The first English translation of iconic Swiss-German novelist Sibylle Berg—a ruthless indictment of contemporary society and a strikingly creative manifesto for rebellion.

New book: GRIME

Born with unclear sex in a cold GDR circle hall, Toto – arbitrarily called "he" – grows up with an overtaxed mother, lands in the children's home, where you torture him, then with brutal foster parents and finally flee to the west. There he becomes a woman, but now, otherwise unchanged, he endures the impositions of capitalism. Toto finds consolation alone in singing – and in the love for Kasimir, the friend from childhood days, who, however, is secretly working on Toto's final destruction.\
\
Sibylle Berg has adapted her novel *Thank you for life* itself for the stage and supplemented it with lyrics, for the premiere of Beni Brachtel.\
"Berg writes funny about the sad existence of the people, touching about the desolate existence and aggressively lovingly against a dark world. The story may still seem so gloomy, its passion speaks another language." (Frankfurter Rundschau)\
"Hear the determination to take note exclusively of the raven black, there is a moral appeal, a crazy hope and a simple question: Why do we get anger citizens at best, but never what Toto embodies: friendly people say thank you for life, which is easy and senseless at some point?» (Theatre today)\
"Until later, Toto is looking for the good, beautiful, true. But the bad, mountain leaves no doubt about it, these are the others. Those we are." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)



### **[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHlJZn0ZsTI)**

### **[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hebqKSLw498)**

### **[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDREbHikUds)**

 Ersan Mondtag

Toto or Thank You for Life

### **Who else would be able to save this world?**

Sibylle Berg: RCE #RemoteCodeExecution

Four computer nerds want to hack the digital surveillance and suppression system with their own resources and are developing the RCE app, a kind of network for preparing disinformation and manipulating money flows and supply chains. The app is intended to prepare the global revolution... With grim imagery (Sibylle Berg) touches on topics such as impoverishment, environmental destruction, the shift to the right and autocracy. She wants to capture the systemic madness and actually everything that the criticism of neoliberalism has had to offer for decades... Kay Voges succeeds in combining all of this by merging image and sound into a total work of art, the elements of which fit together precisely like clockwork grab... You've never seen theater fused with media imagery like this before." (Deutschlandfunk)

This RCE evening takes us visually and enthrallingly into a rabbit hole of algorithms, where the distinction between humans and machines is no longer so easy. Science fiction, that much is certain, is not.” (The Daily Mirror)

A psychedelic AI image flood installation that hacks directly into the synapses and psychological systems of the audience... (Berg's characters) are secret agents of discontent, their system sabotage is the megalomania fantasy of all anarchist hackers: using targeted hacks to bring the financial system to collapse "Redirect and stop the flow of goods and incite the unhappy masses to revolt." (Southgerman newspaper)

“What a hassle. But the result is worth every effort. The creepy techno fairy tale that Kay Voges distills from Sibylle Berg's novel is a lot of fun - obviously for the author too... In its video and image aesthetics, this production is nothing less than sensational." (night review)

«The brave new world that RCE presents is not a very distant fiction; the potentates and oligarchs of platform feudalism, who already dominate most of the world-wide wonderland, are all too clearly recognizable. In RCE, the real world is completely taken over by its digital companies, and the chipped people in it only depend on chilling entertainment and ambitious optimization apps. (Berlin newspaper)

“‘Consumption’, ‘capital’ and ‘digitization’ are some of the bad buzzwords (Bergs). And of course she’s damn right.” (Theater of Time)

“We have never seen anything so spectacular and shocking in the best sense of the word on a German stage.” (Berliner Morgenpost)

