Hitler's National Socialist Party's influence grows stronger day by day. The actress Agnes Eggling shares her apartment with Paulinka, also an actress, the Communist artist Annabella, the Hungarian camera man Husz and Baz who is gay. Together they are angry, dispirited but they are also revolutionaries, fighting against the expanding power of Hitler and trying to strengthen the Communist Party through the writing of plays, designing of posters and openly expressing their opinions and political leanings.

Russia in the mid-19th century. A rural village swelters in the summer heat, yearning for a breath of fresh wind. This all changes when Aleksei is hired as a teacher for the land owner's ten year old son and immediately attracts the interest of all the female residents. Suddenly the air is filled with longing, it vibrates with an exuberance of feelings. For three whole days both young and old experience love for the first time, unspoken love which cannot remain hidden for any longer.

A poetic piece full of longing and fragility, a disturbing world indictment, a tangle of radical, helpless memories and delusions, with glimmers of hope and profound humour. »4:48« is the hour in which the mind fills with demons but it is also at its clearest. Psychological distress and a clear, socially compatible awareness give way to a flood of vicious, brutal words and baroque imagery.

In »Seven Against Thebes / Antigone«, Rasche seeks to explore the relationship of power, language and fanaticism. Thus, terms such as »enemy« and »victim« are only words but at the same time they act as a trigger leading to the radicalisation of the people.

The best way to say it is with music ... »No country more beautiful« goes through the ups and downs of normal family life, mixing popular music of the 60s and 70s with folk songs, Bach and Schubert and satirises the irony of the »normal German day«.

Alexander Eisenach delves into the depths of the Western genre and, with inspiration drawn from famous classic movies, write a financial-based Western. Starting from pre-industrial Americ to the collapse of the financial sector. A classic show down between good and evil. In the end, money or power. His pieces and productions are full jokes, provocative world-views and allusions to milestones in film history.

He is a dreamer, perhaps a romantic, a sleepwalker, a lover and a war hero; The Prince of Homburg. After Michael Thalheimer's acclaimed production of »Penthesilea« last season, he will again be directing a piece by the poet of internal contradictions and strife, Heinrich von Kleist.

How should we respond to outbreaks of xenophobia and nationalistic self-assertion in Europe? Falk Richter, author and director and Anouk van Dijk, choreographer, director and dancer, will try to find answers to these, and other, questions during an open rehearsal process with an international theatre and dance ensemble. Against the backdrop of the current crises, personal stories and social themes, along with private and political strategies for dealing with the challenges of an open society in Europe, will be examined.

Roscha A.Säidow describes her new piece as a »live documentary about the actual state of our Western civilization.« Säidow's work finds itself at the boundaries of drama, music, puppetry, video art and light installation. Each project is given its own language through her interdisciplinary approach.

»Iphigenia« is a bloodthirsty family history. The great moralities of mankind are questioned and run like a common thread alongside the myth through the epochs of (theatre) history. With »Iphigenie«, Ersan Mondtag will deal with the three parts of the Iphigenia myth: Aulis, Tauris and Delphi. The piece is a development and a continuity of his work with antiquity, which he began in Frankfurt with »Orpheus #«.

In his play »King Lear«, Shakespeare tells the story of an ageing monarch who divides his inheritance among his three daughters and thus brings about the downfall of his empire. The Belgian author Tom Lanoye edited Shakespeare's famous drama and moved the story into the present day circles of high finance. Lanoye's piece shows the struggle for power and money through an intra-family ordeal wrestling between selfishness and greed, which ends with disastrous consequences for both the family and the markets.

Pinter's exciting pieces, with their absurd realism and humour, strange elusive figures and everyday observations are full of atmospheric depth and complement Kruse's gloomy directing style. And you can be sure that when it crackles with tension, a turntable will be playing in some corner of the room.

»Thumb-sucker«, »Fidgety Philipp«, »Johnny Head-in-Air« or »Soup-Kaspar«, these characters are present in almost every person's mind and although over the years educational methods have changed radically, there are still parents who use these stories to open their children's eyes to the world around them. Rainald Grebe, musician and comedian, brings the stories to life. An evening for adults over 12 years.

With »The Dance of Death«, August Strindberg has written a play about the desperation and lust of two people who can only find happiness in death. But they are still yet to dance with death.

A fantastic storm starts the beginning of William Shakespeare's final play. The magician Prospero conjures up this storm to strand a ship and its crew on his island and thus take revenge on his brother, who had abandoned him twelve years ago to the open sea and to take the throne.

Oskar Roehler is one of the most important German film-makers of the present day. In »Der alte Affe Angst«, he tells a story of unconditional love. It is not a puppy love, but the love that exists between adults. Director Ersan Mondtag will bring the piece to the stage for the first time.

Rodion Raskolnikov is a young law student. He argues that some people have the right to commit a crime because the existing laws do not apply to them, thus, he kills an old pawnbroker. Raskolnikov, convinced of his own genius, performs an experiment to test his theories that will eliminate existing laws and introduce new ones by which the world can be ruled.

Alfred Döblin's »Berlin Alexanderplatz« is, next to James Joyce's »Ulysses« and »Manhattan Transfer« by John Dos Passos, among the most important city based novels of world literature. Döblin's partly dark and often comedic, but always touching, cityscape panorama is made for the black humour and melancholy of the English band »The Tiger Lillies«.

One year after the death of her husband, Joan Didion beganto write about her first few days of coming to terms with his passing. She desperately attempts to understand death, which is such a powerful part ofhuman existence, and tries to view life from a different perspective.

»Zweite Allgemeine Verunsicherung« was written for the Schauspiel Frankfurt by Felicia Zeller. A new, grotesque and fantastic piece about narcissistically depressed people who cannot save themselves in the face of an impending doomsday. Her words are full of wit, accurately describing our madness in this present time.

To discover the identities and life stories and to reinvent them, that is the point of this project. Young people who have left their »known« identity and must rediscover themselves, here in their new home. It's a play about lifestyles beyond the limits of feasible dictation and about the distrust people have of one another which seem to be rooted in the past. It is also a question of who builds the towers today and what use do they have? What common languages can be found here?

The Amazon queen Penthesilea appears in Kleist's eloquent masterpiece from 1807 with her female army on the battlefield before Troy, because the Amazons are forced to defeat their men in the fight to beget offspring. There is an absolute law in the state of woman: No one may select her man. Penthesilea rails against this law because she just wants one: the Greek army commander Achilles. He is also fascinated by the power and beauty of the Amazonian. Twice they meet on the battlefield and everytime it is more than a fight to the death.

Ferdinand Havlicek is a nobody, an outcast. Expelledfrom one country, he tries to re-enter his homeland but cannot. He now shuffles across the bridge that connects the two countries but at either end the border authorities wait dutifully, guarding their respective borders. Before he knows it Ferdinand becomes mired in political machinations, illegal smugglers and secret love stories.

Two Pieces about justice: A comedy from 1811 and a new play from 2014. Two pieces asking about the relationship of trust between the modern state and its inhabitants. In Kleist's tragic-comic piece »The Broken Jug«, it is not just the jug that is broken but also the world.

Ferdinand von Schirach is a German criminal defence lawyer and author of two short stories. In his first play »Terror«, von Schirach wants nothing less than to talk about the first article of the Constitution and sets it to public discussion: »Human dignity is inviolable.« Oliver Reese will bring both pieces, with the same cast, as independent productions to the stage over two consecutive evenings.