Volkstheater Rostock offers a vibrant array of performances that promise to captivate audiences. From the comedic chaos of 'Arsenic and Old Lace' to the introspective '22 Lanes', each piece weaves a unique narrative. This season is rich with interpretations of beloved classics and bold explorations into new realms, ensuring that every theatergoer finds something to connect with. Join us as we delve into this exciting lineup, exploring the artistic contributions and the unforgettable atmosphere each performance brings to the stage.

Exploring the Rich Tapestry of Theater: A Dive into Volkstheater Rostock's Captivating Season

Volkstheater Rostock is set to captivate audiences in 2025 with an exciting array of performances. From comedic plays to thought-provoking musicals, this season promises a rich cultural journey. Highlights include the side-splitting humor of 'Arsenic and Old Lace,' the emotional depth of 'The Winter Journey,' and the socially reflective '1984 - Love in the Mirror.' Each production offers a unique glimpse into diverse narratives and artistic expressions, featuring talented performers and creative storytelling that is sure to leave a lasting impression.

A Theatrical Extravaganza: Volstheater Rostock's Spectacular 2025 Line-Up

Embark on a captivating journey with Volkstheater Rostock as they present an eclectic array of performances that promise to challenge perceptions and immerse audiences in the world of literature, dance, opera, and musical theater. From the dystopian reflections of '1984 - Love in the Mirror' to the timeless allure of 'The Steppenwolf,' and the vibrant beats of 'Go West,' this season is a testament to the theater's commitment to artistic innovation and cultural richness. Join us as we explore the events that highlight Volkstheater Rostock's diverse repertoire.

Volkstheater Rostock: A Daring Journey Through Time and Art

The Volkstheater Rostock is set to captivate audiences with a diverse range of performances spotlighting dystopian narratives, societal reflections, musical escapades, and operatic entanglements. Events like '1984 - Love in the Mirror' probe Orwellian themes through dance, while 'The Rats' explores societal layers with gripping drama. Meanwhile, 'Go West' and a new summer musical promise nostalgic musical journeys, and 'The Bird Seller' delivers comedic operatic flair. These performances blend artistic expression and cultural commentary, promising a rich theatrical experience.

A Theatrical Odyssey: From Dystopias to Musical Journeys

The popular Volkstheater summer is hard to imagine without a new summer musical. That's why the Volkstheater Rostock is bringing a new hit musical to the stage of the former ship's metalwork shop in summer 2025.
After the musical's journey back in time to the disco era of the groovy seventies and the double look at divided Berlin in the eighties, the early nineties follow with Go West . In summer 2025, the new musical will be heading towards the turn of the millennium with the hottest sounds. As always, the band will perform the biggest hits of this time live, and summery entertainment and a great atmosphere are guaranteed.

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A New Musical

Volkstheater Rostock - Big House

Summer in Hall 207 is ushered in with unforgettable catchy tunes such as Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol , Ich bin die Christel von der Post or Wie mein Ahn'l zwanzig Jahr . The operetta may have premiered in Vienna, but it is set in the Palatinate, where forest and game master Baron Weps has his hands full. He collects bribes from the farmers so that His Serene Highness the Elector will overlook the poaching on his lands during his upcoming visit. Above all, however, Weps has his own arrears and a nephew, Stanislaus, who is even more in debt. Couldn't the money be diverted sensibly? Too bad that the Elector cancels at short notice. And it gets even worse: His wife doesn't know about it and has gone to the village in disguise to confront her unfaithful husband! There are a lot of amorous entanglements to resolve until, in the end, Adam, the bird dealer, gets his Christel; Weps is lucky with a lady-in-waiting and the electress is also reconciled.
House director Rainer Holzapfel will direct the comedy with the lively melodies.

The Bird Seller

The musical journey through time continues and the exciting 1990s begin. In the Nowack family's inn in the tranquil Dröggelin, not far from the Baltic Sea, Uncle Werner is eagerly awaiting the upcoming village festival. Renate and Hans Nowack, meanwhile, are worried about their finances. When their son Torsten gets the chance to start working at a bank in a West German city, he jumps at the chance. Between banking and the vibrant nightlife, Torsten is enjoying his new life to the fullest. In the meantime, the Nowacks receive an offer that holds out the prospect of saving their inn. Will the fortune hunters keep their promises or will they be sold out after all?

Go West

In Gerhart Hauptmann's most frequently performed play, an apartment building serves as a reflection of society: the unemployed theater director Hassenreuter keeps his costume collection in the attic, pursues amorous pleasures, or gives acting lessons. There are sometimes heated arguments about whether art should be beautiful or true. Meanwhile, cleaning lady John dreams of middle-class happiness on the middle floor: when she hears from the maid Pauline Piperkarcka that she wants to kill herself because she has become pregnant unintentionally, Mrs. John offers to buy the child from her. Pauline quickly regrets the deal, however, and names Mrs. John as her child's foster mother. Alarmed, Pauline plants the dying child in the basement of the morphine addict Knobbe.