### **[Play Trailer 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uilbGdxN0s)**

### **[Play Trailer 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSNurG9deNQ)**

RCE #RemoteCodeExecution

The Meta Version | A piece of music for various people

**Occupation**

variable

The material world has had its peers. People have joyfully sold their data to tech companies, been monitored by biometric cameras, welcomed electronic ID cards and even bought their food, which was synthetically produced in a climate-friendly manner – at least as long as there was money in the online account. Now algorithms do their jobs, and at the edges of uninhabited cities, where nobody can pay the rents, idly blink server farms idyllically. The euphoria of the digital natives has been significantly reduced, since not even the optimization of one's own body as the last identity-creating place contributes something to well-being, since everyone only works with chatbots anyway. And what if the power fails or the cloud is switched off? It can only become even better if the great hope was: the engine for the resistance against the impositions of the present (capitalism, wars, climate change) and the entry into the auspicious metaverse. From the point of view of AI, however, which has long since thinks and acts independently, this "serious" only fulfills itself when man finally clears the earth so that it can breathe freely.\
\
Sensitive and residious, witty and warning, Sibylle Berg shows how we have fallen into our self-inflicted "humanoid" misfortune – and how we might find out there.

[](javascript:void(0);)**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npD3IaP5sYU)**

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61YuhovX6mI)**

Things Can Only Get Better

The "Brave New World" has long since begun, half of Europe is ruled by autocrats, the impoverishment of the masses is growing in thousands of decaying cities where people are being dumped to die out. Take Rochdale, England, for example: from there, the four children Don, Hannah, Karen and Peter set out to perhaps find a better future in London. They are driven along by the soundtrack that gives them hope: Grime, or GRM, the biggest musical revolution since punk. When the government announces an unconditional basic income for everyone (but only if everyone has a chip implanted in return, which serves the purpose of total surveillance), the four begin to resist the neoliberal system with the help of other hackers.

[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LH0UH-MPJs)[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LH0UH-MPJs)

Sibylle Berg's novel *GRM. Brainfuck* was at the top of the Spiegel bestseller list for weeks. "A book like an explosive device. Brutal and tender at the same time." (Die Zeit)\
"Berg shows us the perversions, injustices, crimes in contemporary Europe. She tells in this extremely sovereign rhythmic language, which is not without compassion, but on the contrary full of empathy." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung)\
"Be it artificial intelligence, populism, or capitalism in general, including the economic as well as mental drifting apart of the species: everything that is currently bothering us, real and/or media, has already taken a turn further in *GRM* and taken the worst possible turn." (Theater heute)

Sebastian Nübling

Ruff Sqwad Arts Foundation, UK 

GRM Brainfuck

»I am so angry at the world, or the system, or myself because I’ve betrayed everything that I didn’t believe in, or did we really believe we were saving the world? They just lay there as decoration, the books, the feminist, Marxist, queer books, they were just lying about displaying their titles, which we never read beyond because we’d rather watch our series.«

A speaker – »I’m in the age group that makes doctors decide against putting\
me on a ventilator when an up-and-coming portfolio manager is in the bed next to mine.« – takes ruthless stock of her life and that of an entire generation in neoliberalism.

»I’d expected that, in anticipation of my death, my subconscious would show me fascinating images of my successful life. And that I’d just repressed them, these unique moments full of fulfilment, love and exotic places. But what’s playing now can only be described as below average. Furniture and refrigerators, sad holidays and the absence of love.«

Sibylle Berg, an optimistic pessimist, as she describes herself, puts her brilliance on display once more. She has succeeded in creating a startling, furious and intense play full of linguistic wit, attitude and humour. »Did anyone – for goodness’ sake – prepare us for this affront? That we suddenly become unimportant? Invisible, even when we play by the rules? The ones that exist for women.«

Und sicher ist mit mir die Welt verschwunden, in a production once again directed by Sebastian Nübling, is the fourth and final part of\
the saga that Sibylle Berg has written for the Gorki. The journey of the young, multi-part speaker, which Berg began with the brilliant Es sagt mir nichts, das sogenannte Draußen, and accompanied on the search for happiness in an unhappy world with Und dann kam Mirna and Nach uns das All – Das innere Team kennt keine Pause, she ends in an ostensibly elegiac way, with a polyphonic speaker looking back at her life. CUT. ACTION.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scQ7x4w0Cgo)**

As anyone - please - prepared us for this mortification? That we suddenly become unimportant? Invisible, even if we play by the rules? Which there are for women.

