Name: Looking at the suffering of others
Start: 2026-05-14T20:00:00
Location: Schauspiel Köln

Clara Rosina Strasser

Ayla Pierrot Arendt

Filip Caranica

Jürgen Kapitein

Bühnen Köln

A table, an armchair, a bottle. And a glass of wine, which the waiter serves to the guest: that's the starting point. But who is serving whom? And who is serving whom? Who ultimately pays the bill, or who cuts someone else's? In the work of British writer and director Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment), power dynamics are explored in numerous variations – and the longer the scene lasts, the more sinister the humor becomes. In this sense, master and servant explore the manifold pitfalls of hierarchical constellations. Following its German-language premiere at the 2024 Vienna Festival, the table, armchair, and wine are now being moved to Depot 3. The suspense mounts as to who will ultimately foot the bill in this slapstick comedy.

The bill

Carlswerk

"As long as you live under my roof, my rules apply!" In this multi-part theater workshop, children and parents switch roles. As a speaking chorus, we negotiate expectations, boundaries, and intimacy. Who listens to whom? Who decides? For everyone between 8 and 98 years old, including admission to the performance of THAT NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY. The ticket includes all four dates and performances.

Theaterlabor: Familienrat im Grossformat

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

BABY, DON'T GIVE UP is a talk series at the Schauspiel Köln for and with people who don't want to lose their nerve and hope.

Baby, don't give up

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

Arda never knew his father. The only thing connecting him to him is a small black mark under his left eye—his "father mark." Arda is barely in his early twenties, lying in intensive care with organ failure, and time is running out. Time he has wasted with his friends and time that the German authorities have taken from him. His mother and sister haven't spoken a word to each other in ten years. Now they meet daily in the hospital, and Arda is literally caught in the middle. In the time he has left, he writes a letter to his father, Metin. He wants him to know everything about the life of the broken family in Germany that he left behind to return to Turkey. He wants him to no longer be unable to know who Arda was. In his acclaimed debut novel, Necati Öziri weaves a family saga in which mother, daughter, and son try to overcome loss and—even without passports—find their own place in Germany. Bassam Ghazi, together with people from Cologne, creates a fast-paced evening about farewell, longing, migration and family.

Father's mark

"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

Can 135 days fit into 12 hours? Wolfram Lotz's book "Holy Scripture I" is about the wildly radical, 135-day attempt to capture life, both large and small, as completely and directly as possible using all available literary means. With this poetic document of a project that embraces pure excess, actor Uwe Schmieder embarks on a twelve-hour reading frenzy in the grotto. As part of the "Mülheim Night" event, he and the author, along with instant soup, his record collection, an espresso machine, and an audience free to come and go as they please, will plow through 900 pages of truly contemporary writing from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. – until total exhaustion?

Holy Scripture I

A gruesome discovery on the banks of the Rhine in Cologne raises many questions: the body of young activist Luise washes ashore. Detective Clara and her colleague Hans begin their murder investigation and find themselves entangled in a web of environmental pollution, online threats, and encrypted corporate data. They are working in murky waters until they finally uncover explosive information about a major regional chemical company.

The water from Cologne is good

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

WAR AND PEACE is the title of Calle Fuhr's new investigative stage essay, created in collaboration with the independent media outlet CORRECTIV. Based on journalistic research, the performance recounts the rise of Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian developments of the last 25 years in Russia, and the war against Ukraine. At the same time, Fuhr turns his attention to Germany: to the energy policy of recent decades, the dependence on Russian gas, and the resulting supply crisis. Current rearmament measures, the immense state spending on defense, and the debate surrounding the reintroduction of conscription also come into focus. WAR AND PEACE demonstrates how geopolitical decisions are changing our daily lives – and poses the question of how Germany defines its defense capabilities and its future security policy.