The Rats

Staatstheater Mainz

Opera based on the novel of the same name by Hermann Hesse / Composition by Victor Åslund / Libretto by Rainer Lewandowski / In a version by the Volkstheater Rostock
German with German subtitles
The Steppenwolf is one of the great works of world literature and became a cult book in the 1960s at the latest, which has remained fascinating and, more importantly, timelessly relevant to this day. The novel was a major reason why the German-born Hermann Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

The Steppenwolf

Surveillance state, the constant feeling of being threatened by war, arbitrary power - how close are we actually living to George Orwell's famous dystopia? And to what extent is the order in which we live a reflection of ourselves? In 1984 - Love in the Mirror , the Volkstheater's resident choreographer Laura Witzleben explores the expressive possibilities with which the novel can be expressed in movement and dance, music, language, stage and costume - in a satirically exaggerated way and at the same time truthful: In the world, the desire of the few for total power has prevailed and become socially entrenched.

1984 - Love in the Mirror

For a few days now, the ovarian lottery (i.e. birth) no longer decides who inherits in Germany and, if so, what and how much. No! The lot decides. This new procedure is administered by clerks like Gabor and Armin in the job center, whose customer base has not only grown significantly since the inheritance law reform, but has also changed significantly (less sacrificial sausage , more swing ). The only problem is that Silke, founder of a start-up, who has worked hard for a long time hoping for her inheritance, wants to claim it now of all times. Maude, a long-term Hartz IV recipient, is also extremely frustrated because Gabor, who is saving up for an off-road vehicle, has already deducted the bottle deposit she has collected from her benefit.
A high-speed class struggle comedy, not just for die-hard off-road vehicle fans.

Jeeps

Music theater with the song cycle by Franz Schubert and Wilhelm Müller / Version for choir, baritone and two accordions by Gregor Meyer / With texts by Lena Reissner
I came as a stranger, and I leave as a stranger. These words not only open what is perhaps the most famous song cycle in music history, they hit the nail on the head when it comes to the Romantic attitude to life. Motifs such as hiking, loneliness, love's exuberance and heartache, inner restlessness, even the German forest: all of this was very well received after its publication in a country that was searching for its own identity.

The Winter Journey

Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas Church)

An evening of perspectives, or more precisely: a change of perspective - because the dancers of the Volkstheater change sides and choreograph themselves. With enormous curiosity and enthusiasm, they search for and find fresh ideas, designing as independent artists with their own style - including stage and costume designs! Inspired by very different impressions and personal memories, a diverse, colorful program is created that depicts and illuminates the different cultures that the company unites. The change of perspective is not a one-way street: whoever choreographs is supported by the team, and then dances for another member in the next choreography. Mutual inspiration creates a shared evening that promises intense and diverse dance impressions up close in the small venue of the Ateliertheater.

Perspectives

The story of Álex and Bruno, who under other circumstances would probably never have arranged a date, begins with a curious coincidence and a long voicemail message. Because the two young men couldn't be more different. Álex is registered at two gyms and works at the bar of a trendy bar. Bruno is an architect and has a soft spot for film classics. Nevertheless, the two meet, discover more differences than similarities in each other and finally end up in bed. Then begins a series of unconfessed feelings, cold shoulders, longing and the secret hope of a reunion.
The charming love story of two men by Catalan playwright Guillem Clua premiered in Barcelona in 2012 and was released as a Netflix series in 2022.

Smiley

Volkstheater Rostock - Kleine Komödie Warnemünde

A strange feeling leads Maud - who has just been awarded the Pianist of the Year prize - to return home earlier than originally planned. To her horror, she finds her husband Julien - an experienced psychoanalyst - alive, but with a rope around his neck in a clear suicide pose. After the initial shock, Maud realises that there isn't even a farewell letter! In the sleepless night that follows, the couple struggles with their relationship and the meaning and nonsense of life. In passionate verbal battles, exaggerated expectations are exposed as childish, ruthless reckonings are served up and intimate wishes are finally expressed.
An entertaining and at the same time complex chamber play for all people who have struggled for a relationship.

The Farewell Letter

Baron Scarpia collects trophies. And Floria Tosca, the celebrated opera diva, is to be his greatest achievement! He knows that she would reject him sharply - so it suits him, the unscrupulous police chief of Rome, just fine that Tosca's lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, is suspected of having helped an alleged enemy of the state. Scarpia forces Floria to listen to what Mario experiences in prison. In all kindness, he offers her a way out: to spend a night of love with him! But the singer is cleverer than he thinks and makes sure that he will not survive Tosca's kiss. But has she already won?
Giacomo Puccini's blockbuster is one of the most haunting, emotional operas ever. Some of the arias from it are still hits today - such as Vissi d'arte , when Floria Tosca sings about her life for art, to which political power games are completely alien. Or Cavaradossi's famous tenor solo E lucevan le stelle , which has been causing storms of applause during the orchestral postlude for over 120 years.
Director Christian Poewe and chief conductor Marcus Bosch will open the season in the main house with Tosca .