And surely the world has disappeared with me

In the politically correct, vegan, contrasting present, the gender struggle seems fought out. Gone are the days when men explained the world to women and women had to endure bad sex. Women have long been in leading positions and no longer even need men to reproduce.

But where to with the former masters of creation, who have worn themselves out in fierce competition and at some point called for a strike, for sexual abstinence against the feeling of inferiority? As in a natural history museum, gardens of the past that were never a paradise are once again roamed through together: Stations of old couple relationships, from first getting to know each other to starting a family. The role models here have "tuned in" - in the sense of patriarchal systems of order - and made life clearer. But no one was really happy, and everyone is still faced with the question of how to fundamentally change the situation.

Subversively, Sibylle Berg Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata not only reinterprets our present, but extends it into a future that sees man at the end replaced by machines - and thus perhaps frees him from himself.[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNtnZO2dV2Y&t=8s)

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNtnZO2dV2Y&t=8s)**

Miloš Lolić

In the Gardens

A therapy in three wings\
Variable cast

They live on the freeway feeder road or in overcrowded neighborhoods, they are dark-skinned or gay, right-wing nationalist or alcoholic, they are man, woman, or something in between, and nothing unites them except anger at a society in which self-optimization and functionality are the only things that matter, at the general market value - even though the market itself has been idling for some time now. Only when a hate master appears does redemption become apparent. The humiliated take up arms and fight back mercilessly.

*Hass-Triptychon – Wege aus der Krise is a coproduction by the Maxim Gorki Theatres and the Wiener Festwochen*

***[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NowgbHysG5Y)***

The theme of Berg's text is the hatred that has permeated society, primarily a relegated middle class because something has been taken away from it: the job, social interaction, sex, the future, the family, childhood, vacations in Provence. But it would not be Sibylle Berg if this criticism of late capitalism did not also contain a concentrated charge of cynicism. Because self-moaning leads to a provocative therapy: terror, shooting everything down! Usually, victim and outsider roles are cultivated in the theater, here they are challenged ... 'Hate, let up!', one wishes. But the dark goddess Sibylle Berg knows better. 

Such an exaggeratedly depressive theater of impoverishment and desolation that the overall impression is not denunciatory, but rather exaggerated in a beautifully evil way ... Everything, this is the black point of the piece, boils down to a discharge through violence: the rampage of the discarded.

Ersan Mondtag

Sibylle Berg

Rowohlt Theater Verlag

Hate Triptych - Ways out of the crisis

Europe, at some point in the not too distant future: Nationalism and fascism have permanently established themselves on a continent marked by political tensions and warlike unrest. A woman in her thirties is preparing to leave by applying for a reality show whose participants are flying to Mars to build a new society on the red planet. However, this seemingly last resort in face of the increasing threat, is only available under certain conditions: to ensure propagation on the alien planet, the rocket can only be entered together with a partner...

Current: Staging by Felix Hafner in Volx/Margareten

After *Es sagt mir nichts, das sogenannte Draußen* (play of the year 2014) and *Und dann kam Mirna* (Mülheimer Theatertage 2016) follows the third part of the story about Sibylle Berg's anti-heroine of the 21st century. Sharp-tongued and linguistically at the pulse of time, Berg analyses social and political tendencies, without neglecting humour.

Director Felix Hafner, who was awarded the Nestroy Prize for Best Young Talent in 2017 for his popular theatre production *[Der Menschenfeind](http://www.volkstheater.at/stueck/der-menschenfeind/)*, brings the apocalyptic sci-fi adventure to the stage of Volx/Margareten.

Current production\
11.05.2019 (Opening)\
Volx/Margareten

**[Plat Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiZ-rUPa9eE)**

Felix Hafner

After us the universe or the inner team knows no break

The daunting news that global unemployment might reach 200 million people by the end of next year may be the last thing on anyone’s mind as they explore [Frieze London](https://www.artsy.net/frieze-london-2016). But one of the most recognized writers of the German-speaking world, Sibylle Berg, has put the problem center-stage.

