature of this phrase by asking how, after Europe’s profound 20th-century historical caesura, a new, more equal world order can be created.

While the earth continues to be robbed of its resources, while the world is energised by a belief in technological progress, and while societies and nations increasingly isolate themselves, it is clear that the utopia of creating a just world has not yet been achieved.
As in many of her past productions, Marta Górnicka’s work creates a community, which in this case is made up of actresses from the Kammerspiele ensemble, audience members and Munich residents from different backgrounds. With Bach’s cantata “Nur jedem das Seine ...”, (Only to Each His Own) this choir presents itself as a social counter-model, standing for potential diversity and coexistence among all kinds of people.

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

The new dance piece by Munich choreographer Anna Konjetzky stages fragile and inefficient bodies and thematises our social interaction with them. As if in a game, five dancers compete against each other. They test their limits, work against muscle cramps, struggle with losing their balance, get out of step, fall, give up and start again. Inspired by Youtube videos depicting stumbling drunks and weakened marathon runners, the ensemble takes the subject of falling out of context, while analysing and commenting on its own physical progress.

Dance Sahra Huby, Sooyeon Kim, Maxwell McCarthy, Quindell Orton, Robin Rohrmann Choreography, Space Anna Konjetzky Music Brendan Dougherty Video René Liebert Light Wolfgang Eibert Dramaturgy Sarah Israel Production Management Rat&Tat Kulturbüro

A production by Anna Konjetzky in co-production with the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Argekultur Salzburg. With the kind support of the Cultural Department of the City of Munich. With backing from the BLZT (Bavarian National Association for Contemporary Dance) from funds of the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Cultural Affairs, Science and the Arts, and the Performing Arts Foundation e.V.. The production was invited by Tanztendenz Munich e. V.