Name: The Fall of the House of Usher
Start: 2025-12-13T19:00:00
Location: Theater Aachen

Luise Berndt

Torsten Borm

Elke Borkenstein

Petya Alabozova

Furkan Yaprak

Benedict Voellmy

Constantin John

Josa Marx

Dirk Sarach-Craig

Wilke Weermann

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

London, 1912. In front of the Opera House, linguist Professor Higgins notices flower seller Eliza Doolittle, who chatters away in a rough "Cockney" dialect. Fascinated and horrified, Higgins bets that his linguistic methods can transform Eliza into a "gentlewoman" in just a few months. She is to demonstrate her skills at the Ascot races and the Diplomatic Ball. The question remains, however, who is "educating" whom. For the emancipated Eliza also turns Higgins' life upside down.

My Fair Lady

A deep blue, sparkling starry sky with a crescent moon overhead, upon which the star-flaming Queen of the Night floats effortlessly in – yes, this stage set is an icon, a true classic like "The Magic Flute" itself. It was designed by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1815 for a Berlin performance. Around ten years later, he and Peter Cremer designed the new theater building for the Theater Aachen. The famous sets from Schinkel's "Magic Flute" became a source of inspiration for Aachen artist Tim Berresheim, who, with exuberant imagination and computer-aided art, further developed the mystically twisted worlds between vining nature, temples, and starry skies. Together with director Geertje Boeden and costume designer Sarah Antonia Rung, he explores the riddles of this magical fairytale opera: Does good and evil exist? Who can Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina trust on their journey? Equipped with magical instruments that can bring peace to the world and with great hope of finding love along the way, the three attempt to overcome the power games of their parents' generation. A multi-layered, visually stunning "Magic Flute" in a version for school classes and the whole family.

The Magic Flute

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

How does a child react to their mother's suicide attempt? They write her a list of all the beautiful things in the world: 1. ice cream, 2. water fights, 3. being allowed to stay up later than usual and watch television. Intuitively, it's about the many little things that make life worth living. But will their mother actually read the list? And what happens when they realize that depression doesn't just go away? The list gets longer the older the child gets: 4,997. Eventually, the child grows up, goes to college, falls in love, experiences another suicide attempt by their mother - and the list approaches a million: 999,998. Inappropriate songs in emotional moments. "All the beauty" in the world - is it even conceivable? Duncan Macmillan has written a life-affirming monologue about a deadly serious subject. By involving the audience in the search for all that wonderful moments can mean, Macmillan creates – without any sentimentality – a space for perhaps the most beautiful thing of all: shared happiness.

All the beauty

Mörgens Theater Aachen

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

Theater Aachen is a house of art, social debate, encounters, and much more. Is it also a haunted house? After all, its column-lined walls are now turning 200 years old. Wilke Weermann will explore the terribly beautiful stories they might tell. The author and director is known for his atmospherically densely composed theater evenings, citing genres such as science fiction and horror and contrasting them with subtle, subtle humor. He received the 2023 Kurt Hübner Directing Award for his play "Unheim," which explores the debate about housing shortages as a futuristic-comedy ghost story. At Theater Aachen, Weermann will devote himself to the great American master of gothic literature, Edgar Allan Poe, weaving his most gripping tales into a new horror story about dark family secrets and repressed guilt.