The Frieze Project (2016) is an experimental play premiering at Frieze London as part of the fair’s Projects series. The punchy, 20-minute production speculates about what will happen to all the unemployed and unwanted refugees after a fourth industrial revolution. In Berg’s first collaboration with Cologne-based artist [Claus Richter](https://www.artsy.net/artist/claus-richter)—who is best known for his playful sculptures and installations that mimic fictional childhood settings—the duo has created a dystopian scenario in which robots run our lives.

**[Wonderland Ave](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frieze-projects-imagines-a-world-where-robots-rule)[nue ](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frieze-projects-imagines-a-world-where-robots-rule)[in the Frieze](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frieze-projects-imagines-a-world-where-robots-rule)**

**[Play Trailer](https://vimeo.com/186075246)**

The Frieze Project

What will the world look like in the future when social and technological developments progress as rapidly as they have in recent decades? When artificial intelligence has left human intelligence behind and determined all areas of life? What will become of human beings - these unpredictable, faulty, slow and sentimental beings?

Sibylle Berg's new play WONDERLAND AVE. is a bitterly evil and comic swan song to the world as we know it. The young director Ersan Mondtag, known for his radical and visually stunning productions, is working for the first time at Schauspiel Köln.

**[Play Trailer](https://vimeo.com/279815225)**

Wonderland Ave.

In the forests of the Jura, somewhere between the desolate towns of Moutier and Delémont, there is an oasis of peace that has fallen out of time: a magnificent villa, the setting for How To Sell A Murder House. Civil wars are raging in the nearby town - Salafist Muslim militias are locked in bloody battles with angry ultra-nationalists. No one is shocked by natural disasters anymore - it's a lot more catastrophic when the internet goes down after a power cut. The infrastructure of the modern world - what a vulnerable fabric it turns out to be.

In a circular sequence of scenes, different protagonists meet in pairs in the murder house. The strain of adapting to changing realities demands its tribute: a father flees his daughter, a nerd regrets the consequences of his cyborg experiment, a newly-arrived Russian lover turns out to be a disappointment - and a nameless horror pervades everything. There are voices, strange animals, and there is the taste of the end of the world lurking in the cracks and the curtains. It seems as though the final battle has begun. But who will come out of it alive?

[To Play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHIJHYgR6R0)

The gender battle, emancipation, equality - of course! But with the habitual Bergian uninhibitedness.

The Burgtheater actors Caroline Peters and Marcus Kiepe change their costumes to play the woman and the man - brilliant, precise, and colourful as they invigorate the text with their performances, which range from finely-controlled mimic movement to fierce physical theatre.

The two actors Caroline Peters and Marcus Kiepe did it very well - though Peters had it easier, considering that despite several role changes she played the same type of woman five times: self-confident, superior, highly-strung. Kiepe on the other hand slipped like a virtuoso from the bragger to the beaten whining dog. … Both woman and man also met the scenic demands, and everything else was slickly arranged: there was much panache, cliché-free gestures, symbolism, videos, and music … Everything was well-calibrated, no word was forced. And so you enjoyed watching the four scenes, plus prologue and finale …

How To Sell a Murder house

A half-emptied flat, suitcases and boxes. A woman in her mid-thirties and her ten-year-old daughter Mirna are waiting for the removal van that is supposed to take them to their new lives. As they're packing, images of 21st century womanhood and relationships are dissected as bitterly as the failure of ambition and the vague yearning for a new beginning that will never be real. And Mirna has inherited her mother's sharp sarcasm - much to her consternation - but seems otherwise to have turned out very different.

