A social drama by Henrik Ibsen in an adaptation by Sapir Heller. Thomas Stockmann discovers that the water at the local spa is contaminated, and his truth is drawn into a whirlpool of power and self-interest.

An Enemy of the People

Münchner Volkstheater

A documentary theatre evening about the racist attack at the Olympia Shopping Center in Munich on July 22, 2016, and the relatives of the nine people who were murdered. Developed by Tunay Önder and Christine Umpfenbach based on conversations with the relatives.

Open Wound

To close out the Oktoberfest, the Münchner Volkstheater, together with the "Boandlkramerei" musicians' tent on the Oide Wiesn, offers the "Wiesn Brandner" package. Combination ticket including a performance visit, admission to the "Oide Wiesn," a reserved seat in the musicians' tent, one Maß of beer and a three-course menu.

With Brandner to the Wiesn

A production by the youth club. Berlin in the late 1920s: the Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko searches for her place in a society in upheaval. The starting point was poems, letters and diary entries by Mascha Kaléko; the young performers developed the roles themselves.

Wir haben keine andre Zeit als diese

Ingolstadt, 1926. The Pioneer is in the country! Dispatched to build a bridge, the group of soldiers is welcomed as an exciting diversion in the orderly routine of small-town life. The unemployed Alma quickly makes the acquaintance of the foreign pioneers and sergeants. The maid Berta wants to do likewise. Her chosen one, Karl, who is regularly harassed by his military superiors, warns: whoever loves him must suffer. Nevertheless, Berta seeks love with him, while the young Fabian fails in his advances toward her. The advice from those around them is: in love a man must be cold. The system of pressure that holds the men firmly in its grip discharges painfully in every one of their encounters, tearing unbridgeable rifts in their dealings with one another.

Pioniere in Ingolstadt

A few years ago, a young couple left the city. They wanted to start over in the countryside, dreaming of finding a place of refuge from a world that seemed increasingly threatening to them.

The Last Ones

Tragedy after Sophocles by Roland Schimmelpfennig. The war between the brothers Polyneices and Eteocles leads to a deep division in Thebes. King Creon refuses to grant the fallen Polyneices burial, which moves Antigone to defy the law in order to pay her brother the final honor. In his first production at the Hessian State Theatre Wiesbaden, the Georgian director Mikheil Charkviani confronts a democratic society with the question: How ready are you to defend your moral values?

Antigone

A multiperspective theatrical journey through the biography of Mesut Özil, by Akın Emanuel Şipal, directed by Aram Tafreshian.

The Wizard of Oz - A Football Tragedy

The Idiot, by Milena Michalek after Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, with a text by Clara Kroneck. Prince Myshkin is repeatedly called an "idiot" by St. Petersburg society. Dostoevsky's second "great romantic tragedy," reworked and made relevant for our present day. Running time 3 hours 40 minutes, with one intermission after 1 hour 45 minutes.

The Idiot

After Ingmar Bergman. Elisabet no longer speaks. During a performance of "Elektra," the actress falls silent in the middle of the stage. When her condition does not improve after some time, nurse Alma is to look after the woman who refuses to speak.

Persona

Devised theatre piece by Bonn Park with songs by Dagobert, freely based on Ödön von Horváth and Lukas Kristl. World premiere. 2 hours, no intermission.

Faith Love Robot

A poetic, fragmentary adaptation of the novel "Anleitung ein anderer zu werden" by Édouard Louis, directed by Chiara Liotine. 1 hour 20 minutes, no intermission. Note: strobe effects and loud music with heavy bass.

How to Change Your Life

After Mary Shelley and Thomas Melle, in an adaptation by Philipp Arnold. The scientist Victor Frankenstein appears to have achieved what humanity has longed for since time immemorial: to overcome the laws of life and death like a god. A human-like creature sees the light of day, but its creator casts it out in disgust. Searching for belonging, the creature swears revenge, and a pursuit to the ends of the earth begins. The production asks who the monster really is here, and whether we can bear responsibility for what we create.

Frankenstein, or: Dirty Creation

A tragicomedy by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The town of Güllen is on the brink of ruin. Claire Zachanassian returns to her hometown and promises a billion for the head of hotel owner Alfred Ill.

The Visit

Vagantenbühne Berlin

By Eugène Ionesco, translated by Claus Bremer and Hans Rudolf Stauffacher. Directed by Anna Marboe. 1 hour 45 minutes, no intermission. Note: Strobe lighting is used.

Rhinoceros

Although terrible things are happening in the world, Mini and Miki have felt okay since buying their new kitchen countertop at IKEA. They get up, drink coffee, and work from home or in the office. They try to find common topics of conversation with party guests and to belong, as the ones who are not "from here." Again and again they are haunted by dangers: Miki gets into a toxic relationship with a baby cat, and Mini tries to shake off the faceless tickling monster that has been stalking her since childhood. Marković's stories about the banalities of couples' everyday life, the nightmares of migrant reality, and the art of recognizing the moment just before catastrophe won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2024. At the Theater Magdeburg, they were staged for the first time in Germany.

