People of all ages wear their shirts, and their songs have become the soundtrack of entire generations: Nirvana. But what accounts for the enthusiasm for this band, even though it disbanded over thirty years ago? Not only the suicide of grunge star Kurt Cobain, but also the life and personality of the unforgettable Nirvana frontman still raise questions today: resignation or revolt? Angry outsider, highly sensitive artist, lifelong seeker? Drinks, drugs, and depression. Voice of Generation X, ally, feminist?

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Come As You Are

Theater Lübeck

Composer John Kander tells a great love story in "Cabaret": Nightclub singer Sally Bowles and writer Clifford Bradshaw meet on New Year's Eve 1929 in Berlin. For a while, the newly in love couple's happiness seems perfect – despite their differing ideas about the future and their precarious circumstances. Sally lives for the day and sings at the famous "Kit Kat Klub" at night. Jealous Cliff can't deal with this. He is working on his second novel, but is in the midst of a creative crisis. Moreover, the mood of the "Golden Twenties" is increasingly changing, even in the liberal metropolis of Berlin. Fascism and anti-Semitism are poisoning society. Even the apolitical landlady, Fräulein Schneider, can no longer close her eyes to the rise of National Socialism.

Cabaret

He is one of the greats of American rock music: an Oscar and Tony Award winner, a 20-time Grammy winner – and more than 60 million albums sold make him one of the most successful musicians of all time. His songs, sometimes melancholically dark, sometimes powerfully earthy, have won a huge fan base around the world. Autobiographical elements are repeatedly reflected in the songs: his difficult relationship with his father, his working-class background, but also social themes such as rural exodus in the USA or everyday racism in the provinces. His childhood and youth experiences – growing up in a small town in New Jersey, in a home shaped by a choleric father who failed to build an emotional relationship with his children – flow into his songs. With a mixture of anger, a longing for escape and freedom, but also with wistful nostalgia, he describes his roots and simultaneously expresses what concerns the "little man" on the street. In "My Hometown," for example, he sings about the decline of his hometown, empty shops, violence, and unemployment. He tells of failed lives, lost dreams, and defiant rebellion. His songs deal with life and death, friendship, family, idealism, the American Dream, and homelessness—and they reflect the psychological state of a nation.

My Hometown

The godfather of the Beat Generation, William S. Burroughs, rock legend Tom Waits, and director Robert Wilson created "The Black Rider" in Hamburg in 1990: a dreamlike play about the price of escapism. Seemingly opposing worlds blend within it: the associative, often drug-induced lyrics of William S. Burroughs, driven by sound and rhythm, the raw, dissociative sound of Tom Waits, and a well-known German folk tale.

The Black Rider The Casting of the Magic Bullets

Nils doesn't feel like helping his parents and finds going to school boring. He prefers to annoy the cat or the geese – but when he catches a goblin, he's caught the wrong one: Before he knows it, he's transformed into Thumbling and suddenly experiences what it's like to be small and powerless. When he tries to stop Martin the house goose from following the call of the wild geese to freedom, he unexpectedly finds himself high in the air on Martin's back. This is the beginning of the famous journey of little Nils Holgersson with the wild geese, which Selma Lagerlöf wrote down over 100 years ago – for which she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature – and which still tells us a lot about responsibility, friendship, and how we treat our environment.

The wonderful journey of Nils Holgersson

It's their fourth meeting, and the man and the woman seem to be a perfect match. They count the days, hours, and minutes that have passed since they last saw each other: "Five days, two hours, six minutes." They talk about their fears: "What was it today? The black dog? The climate?" They don't communicate digitally, but write on pieces of paper what they want to say to each other at their next meeting: "Monday. I wake up thinking of you." But what actually happens in our hearts, brains, and guts when we're in love? Neuroscience has been studying this topic for 20 years and has now proven which hormones are necessary and which brain areas are involved in creating a lifelong bond between two individuals. So, could we in the near future control all of our emotions using chemicals and build neural networks so similar to our brains that they can not only learn but also feel?

The fourth meeting

Who do I still talk to, and who do I no longer talk to? Who is so politically distant from me, who strikes me as so contemptuous of humanity, that they've disqualified themselves as a conversation partner? And what do these personal perspectives mean for the greater whole of our democratic coexistence? It seems as if political discourse is becoming ever more heated and irreconcilable, the choice of words increasingly drastic, the views ever more radical. But this observation is by no means limited to politics; social media is being insidiously undermined by hateful, denigrating, and violence-glorifying comments about everything and everyone. Are we becoming a society full of bullies? Why have the fronts become so entrenched, what has changed in recent years? And above all: How do we get out of this whole mess?

WTF?!

Truffaldino travels to Venice with his employer. And because the boss is busy in important meetings, Truffaldino quickly finds a second job that promises to fill his empty stomach and save him from financial difficulties. Now it's all about keeping the two employers secret. But Boss No. 1 is actually a woman, dressed only in men's clothing, looking for her lover, who is on the run after a botched duel. And Boss No. 2 is—how could it be otherwise—this lover, of all people. While the two lovers are actually looking for each other, Truffaldino works up a sweat to prevent them from meeting at all costs. This famous game of mistaken identity brought joy to people more than 250 years ago and became Carlo Goldoni's masterpiece.

Willy Daum

Events

Upcoming events

Jun 20 - Jul 5, 2026

The Servant of Two Masters · Theater Lübeck

Past events

Mar 27 - May 30, 2026

Come As You Are · Theater Lübeck

Mar 19 - May 10, 2026

Cabaret · Theater Lübeck

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Cabaret by Kander

Theater Lübeck

About

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