Sibylle Berg has written a sequel to And Now: The World, which was named the play of 2014 by Theater Heute magazine. Using the same actors (with the addition of Çiğdem Teke) and four children, director Sebastian Nübling and choreographer Tabea Martin show where the rebellious young women are ten years later, in their mid-thirties. They've had children and break-ups, and are contending with the painful realization that they will "only have small mediocre lives" - along with their daughters, who interrogate their mothers just as critically as the women scrutinized the generation before them.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uws0HBSdSpo)**

And Then Came Mirna

Eight-year-old Lisa can solder together computers from scrap metal and spends her evenings searching space with her astro-software for extraterrestrial life. She has good reason to do this: the life that she has to contend with on Earth is anything but pleasant. Since her parents lost their jobs, all they do is heave themselves from the bed to the sofa and back; family dinners or outings or conversations are over. At school, Lisa sits by herself and secretly reads books about physics while trying not to stand out during breaks. She is easy prey for teachers and bullies alike.

But one evening, an actual space ship lands in the forest near Lisa's neighbourhood. The group of extraterrestrial travellers takes just one brief, disgusted look at Earth before turning around, but in their haste to take off they leave one of their own behind: Klakalnamanazdt, or, as Lisa prefers to call him, Walter. On Walter’s planet, everyone is busy cuddling, playing, and looking out for one another; no wonder he finds Lisa's life extremely strange. He wastes no time bringing her life in order - until Lisa can manage without relying on a stranger’s powers.

My Slightly Strange Friend Walter is a play about friendship and taking small steps in a difficult situation. Steering a long way wide of mendacious self-improvement advice, Sibylle Berg gives her heroine the chance to change things - not everything, not by a long shot, but a few things.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we4rrRodRV4)**

Andrea Kramer

My Slightly Strange Friend Walter

Gay marriage, migration, organic vegetables, the euro crisis, feminism - all hot topics wildly bandied about in the pub and on the internet. The politically correct offer warnings and reactionaries offer self-contradictions. In the midst of this is the soliloquising modern everyman: white, heterosexual, middle class, and able to produce a seven-course gastronomic experience for his wife and son. Career-wise, he hasn't achieved what he'd hoped for and despite living in a very respectable part of town his family aren't living up to his expectations either. He's running out of money and hope. He feels misled by his parents, who convinced him he was a winner, that he was somehow unique. Now their promise is beginning to look like a cruel joke.

Everyman complains, whines and pontificates about society, accompanied by a male choir - "the voice of the people" - that becomes more and more threatening.

[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12sFvR-KeFE)

Rafael Sanchez

Eat a lot and eat it well

And Now: The World!

Or,

The So-Called Outside Means Nothing To Me

They're smart and they live in precarious circumstances, because none of the internships they do makes any money. They sell home-made drugs on the internet, they write fashion blogs and try to boost the market value of their bodies in gyms, even though they despise the market. They communicate via Skype, text, chat or phone and still can't help but feel an overwhelming loneliness. In Sibylle Berg's "text for one or several voices", a young woman takes stock of her life so far. Once a member of a brutal girl's gang, she's now all about serene yoga sessions. Where there was once clumsy heavy petting in a summer camp, now it's gender issues and "sex" and "love" projects with men and women. Desire and longing only happens in movies, the family is a grouping you build yourself, while the world lurches on outside, making demands and creating impossible role models.

Sibylle Berg draws a merciless but tender portrait of four young women who, torn between aggression, apathy, outrage and serenity, are unsure about what we should be fighting for, and they even use the word "we" with a certain skepticism.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_67RgXLRlcc)**

Berg settles her account with a world in which Hollywood movies are seen as depicting the ideal love life, friends are social media contacts, and shopping is a civic duty. What a wonderful piece of theatre - powerful, brutal, and desperate.

Sebastian Nübling. Currently running in repertoire

And Now: The World!

