“Together / Ensemble”: This coming season, we will redouble our theatre routes into the city: For the first time, our summer theatre production will makes its way to you with performances at various venues in and around Leipzig – from Thekla to Markkleeberg, from Kees’scher Park to Schönauer Park. Due to popular request, we will once again present “Die 12 Monate” at Leipzig Zoo during the Advent season. And in summer, we will once more be guests at Leipzig Zoo, with an open-air special edition of a format that has proved hugely popular: “Kitsch und Krempel” – a show that features members of our acting company as well as other colleagues from all departments of our theatre.

The grand launch of this season “Together / Ensemble” will be a big theatre part for the city of Leipzig on 31 August 2019. Join us on the Main Stage, let’s talk about things. We will open the Schauspielhaus and give you the opportunity to meet us and to go on discovery tours of special and hidden places in our theatre.

During the coming months, several artists will work at Schauspiel Leipzig for the first time: directors Anna-Sophie Mahler and Katrin Plötner, the directing team Regine Dura & Hans-Werner Kroesinger, authors Martina Clavadetscher and Alexandra Pâzgu as well as the Czech director Dušan David Pařízek, who will direct the season’s opening production on the Main Stage: Heinrich von Kleist’s “Hermannsschlacht”. 

In the context of our work on “FAUST”, we came across several issues that we will continue to explore and develop.

After the “Faust”-tour to Leipzig’s Monument to the Battle of Nations dealt with the opencast brown-coal mining in the city’s southern areas, Regine Dura and Hans-Werner Kroesinger will follow up the topic, investigating its impact on the region and its people in their project “Brennende Erde” at Diskothek. At Residenz, further projects will deal with mining from a regional and global perspective: “Wismut – A Nuclear Choir” by Jule Flierl and Mars Dietz in October 2019, and the first two projects in the series “Landscapes and Bodies” by Kötter/Israel/Limberg: #1 Gold, about gold mining in Indonesia and #2 Coal, which will focus on the Leipzig area of Neuseenland.

We will also continue our investigation of the topic of Artificial Intelligence, which we began with the “Faust”-tour “Es wird ein Mensch gemacht”: Martina Clavadetscher’s play “Frau Ada denkt Unerhörtes” tells the story of mathematician Ada Lovelace, a pioneer of the digital age, and at the same time deals with Artificial Humans and AI. We are also talking to “Rimini Protokoll” about a guest performance of their production “uncanny valley”, in which a robot performs as a stage avatar in the place of author Thomas Melle.

Claudia Bauer, Director in Residence at Schauspiel Leipzig, will direct a production of Bulgakov’s “Meister und Margarita (The Master and Margarita)”, continuing the theatre’s exploration of the Faust-motif that began with Philipp Preuss’ fiery interpretation of the ‘Nordic Faust’, Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt”.

The Medea-complex, one of the oldest and greatest tales of humankind, will feature twice in this season’s programme: once in classic ancient Greek version by Euripides on the Main Stage and, only a few weeks later, in a world premiere at Diskothek of a work by E.L. Karhu, commissioned by Schauspiel Leipzig: “ERIOPIS — Die unglaubliche Geschichte von Medeas überlebender Tochter” (WT).

Philipp Preuss, also Director in Residence at Schauspiel Leipzig, will dive into the world of Franz Kafka’s “Das Schloss (The Castle)”, while Moritz Sostmann will continue his exploration of puppetry and acting. Schauspiel Leipzig has invited him to interpret another classic: Bertolt Brecht’s “Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (The Good Person of Szechwan)”. The latest instalment in our series of great theatre comedies at Schauspiel Leipzig will be “Mein Freund Harvey (My Friend Harvey)”. Our family production for the Advent series will once again be in the capable hands of Stephan Beer and his team, and this year it will be all about ice, mountains and deception – in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Die Eisjungfrau (The Ice Maiden)”.

Our concept of the city theatre goes beyond the idea of the ensemble. It also includes the repertory system, which enables us to present productions from previous years over a number of seasons.
At our Diskothek-venue, a repertoire of exceptional and award-winning productions of contemporary drama has emerged over the past seasons and its quality and concentration might be hard to find elsewhere.
On the Main Stage, the new productions will be complemented by additional performances of productions including “FAUST”, “Jeder stirbt für sich allein / Die Leipziger Meuten” and “Maria Stuart”. David Bowie’s hit musical “Lazarus” will also be performed again, as will “Der nackte Wahnsinn (Noises Off)” and “Der Gott des Gemetzels (The God of Carnage)”.
Several of these productions will of course again feature an audio-description for the blind and visually impaired members of our audience.

In May 2020, a “Club Convention” will bring together the premieres of our theatre clubs. New talents in creative writing for the stage will be introduced to you in a further edition of our festival “4+1”, which invites students from German creative writing academies to present their texts at the Schauspielhaus.

There is special occasion for us to revive a highlight of our repertory this autumn: “89/90”, Claudia Bauer’s production was based on Peter Richter’s novel of the same title and was presented at the 2016 Berliner Theatertreffen.
The events of the autumn of 1989 and the ensuing developments of later years will also be the foundation of a series of expert talks under the title “Dreißig Jahre später (Thirty Years later)”, which will be moderated by Jens Bisky of Süddeutsche Zeitung.