Minihorror

A dance theatre piece by Sophie Haydee Colindres Zühlke & Serhat "Saïd" Perhat. A dance project about dystopian visions of the future, contemporary dance with an urban aesthetic. World premiere. Running time 1 hour 15 minutes, no intermission. Invited to the 40th Bavarian Theatre Days 2026 in Regensburg.

GREY

Spain in the 16th century: King Philip II rules with an iron hand over a world empire that is riddled with intrigue and shaped by the deadly control of the Inquisition. No one can be trusted, so the despot's suspicion turns even against his own son, Don Carlos. And rightly so, for the crown prince's secret love for his stepmother, Elisabeth, begins to shake the foundations of the kingdom. The prince's desire becomes part of a power struggle that inextricably links the private and the political. Into these entanglements steps Don Carlos's childhood friend, the Marquis of Posa, who returns to court from the rebellious Dutch provinces. He brings with him a vision of freedom and tolerance that holds both hope and destruction.

Don Carlos

Based on the film by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, German translation by Linda Kokkores. Directed by Lucia Bihler. German premiere.

The Lobster

Shipwrecked and rescued, Viola is washed up on an unknown shore. Strange and alone, she has no idea what ground she is setting foot on. "What is this country called?" she asks, and the answer is "Illyria." In this land everything seems possible. Love knows no boundaries. Everyone enters into a relationship with everyone else. Wild desire and seduction reign, along with love's frenzy and an intoxicated whirl of activity. Viola, disguised as a man and searching for her twin brother, falls into the clutches of Olivia. Orsino, who is unhappily in love with Olivia, is loved by Viola. Malvolio, the enthusiast mocked by his companions, desires Olivia. In the end, no one gets the one they wanted at the start.

Twelfth Night

A ritual happening between concert, theatre piece and celebration, based on St. Vitus' dance (the Strasbourg dancing plague of 1518). Approx. 90 minutes, no intermission, no spoken language, no seating.

Unruhe

OH! A RHINO! A what? A rhino. Where? Oh! A WHAT?! A rhino! A what? RHINOCEROS! Right in the middle of the marketplace, in broad daylight. Unbelievable! Everyone agrees on that. Everyone except Behringer: it's a rhinoceros, so what? But over time more and more rhinoceroses appear. With them grows fear and uncertainty: Is the report about the rhinoceroses false information? Who has really seen them? Has the press made an elephant out of a mosquito, or rather a rhino? And are these good-natured thick-skinned creatures really as cruel as suspected? Fascinated by their strength and simplicity, Behringer's fellow citizens gradually turn into rhinoceroses themselves. The initial displeasure at the growing number of rhinoceroses gives way to an all-encompassing craze. There are many good reasons to become a rhinoceros, and perhaps one could move closer to the animals by first learning to put oneself in their way of thinking. The individualist Behringer faces a mass that has perfected its conformity. The more optimally the spread of preconceived opinions proceeds, the more strongly Behringer defies the merging mass and holds out in resistance: he will remain human, no matter what it costs! Anna Marboe runs the tools of theater through enticing mainstream machinery and, in asking about manipulation and the seduction by groups, pulls out all the stops of the Theater of the Absurd. In a time when everything is coming unhinged, it is, after all, simply a good feeling to be among the good guys. "Rhinoceros" was the Volkstheater's own contribution to the Radikal jung Festival for Young Directors 2026.

Louise has pitched her tent in the Black Forest to think quietly about her relationship. When Faust offers to help her, more figures wander through the woods: Eros and Tanna, two aliens; a vampire; a machine-human. Through the night by the campfire, they explore new variations of coexistence. Direction and performance: Heiki Riipinen.

Philophobia

A few days after the sudden death of the mother, a father and his two children sit lost in the empty apartment. Into this emotional chaos bursts a huge, talking crow. The prize-winning novel by Max Porter in a stage adaptation by Spaan.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Agamemnon is dead. The celebrated war hero is murdered by his wife Klytaimnestra and her new lover Aigisthos as soon as he returns home, in revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenie. Elektra and her brother Orestes then swear to take revenge in turn for the treacherous murder of their beloved father. The family curse of endless vengeance spins its way into contemporary Germany: Elektra's rage is directed at the troubled family history of one of Germany's wealthiest industrial dynasties, whose prosperity rests in no small part on the exploitation of Nazi forced laborers.