A travel-opera epic in several acts

An island far from civilisation; the travel brochure says this is one of the last untouched paradises. Karl and Karla, a couple of elderly teachers, want to take a vacation from themselves, while Ansgar and Kevin, two journalists in their early thirties, have chosen this place to investigate the grievances of the developing world. All of them are disappointed: there's nothing even remotely idyllic about the island, and no child soldiers or sex tourism. Instead, they find boredom, casual tsunami warnings, and hatred masked by professional courtesy. The travellers' old-style liberal ideals clash with the locals' neoliberal ambitions, a need for basic resources, and the desire for comfort - until all of them are taken hostage. A nightmare begins that forces them to reevaluate their preconceived opinions.

Hasko Weber

Fear Travels With Us

Four women in their early fifties receive an invitation for a free "wellness day" and find themselves in a spa, where a hair and make-up artist spells out the horrors of their womanhood, from anorexia to menopause. They may have very different lives - Ms. Luhmann (single mother, office employee), Ms. Gray (pathologist and single, no children out of choice), Mrs. Merz-Dulschmann (housewife and mother) as well as Ms. Töss (lawyer and permanent girlfriend) - but they share a common set of problems: the apparent disappearance of sexual attraction, or else outright social rejection, being judged on their looks regardless of their intelligence; the unspoken decree of male judgements and norms. But there is a sinister plan hidden behind all the focus on the body, the cosmetics, the fashion and hair care. The women discover it just in time - and begin to plan their counterattack.

Sibylle Berg masterfully frees her ladies from the purgatory of all the world's women's magazines, and replaces discussions about liposuction with a feminist discourse of bitter experiences and nasty, sarcastic remarks. For if they overlook where the real battle line is, women will become women's worst enemies - a state of affairs that needs to end.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OeaVoTrXZs)**

Klaus Weise

The Ladies Are Waiting

A Christmas play

Christmas, a celebration of enforced family reunions. With foreboding, the parents - baby boom hippies, academics, and still enemies of "the system" - await the annual visit of their ill-bred offspring. Where did their progressive education go wrong? How did they fail to produce pot-smoking revolutionaries, and instead turn their children into career-driven philistines? The children's return is motivated solely by material interests. Marie and Lukas would like to inherit the family mansion, and think their parents would be better off in a nice retirement home.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0ALIpbZDqs)**

The mother: feminist, drinker, an extravagant Susan Sontag type. Can't stand her kids, who she sees as too conformist. The father: someone who has to retrieve the TV set from the cellar for the benefit of his visiting kids. … The children: out-and-out careerists and representatives of the neocon bourgeoisie… This family celebration, with its ritual exchange of catty remarks, brings many a surprise to light … witty, pointed, mean.

Maaike van Langen

Don't Spoil The Surprise!

"Looking good means you'll be raped more frequently than others," is the first thing Judith from Kinshasa says, and she speaks from experience. Judith from Berlin cuts herself with a razor blade, because she doesn’t conform to any known idea of beauty. And Judith from Betulia poisons her husband and her sons just to get some quiet time.\
\
Sibylle Berg’s eight "Holofernes moments" appear to be randomly picked from world events: eight spotlit monologues by women of different ages and different nationalities, talking about injuries and scars, about self-mutilation and the evisceration of others, about death and destruction. They don't do this with a biblical imperative, but almost casually and deadpan, at times patchy, sometimes with frightening clarity, and at other times in complete self-denial - but always inflected with a dark bitter humour.

**[Play Trailer](https://vimeo.com/188816765)**

Missions Of Beauty - Holofernes Moments

It's the company party at a big corporation. For some this is the highlight of the year, for others it's just a nightmare. This time round, management comes up with something special: a chartered pleasure boat. And here, on the garishly decorated dance floor, the boss cheerfully announces cutbacks to boost revenues. The race is on as everyone fights to keep their job, and defiance and dignity fall by the wayside.

And so, while employees take turns to go upstairs and make intimate pleas, under the guidance of a motivational trainer, about why they shouldn't be the ones who get fired, some very different games are being played in the belly of the ship, occasionally using electric shocks. There are subversive moments that provide a brief respite from the power struggles and intrigues that burden everyday working life. But one question permeates all levels of the management and wage structure, down to its smallest component: is life determined by work, or is work just a way to prevent widespread revolt?

