Name: Terrible #9
Start: 2026-05-11T20:00:00
Location: Carlswerk

Bühnen Köln

A man in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, a leather cartridge belt over his shoulder. He is about to fall backward; his knees at a 90-degree angle, his right arm outstretched, the rifle slipping from his grip: Robert Capa's "The Falling Soldier" from 1936 in the Spanish Civil War, supposedly taken at the moment of death. Initially, photographs were "a representation of something real, as irrefutable as no verbal description ever could be," wrote the American author Susan Sontag in her essay "Looking at the Suffering of Others" (2003). The ideal of war photography is to show the "true face" of war and to bear witness: This is how it was, this is what happened! And today, when AI-generated images are almost indistinguishable from real photographs? The internationally active video artist and director Ayla Pierrot Arendt explores the manipulability of reality. With the ensemble, she tells stories of journeys through the crisis regions of our time, captured by war photographers, peace activists, and influencers – in search of the truly authentic. How can one find objectivity today when it is constantly being tested between falsification and reality? Who creates and who views these images of suffering? What purpose do they serve – and for whom?

Looking at the suffering of others

Schauspiel Köln

Austrian prison poet, ladies' man, journalist, convicted murderer: Jack Unterweger was many things, and he played numerous roles throughout his life. During his first imprisonment, for the murder of an 18-year-old girl, he published his first novel, which brought him immediate fame. A petition for his release was signed by, among others, Elfriede Jelinek, Ernst Jandl, and Günter Grass. After 15 years in prison, he was released: Unterweger became a prime example of "successful rehabilitation." But in 1994, he was convicted a second time—for the murder of nine women. UNTERWEGER explores this irrational fascination—an evening about lust and compassion, attraction and disgust, judgment and mercy.

Unterweger

Carlswerk

"Perhaps we must finally learn to truly understand that the fabric of our civilization itself is woven from fire and smoke." (WG Sebald) It all begins at an altitude of 4,000 meters: A stream of US bombers, 600 meters wide and 30 kilometers long, moves toward a German city. Below, bombs fall, along with the parachutes of a bomber crew, low-flying aircraft, and flak towers. Far below, houses and streets where staggering people are "grilled" in boiling tar. Air-raid shelters, cellars, chaos—an unimaginable horror scenario. A mother searches for her son, who has already met his death as an anti-aircraft gunner; a young woman is buried alive with a stranger and raped by him beneath the rubble. Gert Ledig's novel REVENGE takes a cold and unsentimental look at the destructive violence of an Allied air raid in July 1944. The city in question remains nameless—but could well be Cologne. Here, too, after the night of May 30-31, 1942, only the cathedral stood amidst a vast landscape of rubble. The book was published in 1956, long after Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass had begun depicting the postwar reality of West Germany. It was soon forgotten. To this day, the trauma of the air raids remains largely unaddressed, while the haphazard postwar architecture of city centers continues to silently bear witness to the horrors of that time. Director Sebastian Baumgarten stages Ledig's defiant challenge to warmongering rhetoric of "fatherland, heroism, tradition, faith, and honor" as a world premiere for the Schauspiel Köln (Cologne Theatre).

retribution

The most famous murder in Greek tragedy takes place in a bathtub. Clytemnestra, Queen of Argos, murders her husband Agamemnon after his victorious return from the Trojan War—in revenge for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia for favorable winds. But Clytemnestra's triumph is short-lived. Orestes, her own son, stabs her with his sword to atone for Agamemnon's death. From then on, Orestes is hunted by the Erinyes, avenging spirits who follow him from the temple at Delphi to Athens. There, he is put on trial before the goddess Athena. The jury ultimately acquits him. But is this victory of the law over the principle of blood vengeance, which has become part of literary history, also a victory for justice? Australian director Adena Jacobs certainly questions this. She stages THE ORESTETY in a version that focuses on the crimes against Iphigenia and Clytemnestra. What about the rage that remains after the murder of daughter and mother? The anger that cannot be appeased by Athena's exhortation, "Women, do not be angry"? Adena Jacobs works in and on the neglected spaces of antiquity, combining acting with dance and video art into a feminist Gesamtkunstwerk.

The Oresteia

"You tell us when to sit and when to stand. You tell us when to move and when to be still for a moment. You tell us when we're allowed to get up from the table. You teach us to say please. And you teach us to say thank you. You teach us how to look nice and clean. You explain to us that there are bad people in the world. That monsters don't really exist. That words are just words." THAT NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY turns the world upside down: A chorus of children between the ages of 8 and 14 becomes the main character. They have only recently been thrown into life, and immediately they find rules and values ​​there. But the children turn the tables. They reverse statements, reject them, and reformulate them. And the longer you listen to this set of values ​​with the reversed source, the more audibly an unspoken "Why?" enters the stage: The questioning of what is—and what could just as easily be different! Deeply moving and exceptionally funny. THAT NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY was first produced by Victoria Deluxe in Ghent, Belgium, in 2007 and has since been performed in many countries and languages. For the Cologne premiere, the text will be updated for a group of Cologne children. Tim Etchells is an internationally renowned writer, director, and artist. He is particularly well-known as the leader of the performance group Forced Entertainment.

