Name: St. John Passion
Start: 2026-03-15T17:00:00
Location: Theater Aachen

Manuel Michels

Olivia Fuchs

Theater Aachen

The Brenner Pass: A swathe of mountains in an idyllic landscape and a border crossing between Austria and Italy. Eighty years ago, a relatively unknown crime took place here. High-ranking Nazi officials like Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann fled the Allies' grasp and their just punishment on secret smugglers' routes across the green border, first to Italy and from there to the world. And they had help from the local population. Miriam Unterthiner's new play "Blood Bread" is about the so-called "Rat Line," as this escape route was dubbed. It will receive the Kleist Prize for Young Dramatic Artists in 2025 and will premiere at Theater Aachen. The "Blood Bread" is a metaphor for repressed guilt: The soil on which this happened produces the bread we are meant to eat today. Can we chew, swallow, and digest it? Or can we no longer get it down? Poetically condensed and at the same time concrete, virtuosic and powerful, with subtle humor and great images, "Blutbrot" literally digs into the past and builds a bridge to the present.

Blood bread

Kammer

When Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, bringing with him the seer Cassandra as "war booty," he falls into a trap. His wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murder him in revenge for Agamemnon's sacrifice of his own daughter Iphigenia to ensure fair winds toward Troy. One bloodbath breeds another, and the siblings Orestes and Electra avenge their father's death on their mother. To end the family curse, a citizens' court is convened to decide Orestes' fate. "The Oresteia" is not only the only completely surviving ancient drama trilogy, it is also the first written account of a democratic vote. Its author, Aeschylus, had witnessed the end of a tyranny and the first steps toward democracy in Athens in his youth. In Florian Hertweck's production of all three parts, including a prologue with the backstory of the Tantalus Curse, great ancient tragedy meets participatory theater, "true crime" meets rap theater. He most recently staged the rap spectacle "House of Karls," and now Hertweck and the ensemble are turning their attention to one of the oldest texts in literature: classical, pop, political, performative, and cinematic.

The Oresteia

In the "Navel," people live like they're in an amusement park with roller coasters, cotton candy, and mascots – while on the other side of the wall that borders this paradise, in the "Rand," precarious conditions and poverty prevail. People from the "Rand" regularly move to the "Navel," partly to provide a better life for their families. The father of "She," the protagonist of this play, once left his family to work in the "Navel" – and never returned. Years later, "She" is grown up and follows in his footsteps. She hasn't spoken her native language from the "Rand" for a long time anyway. In the "Navel," there's work, roller coasters, perhaps a future...

Mysteryland

A story about growing up and becoming an adult, about feeling "very big and very small," about encounters with the unfamiliar, and the question: Who am I when I'm constantly changing? Lewis Carroll, a mathematician by profession, sends little Alice on a journey full of unpredictable twists and turns and logical contradictions in his magnum opus. The fantastically crazy creatures she encounters in Wonderland—the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts, and the egg-shaped Humpty Dumpty—are cult figures. Director Nikolas Darnstädt stages "Alice" as a musical adventure about the power of imagination: As long as we dream and tell each other stories, we continually discover that the world could be completely different. Like Darnstädt, costume designer Laura Kirst is also working in Aachen for the first time. For set designer Sina Manthey, however, it's a reunion; she previously created the magical underwater worlds for the family play "The Fisherman and His Wife." The soundtrack and original songs are provided by actor-musician Malcolm Kemp.

Alice in Wonderland

The doting Nemorino loves Adina. Hopelessly. Because she seems to only have eyes for the boastful Belcore. And anyway, Adina would rather live free and unattached. A magic potion is needed that will make the other person fall in love. How convenient that the miracle doctor Dulcamara has a cure for everything and, for his already scarce money, talks Nemorino into buying a love potion. As it turns out, it's just ordinary red wine.

L'elisir d'amore / The love potion

Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence. Tech companies and governments are pumping billions into this promising key technology of the future. It's supposed to revolutionize virtually all areas of human life. Yet the idea isn't fundamentally new: As early as 1816, Mary Shelley had her Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein create an artificial intelligence—his famous monster has been roaming pop culture for a good 200 years. Like today's "large language models" (e.g., ChatGPT), it learns through observation and imitation. Its clumsy brutality touches and frightens us, just as AI simultaneously provokes euphoria and apocalyptic fear. But what if these two reaction patterns weren't contradictory at all: Is the desire for invention perhaps rooted in a longing for self-abolition? Are we deliberately replacing ourselves with a new, better form of existence—more rational and less destructive than the obsolete human species? In his playful reinterpretation, director Tristan Linder connects Mary Shelley's classic with current technological debates, employing the very tools that are also the subject. A theatrical evening that oscillates between science fiction and creation myth, between hope and fear.