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDw6628mqs4)**

The Main Thing Is Work!

Is it possible to start over at forty? Petra and Peter, both about to step beyond the preferred target age for advertising, meet at a cocktail party. The misery of their mediocrity, the sense of failure despite a comfortable income, draws them together almost magically. They decide to get married, to move away together to a strange town. No more half-baked dreams of romanticism, of great unconditional love. Who knows, maybe you can find more happiness with someone who is not a prince or a princess, but who can make you feel safe and at home? But long-held preconceptions can't be shed so easily: two ghosts return to haunt Petra and Peter, intent on sabotaging their marriage. They conjure forgotten promises and trap them in horrifying scenes of their future conjugal life. Fear of failure, fear of illness or poverty in old age - the possibilities are endless. How alluring, in contrast, are the images instilled in them day by day, about having a successful career, owning a beautiful house and a flawless, eternally young body. Wouldn't the fulfilment of those high expectations be worth waiting for? Or are these just delusions? And how much courage will it take for Petra and Peter to resist the peer pressure?

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDAq4tnXK04)**

Niklaus Helbling

Only At Night

Even back in school, some thirty years ago, Bea, Rita, Paul and Uwe weren't exactly "alpha dogs". Bea got ridiculed for her leg braces; Rita was so inconspicuous that even her own parents occasionally overlooked her; the red-haired autistic Paul contemplated suicide most of the time, and, since he was weight challenged, Uwe's peers liked to dress him up as a sausage.

None of them treasure their memories of those days, and they all envy Imke, Carl-Gustav, and Rüdiger, the rich, good-looking, popular ones, always at the top of the food chain. Not even their hope that everything would get better after graduation was fulfilled. Still, getting older has its advantages, especially if one was never good-looking and has little to lose. After all, perhaps only those familiar with unhappiness are able to be truly happy, and when Bea and her fellow sufferers meet again after all these years, they experience some pleasant surprises in the late summer of their lives.

Schirin Khodadadian

The Final Golden Years

Adapted by Andreas Erdmann\
\
Max and Anna, 13, have decided to take off - in a rush, with no definite destination, maybe Italy, or Greece. The main thing is to get out of grey and stuffy East Germany, which certainly can't be the best country in the world, away from the parents who won't talk to them. They didn't even know each other until a few hours ago. But then Anna's mother fell down drunk in the street, right in front of Max. He helped Anna carried her to bed, made spaghetti, and now they're at the slip road to the motorway, "because it's winter, and everything is a pain in the arse ... and there's still six years until we're of age. Can't fuckin' take it." A truck stops, and Anna and Max are on their way to the Polish border. But the impromptu escape from institutionalized despair is fraught with obstacles, and not just practical ones. At first, Max and Anna are best friends, but then Anna meets handsome Igor, and suddenly they have their first really big fight...

Have I Ever Told You... A fairy tale for everyone

A musical fit for Broadway

Buddha, Allah and Elohim are worried: God is going through an existential crisis and has been neglecting the interreligious croquet game. Instead of promenading leisurely through Elysian fields, he takes the shape of a poodle and roams amongst the humans. Outraged by the state of his creation, he decides to put an end to the misery. Apocalypse now. But just as in its creation, there must be order in Earth's destruction. It took seven days to build the whole thing, now it takes seven corrupt souls to undo it all. And so God sends out his adoptive son Ralf, aka "The Evil", to hunt for souls. Whether it's a mansion, fame, fortune, sex or cultural distinction, Ralf fulfils one wish after another - in the most unpleasant manner possible, but always to the letter. One soul after another is sold to him. The other gods are getting nervous. If God erases everything, they'll all have to start over, a complete repeat performance, from dinosaurs to recycling. There's only one solution: Ralf must find true love, and as quickly as possible.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltn2uJsZa9Q)**

Make A Wish

It's New Year's Eve - the nightmare for all single people. On this particularly fraught night before January 1st, two women take part in a workshop. One is in her mid-forties and the other in her mid-thirties. Both are attractive and smart, yet single, despite numerous attempts to find a partner. The workshop is called "Never Love Again!" - a good New Year’s resolution with guaranteed lasting effect.