ELEKTRA – 750 PS Overcoming the Past

The economic crisis is spreading across all of Chicago. The vegetable trade in particular is doing badly. To save its business, the cauliflower trust has to get creative. Arturo Ui offers his help, but the businessmen want nothing to do with him and his gang of gangsters. Instead, they draw the respected politician Dogsborough into a scheme. And Arturo Ui, who gets wind of the corruption between the cauliflower business and politics, sees his chance. Piece by piece, he plays the other players against one another and seizes power. Anyone who gets in his way is eliminated. Soon Ui and his gang control the entire cauliflower business. But that is not enough: alongside Chicago, the neighboring town of Cicero is also to fall under his wing.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

"MOMO" by Michael Ende tells the story of a girl who has one remarkable gift: listening. An inclusive theater project by the Backstage Club of the Münchner Volkstheater in collaboration with Refugio München, directed by Rebecca Maria Fischer, with music by Danielle Lurie and pre-produced black-and-white videos.

MOMO

Walburga Stromminger is known early on for doing what not even the boys her age dare to do. In full view of everyone, she takes a vulture's nest from a rock face and becomes, to her father's great pride, the strongest girl far and wide. The vulture that from then on never leaves her side also gives her her nickname: Geierwally. Years later, her father decides whom she is to marry; Wally refuses, is banished, and in the mountains finds a radical self-determination. Wilhelmine von Hillern's novel in a stage adaptation by Julia Prechsl.

Die Geierwally

An ancient curse, an eerie castle and a lost soul haunting its halls. Starting from Oscar Wilde's story, author and director Katharina Grosch and her team ask: Can a fully enlightened society still be frightened?

I WANNA CONTACT THE LIVING – The Canterville Ghost

Georg Wilhelm Pabst is one of the most successful directors of the Weimar Republic. He is called a "master of editing" or, because of his political films, "the Red Pabst." When he emigrates to America in the early 1930s, however, the fame he earned in the Weimar Republic does him little good. Again and again he is confused with better-known colleagues. Warner Brothers does offer him a film, but it flops at the box office and with the critics. And so, shortly afterward, Pabst sets out with his family on a remarkable journey back: while most other artists flee abroad, he accepts an invitation from Goebbels' film industry and returns to the German Reich. There, a pact with the devil awaits him. The family estate is in the hands of a National Socialist housekeeper, and the artistic work offered to him is, of course, expected to toe the party line. Meanwhile, his wife Trude and his son Jakob are also drawn into various parts of the Nazi system. Daniel Kehlmann's acclaimed novel tells of self-betrayal, the pursuit of fame at any price, and the loss of self that goes hand in hand with it. Christian Stückl now brings the bestseller to the stage for the first time.

Lichtspiel

Dance theatre piece by Sophie Haydee Colindres Zühlke and Serhat "Saïd" Perhat. Following their piece "Grey," they embark, together with their ensemble, on a research journey into individual and collective tides. Urban dance meets experimental forms.

Tide

Coming-of-age story based on the novel by Tonio Schachinger, a play at the Münchner Volkstheater.

Echtzeitalter

With his "Felix Krull," Thomas Mann produced the captivating memoirs of a cunning criminal and dreamer who effortlessly wraps polite society around his finger and so works his way up.

Felix Krull

In the rural idyll of their holiday house, a six-member family gathers every year to cook together, sing, and plant a tree. The three generations enjoy the peace and, over a glass of wine, watch the swallows passing by, until they finally arrive at the essential purpose of their annual reunion: the killing of a fascist. This delicate tradition goes back to the great-grandmother, who once shot her husband, a fascist, and bequeathed to her descendants the mandate to "do evil in order to practice good." Sara, the great-granddaughter, who this year is for the first time charged with "practicing justice," however doubts the rightness of killing. After more than 70 years, the family inheritance is suddenly called into question and throws the ritualized procedure into disarray. Amid the heated discussions that follow, the gagged fascist Romeu listens in, his fate in Sara's hands. In 1954, the Portuguese farm laborer Catarina Eufémia was shot by a commander of the security police while demanding higher wages for herself and her fellow workers. The Portuguese author Tiago Rodrigues weaves a fictional story around this historical event, reaching into the present, and provocatively confronts us with the question of what we are prepared to do against the rising tide of fascism.

Catarina, or On the Beauty of Killing Fascists

After a stroke, fishing is finally over for old Fischer Fritz. But moving out of the house by the river, where his father and grandfather had already worked in the family trade, is out of the question for the widower. Franz, his only son, is unfortunately of little help: he has turned his back on the countryside to open a hair salon in Munich. He wants neither to carry on the fishing business nor to care for his father. Since Fritz resists moving into a nursing home, Piotra, a Polish caregiver, is hired to move into the Bavarian backcountry and take over the old fisherman's care. Six days a week, around the clock, she looks after the grumpy old man. Besides listening to music, Piotra's only way of escaping her narrow world is chatting with Borys, the bus driver who brought her here and may pick her up again. The initial distance between Piotra and Fritz, which rests mainly on difficulties in communication, gradually dissolves, because Piotra knows exactly how to prepare fresh fish for Fischer Fritz. Munich author Raphaela Bardutzky lets her characters shed external labels with easygoing grace, taking up the perspective of the other or even of a narrating voice. With great empathy, this tongue-twisting play on language questions our notions of home, aging and foreignness.