That Night Follows Day

Since the insolvency of Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, Austria's once richest man has also become a household name in Germany: René Benko dominated the headlines for months in 2024 with the collapse of his real estate company, Signa Holding. It became the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the Second Republic of Austria. Even millions in German state aid evaporated almost completely. Numerous cities now face the threat of construction scars lasting for years. The path to this seems to have been paved by an impenetrable mix of ruthlessness, billionaire cronyism, and a flawed financial system. In January 2025, Benko was taken into custody in his hometown of Innsbruck. For months, director Calle Fuhr and DOSSIER collaborated to unravel the story of the rise and fall of the "miracle worker" Benko. The result is a unique theatrical evening somewhere between stand-up, TED Talk, and lecture-performance, which, due to high demand, had to be moved from the smallest to the largest venue at the Volkstheater in Vienna. After guest performances at the Berliner Ensemble and an invitation to the Radikal jung Festival in Munich, Calle Fuhr's entertaining solo show now comes to the stage of the Schauspiel Köln in an updated version.

The Rise and Fall of Mr. René Benko

Throughout his life, Goethe worked on his magnum opus, FAUST, the drama he uniquely called a "tragedy" among his works. Enigmatic and luminous, it stands there in epic scope—a seemingly endless succession of scenes and reflections. What holds this tragedy together at its core? There is Faust, the eternally restless one, who sees the world as prey and time as a pledge. There is Mephistopheles, the antithesis, literally in Faust's shadow. There is Gretchen, innocent and beautiful in the face of ruin. And there is the light that filters through all the cracks in fate. The majority of the tragedy takes place in the dead of night. This darkness is repeatedly pierced by fire and flashes of light—like the flash of a photograph. In 1928, the Russian photographer Alexander Rodchenko described photography as a "struggle between eternity and the moment" and continued: "With its emergence, there can no longer be a general, unchanging image. A person is not merely a unity; they are multifaceted and dialectical." “Stay a while, my moment.” Kay Voges stages FAUST as precisely this struggle and, together with live photographer Marcel Urlaub, transforms the stage space into both a room of light and a darkroom.

fist

Imagine the world were a village. Imagine peace reigned there. Now imagine night falling over the houses and the streetlights shining. Picture it clearly. Behind the windows, people were eating their bread and drinking their tea. And the children were reading peacefully in bed before their father kissed them and their mother turned out the light. Now imagine a shadow creeping across the deserted village square. And there, in the greenhouse, plants grew menacingly—and on the altar lay an ominous book containing holy scriptures. And a package full of uniforms appeared as if from nowhere before the fence. And then a strange song sounded in the sky. Picture it clearly—like a crack in the firmament. Imagine it drawing people from their beds, and together they gazed up at the sky. And with hearts pounding in their chests, they wondered what was approaching them. An angel? A drone? A deadly missile that burns and destroys everything? We're at the beginning of a great story. There is no fatherland and no reason for murder and war. And everyone lives only in the here and now. Imagine that. It's easy if you try. Welcome to IMAGINE.

Imagine

Ensemble member Jonas Dumke's personal solo performance is a tribute to the tormented spirit and linguistic artistry of Heinrich von Kleist. Through quotations from his letters, novellas, and dramas, he creates a dazzling kaleidoscope of a poet whose character and biography both fueled his great creativity and made life and work difficult – right up to his tragic end. From the young soldier to the literary outsider, the evening paints a portrait of a mind yearning for its fulfillment.

Ah! – A portrait of Kleist

La Mancha. The largest plain in Spain. A flat plateau. Endless. No mountains. No valleys. A few silly windmills… otherwise – nothing. Nada. Too much nothingness to bear. The fear of emptiness. El horror del vacío. This fear turns a person into Don Quixote. Someone who wants to squeeze meaning out of the world like juice from an orange. And out of the person opposite him. Don Quixote – the witty one – has to make something out of nothing. No matter how. In search of a feeling. Heartbreak, for example. Profound anguish. Better than nothing at all. Well then, ¡Cuando se quiere, se puede! (When you want to, you can!) Bastian Reiber's play is about taking the risk of making the biggest claim, thereby arousing the greatest expectations – and then not fulfilling them (and therefore all the more so!). ¿QUÉ PASA EN LA MANCHA? (What's happening in La Mancha?) It's a ride through the Spanish steppe, right into the fantastical mind of the unique hidalgo Don Quixote. Courage for absolute theater. The ultimate game for the sake of play – always on the brink of nothingness.

¿Qué Pasa En la Mancha?

In the midst of the Cold War, Salvador Allende, who on September 4, 1970 became the first freely elected left-wing president, pursued a groundbreaking revolutionary idea of ​​cybernetic socialism.

Terrible #9

Germany is taking on one trillion euros in new debt! For bridges, the railways, the armed forces – in short, for the entire Federal Republic. This was announced and passed by the Bundestag in early 2025. The seemingly unwritten law of the debt brake was relaxed, and the endless debates about the "black zero" (balanced budget), which ultimately led to the collapse of the coalition government, suddenly vanished into thin air. But where did this trillion euros come from? To whom does Germany actually owe money? Or, put another way: How does monetary policy work in the 21st century? Together with the economic experts from FiscalFuture, theater director Calle Fuhr leaves the realm of daily political debates and dedicates his new stage exploration to the schools of thought that shape political action. Playful, humorous, and accessible, Calle Fuhr invites the audience to reflect on economics. Because that's where the major levers for a livable future lie.