Hosted by a wailing woman (who chimes in frequently with an "alas" or a "woe is me") and more importantly, an all-purpose man who takes on the role of various partners at different stages of life, the workshop has the two women act out their dating experiences. The only way back to their former ease is a rigorous exorcism of all their ideals, dreams and other delusions, so as to avoid the terror of coupledom and be able to say loud and proud, "the city we'll take, but no sex."

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCOvTZA4rIk)**

It'll Be Alright. Never Love Again!

Two different ways of life: one takes place in a "typical gas explosion district" whose inhabitants have sunk to the bottom of society, the other in an upmarket area where the well-off are climbing the career ladder. As different as they are, the two worlds lie very close together - only a blink of fate's eye separates dignity and poverty. Here, we have supermarket cashiers, book-keepers and the unemployed; there, newspaper editors, web designers and event managers, but on closer inspection, these parallel universes overlap a lot. The same sentences are spoken in both worlds, and there are identical constellations of people, if not identical people. They are variations of the same person, whose social status is decided by the toss of a coin. Whether heads or tails wins in the end, everyone fights the same battle against estrangement from their body, loneliness and gradual disappearance - only the means are different.

Look, The Sun Is Going Down

Herr Mautz has travelled to the Far East and finds himself in a shabby hotel room where three cockroaches are impatiently awaiting his death. They encourage him to choose one moment from his past to take with him into eternity. Images of his carefully planned life rush by him in quick succession. Herr Mautz had methodically learned and ticked off one emotion per year. Nothing in his life had ever struck him as out of place, quite the contrary - he found his accomplishments remarkably pleasing. But regretfully, no single moment for eternity willingly reveals itself, and suddenly the last thing he feels is the sense of dying. Then Herr Mautz has an unpleasant inkling, but it comes a little late…

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gy7KGSZNcs)**

As long as there are plays of this quality by Sibylle Berg, theatre is not doing too badly.

Herr Mautz

A dog narrates the odd behaviour between a man and woman who have bound themselves to one another even though neither can stand the other's company. At the very moment they meet, the dog runs up and stays with them because he - like them - has nothing to lose and he - like them - is looking for protection. After a short period of devotion, human nature forces its way to the surface: love becomes possessiveness, closeness is replaced by mistrust and alienation. But a break-up is out of the question. The couple’s energy-sapping everyday routine binds them together like a taut leash. This all seems very natural to the dog: "We dogs and human beings are alike in many ways. We deal with catastrophes similarly: we accept them."

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jbXjSiLECc)**

Stephan Bruckmeier

Dog, Woman, Man

In the year 2004, animals have seized power from humans. For entertainment, they can order "ordinary human lives" to watch at home via pay-per-view. And tonight, "Victor's Life" is on. They watch his biography as if in jump cuts. Victor's failure is not down to tragic strokes of fate, but something shockingly banal: his lack of courage to make decisions, his unkindness, and his dullness.

**[Play Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4IJyReAAoQ)**

This is a nasty, hilarious little fable in which social critique, cynicism, trendy jargon, and fake innocence pass us by in a garish parade.

Victor's Life

Adapted by Stephan Bruckmeier\
\
"The men and women on stage are dead before they've even started to live. Then they parade their death throes for the last time - small trash-tragedies of loneliness, desire and violence. And of course, there are their causes of death, each his own creating a collective suicide that has transported them to Hades - murdered by a radiator, self-incineration, pills, car accidents. In fact, "Generation Shit" wears rose-tinted glasses even more than they are bent on fulfilling a death wish. The protagonists cling to love as the last utopia… Short Cuts seen through the prism of 90s emotions, a pandemonium of hopelessness and the void of relationships." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Plays