Fischer Fritz

Brandner Kaspar outwits Death. When the Boandlkramer comes to fetch him, he gets him drunk on Kerschgeist and cheats a few more years of life out of him at cards. However, the matter becomes known in Heaven to the gatekeeper Saint Peter. He will not tolerate any deviation in the divine course of destiny. The Boandlkramer is left with only one chance: to let Brandner sample the joys of paradisiacal eternity on a trial basis.

Der Brandner Kaspar and the Eternal Life

The first international slaughterhouse theatre. A furious, whirling interrogation of contemporary protest movements, the ideological divide between generations, and the longing for radical freedom, after Friedrich Schiller.

Die Räuber

More than 100 years after its publication, L. Frank Baum's children's tale has become one of the best-known stories in the world. Directed by Tristan Linder. This stage adaptation weaves the enchanting appeal of the original together with its failed offshoots, exploring escapism, disillusionment and homesickness in a journey through our hopes and longings.

The Wizard of Oz

Play based on the debut novel by Tomasz Jedrowski. Directed by Koen Verheijden. A coming-of-age production about love, identity and freedom in 1980s Warsaw.

In the Water We Are Weightless

Even during his lifetime, Bavaria's most dazzling king was a polarizing figure. Revered and ridiculed by his people, and later toppled by his own ministers, Ludwig II became known worldwide after his mysterious death in Lake Starnberg. Munich author and historian Dana von Suffrin has written her first play for the Münchner Volkstheater.

Ludwig II.

At the MEGA Gym fitness studio, what counts is what the body promises. Managing director Ferhat only hires people whose fitness lifestyle you can actually see. So when the unnamed protagonist is asked about herself at her job interview, she blurts out: "I've just given birth." A spontaneous white lie, and a perfect explanation for why her body seems out of place in this environment. It works: Ferhat hires her, after all, since he is an outspoken feminist. What begins as impersonation soon becomes a grueling training regimen. She becomes a role model in the studio: a single mother fighting the supposed "post-pregnancy body." When the bodybuilder Vick shows up there, the protagonist soon has only one goal: to emulate her. She is drawn into an obsessive vortex of protein tracking and muscle building, until it becomes clear that the invented baby is by no means her only secret. With plenty of humor, author Verena Keßler dissects the world of protein shakes, leg presses and empowerment rhetoric, and along the way exposes the neoliberal promise of self-optimization as absurd. Director Merle Zurawski brings MEGA Gym to the stage and traces the desires and obsessions of this driven protagonist, whose drive toward self-creation soon becomes indistinguishable from self-destruction.

After an accident, Michaela lies in a coma. Her family has gathered at her bedside: her husband, her daughter, her sister and the sister's husband, with whom Michaela once had an affair. Encouraged by the doctors and nurses, the family speaks to Michaela, tells her stories from the past, and at the same time goes about the business of everyday life. A shadow realm opens up between life and death, but also a demimonde of human relationships, unfulfilled dreams and unlived longings. Will the memories awakened by her family be enough to bring Michaela back to consciousness? "Koma" is performed – as the score prescribes – partly in complete darkness. Between scenes in light and in half-darkness, musicians, singers, actors and audience members enter together into an in-between world. The opera forms the final part of the "Schwetzingen Trilogy" by Georg Friedrich Haas and Händl Klaus and tells of the physical resistance that Michaela's body mounts. In this way "Koma" fits into the overarching theme of Resistance of the "Ja, Mai" festival. A co-production of the Bavarian State Opera with the Munich Volkstheater

Koma

Stage adaptation of the blog by Wolfgang Herrndorf, directed by Max Lindemann. The character Wolfgang encounters figures from the novels "Tschick" and "Sand" as well as himself.

Arbeit und Struktur

The men's room as the setting: five actors embody more than 40 roles in a many-voiced panorama of masculinity. The debut play by British playwright Sam Grabiner, German-language premiere directed by Marco Damghani.

Münchner Volkstheater

Oct 30 - Nov 27, 2026

An Enemy of the People

Nov 1, 2026

Rhinoceros

4 - 28 Nov, 2026

Philophobia

Nov 5, 2026

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Nov 6, 2026

ELEKTRA – 750 PS Overcoming the Past

Oct 30 - Nov 27, 2026

An Enemy of the People

Oct 28, 2026

Open Wound

Münchner Volkstheater