Frankenstein

Aachen in the year 2044. After the National Alliance for Germany (NAfD) emerged as the strongest party in the 2029 federal election, democracy was gradually dismantled and an authoritarian regime established. Freedom of expression no longer exists, artistic production is under state control, people who cannot provide proof of German ancestry are "denaturalized" on a daily basis, and digital surveillance is omnipresent.

2044. Chronicle of the Future

After a sleepless night reading Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin," the concept for Tchaikovsky's new opera was born: "I am looking for an intimate yet powerful drama, based on conflicts I have experienced or seen myself, conflicts that can touch me deeply." Tchaikovsky transforms the novel into a lyrical chamber play in which unbridled love, sharp rejection, and a deadly duel shake the emotional worlds of young people: The young Tatiana, engrossed in her books, falls head over heels in love with the daredevil Onegin. In a passionate letter, she confesses her love to him. But he harshly rejects her, instead having fun with her sister Olga and killing his good friend Lensky in a duel. After years of wandering, Onegin realizes his missed opportunity.

Eugene Onegin

From the mid-1930s onward, Aachen was a "gateway to freedom" through which people dared to escape persecution by the Nazi regime – across the green border to Belgium or Holland, and from there into the world. In Aachen, the refugees encountered both human trafficking networks and a few "silent heroes" who expected nothing in return for their help. Against the backdrop of this historical situation, "Oppenhof. Mohren. Cohn" tells a story of resistance, dissidence, despair, and courage. Inspired by the lives of historical figures such as the former mayor of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff, the communist Josef Mohren, and the resistance fighter Marianne Cohn, the piece addresses the questions of whether a young woman on the run will be helped, whether a work of art branded as "degenerate" can be saved from destruction, and who stands in solidarity with whom. Protest and partisan songs and new songs combine to form an overall musical concept; a gripping plot is intertwined with documentary material.

Oppenhoff. Mohren. Cohn

"Is this my home, my land, my place? Am I supposed to fill the void of an emptiness here?" In Dinçer Güçyeter's novel "Our Germany Fairytale," two generations of women—mother and grandmother—constitute the voice of Fatma, who comes to Nettetal in 1965 as the wife of a Turkish guest worker. Through powerful images, poetry, monologues, dialogues, prayers, and dreams, the novel tells of hard work and great strength, of old gender roles and the dawn of a new beginning, of uprooting and longing. It is a homage to women and tells a piece of German history in a new, sensual, and humorous language. Güçyeter's debut novel, published by "mikrotext," was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2023. Director Antigone Akgün, who already thrilled audiences in Aachen with her production of "The Garden of Earthly Delights," is adapting the novel for the Kammer stage.

Our Germany fairytale

A Bundeswehr officer who refuses orders. A member of the "Last Generation" who is imprisoned for their activism. A railway unionist who organizes strikes. A pig farmer who blocks roads. What they all have in common is that they have crossed a line: They have either broken the law or are publicly perceived as "disobedient" and put under pressure by their actions. "Disobedience" means taking a personal risk, pushing the boundaries of what is permitted, expected, and usual, transgressing them, questioning them. Disobedience occurs on both small and large scale: on German highways, at the Federal Office for Migration, by whistleblowers, in the Hambach Forest or in Lützerath – or in villages declared autonomous republics by Reich citizens. Disobedience hangs in the media spotlight as well as in small private acts of defiance. Sometimes it is driven by noble goals, sometimes by irrational fears, occasionally by major moral questions. Authors Marcel Raabe and Manuel Waltz conducted numerous interviews, accompanied by intensive research on the topic of civil disobedience. From the documentary material, they are developing a participatory theater piece that engages audiences.

The Disobedient

Mörgens Theater Aachen

Too operatic, too dramatic, not appropriate for the occasion – the worshippers at Leipzig's St. Nicholas Church were not enthusiastic on Good Friday in 1724 when Johann Sebastian Bach had his "St. John Passion" performed there for the first time. Indeed, Bach goes beyond a simple setting of the Passion of Jesus and fully exploits the dramatic potential inherent in the text of the Gospel of John, using all musical means at his disposal. The numerous choral scenes, in particular, lend the work an almost theatrical impact. And although it is a biblical story that is being told here, it is the great, universal human themes that are at stake: loyalty and betrayal, suffering and compassion, denial and forgiveness.