Tosca

Tilda and her little sister Ida are a well-rehearsed team when it comes to managing their everyday lives. And they have to be, because their mother is an alcoholic, their fathers are absent, and Tilda's friends have long since run off into the big wide world. Between university, a job at the supermarket checkout, and the saddest house on Fröhlichstrasse, Tilda's daily 22 laps in the outdoor pool are her only escape from her dreary life in the small town. But then she has the option of taking up a PhD position in Berlin. But who will look after Ida then? The appearance of this irritatingly good-looking Viktor, who, like Tilda, is a math nerd and swims laps in the outdoor pool every day, makes everything even more complicated.

22 lanes

The sixth edition of the Musical Time Travel series takes us back to the dazzling 1920s. It will be weird, eccentric and seductive. Here, distinctive Berlin attitude meets the longing for sinful love. Songs sing of desires for social change and tell of the search for self-development beyond convention. The song evening puts artists like Claire Waldoff in the spotlight and takes the audience into a world between a revue and a smoky salon.

The Roaring Twenties

The large foyer of the Volkstheater vibrates with anticipation. But tonight the performance begins before the curtain rises. In the midst of the chaos of the performance, the head of admission collapses. Was it an accident or even murder?

As the dancers move through the room, suspicions grow louder. Who was it? The cashier with a hidden grudge? The usher who has something to hide? The mysterious stranger who is not on the guest list? Everyone is a suspect.

Dance Course

Antonio Salieri was court composer in Vienna when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came to town in 1781. With his casual manners and high spirits, Mozart constantly crossed the boundaries of social conventions. But his compositions, with their brilliant perfection, testify to his great talent. Salieri felt insulted by the boy prodigy and began a personal battle with Mozart. He tried to sabotage Mozart's career through intrigues and rumors. In the process, Salieri found himself in an inner conflict between admiration for Mozart's music and his own jealousy.

Amadeus

It's complicated. Mrs. Bennet has five daughters that she urgently needs to marry. As patriarchal inheritance law stipulates, at least one of the daughters must find a suitable bachelor to secure the family inheritance. When the extraordinarily amiable and extraordinarily wealthy Charles Bingley moves into the neighborhood, happiness seems within reach. At the town ball, it's all about entertaining! Dancing! Singing! While things start to heat up between Jane and Bingley, the proud Elizabeth clashes with the snooty Mr. Darcy. On the way to the happy ending, there are of course still numerous misunderstandings to clear up, wounded vanities to heal and emotional entanglements to unravel.

Pride and Prejudice* (*or something like that)

With Orlando, Virginia Woolf achieved her big breakthrough as a writer in 1928. With the novel, disguised as a biography and with a plot spanning several centuries, Woolf not only overcame her personal trauma of falling in love with the writer Vita Sackville-West, to whom she created a monument with Orlando . She also created one of the most dazzling novel characters of the last hundred years, who finds herself in a variety of roles in her search for her own identity: as a nobleman, as a lover, a desirer, a writer, a diplomat and - after a mysterious metamorphosis into a woman - finally as a wife and mother.

Orlando

The best stories begin with courage, that's what three actors thought and want to put on a great courage show. But then they hear an eerie noise, a quiet rustling that throws them off track. Because suddenly there is a real problem here in the theater - fear.
The theater text by the young Swiss playwright Julia Haenni questions this great, strange feeling of fear with curiosity, humor and a wink. Can you swallow fear? How do you grow beyond yourself? Is it possible to be brave and fearful at the same time? Is there such a thing as fear of fear? And are courage and fear really opposites? And what do a rabbit and fear have to do with each other?

Fear or Rabbit

Since theater critic Mortimer Brewster fell in love with the pastor's daughter Elaine, he has been visiting his quirky aunts Abby and Martha every day. Conveniently, Elaine lives right next door. On the evening of the engagement, of all days, Mortimer discovers a corpse in the window chest of the popular ladies. It can only have been Teddy! Mortimer's crazy brother thinks he is President Theodore Roosevelt and is busily digging the Panama Canal in the basement of the house. But it gets even worse: the dear aunts know about the unknown dead man! When Mortimer's brother Jonathan, who was believed to be dead, turns up with his dubious friend Dr. Einstein, things get really complicated. And incredibly funny.

Arsenic and Old Lace

The donkey can no longer carry enough, the rooster no longer crows loudly enough, the cat prefers to lie around lazily and the dog no longer likes to hunt. Because the animals have grown old, people want to get rid of them as quickly as possible. But before it can get to that point, the animals take their fate into their own hands. The outcasts decide to go to Bremen to become town musicians. On their journey they have to overcome challenges, endure adventures and teach a band of robbers a thing or two. Despite their differences, the four realize that they are only strong together and finally find a home, even if it is not Bremen.

Volkstheater Rostock

Jul 6, 2025

A New Musical

Jun 7, 2025

The Bird Seller

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