Works
VOLL HAPPY – FAST EINE TRAGÖDIE
A turbulent comedy with witty dialogue and quirky characters about three generations of a family.
Read moreVOLTAIRES NEFFE
Enzensberger’s version of Diderot’s “Rameau’s Nephew” where two persons, an anonymous philosopher and a bizarre, nihilistic bohemian, discusses morality, genius role, eroticism and religion.
Read moreVON DEM MACHANDELBAUM
En version of a lesser known Grimm fairytale about a boy, who’s killed and boiled by his stepmother and served for his father. The boy resurrects as bird and finds the magical powder that will liberate his father and sister from the evil stepmother.
Read moreVORE EGNE MANDARINER
This is a good-humoured caricature of the enterprise in the poultry ministry. What is done there seems completely foolish and useless, yet it is not mad enough for us to not sense a connection to some kind of reality. The characters use all their energy pursuing personal goals and achieving…
Read moreVOYAGE DE MOLIÈRE, LE
Chartes, August 1944, recently liberated from German occupation.The Giraud family have been hairdressers from father to son and so it naturally came to Pierre to take over from his father, killed in a prison camp a year earlier. Marie, his mother, a heroïne of the French Résistance, is in charge…
Read moreVOYAGE OF MARY BRYANT, THE
The Mary Bryant story begins in the late 1800s, when she is sentenced to seven years deportation to the Botany Bay penal colony. After the eight month journey on board the First Fleet, Mary and her fellow convicts are given the task of building a new world at the polar…
Read moreVOYAGES CHEZ LES MORTS
Ionesco’s final play combines autobiographical material with the hallucinatory quality of his early works. The play is an anxiety driven, autobiographical fantasy revolving around a middle-aged writer who visits a realm where the dead and the living exist plainly with one another. Answers are not forthcoming, and the audience is…
Read moreWAGER, THE
Leeds who is a selfish, bright student of philosophy enters a bet with his roommate Ward, who constantly brags about his sexual escapades. And so he is to seduce, not entirely without dangerous consequences, the young beautiful wife of one of their professors living in the flat next door. Leeds…
Read moreWAIT UNTIL DARK
A sinister con-man, Roar, and two exconvicts, Mike and Carlino, are about to meet their match. They have traced the location of a mysterious doll, which they are much interested in, to the Greenwich Village apartment of Sam Hendrix and his blind wife, Susy. Sam had apparently been persuaded by…
Read moreWAKE, THE
This is the first play in eight years from the Irish playwright Tom Murphy. The main themes are the same as in his previous works and those of other Irish authors: the homecoming after a life in exile. It also deals with the clashes between the free spirited and the…
Read moreWAKEY, WAKEY
“Is it now? (Brief pause.) I thought I had more time.” A dying man and his humorous, almost improvisational, reflection on life: What are we doing here? Where are we going, how and why? Take a step back, look around and enjoy the simple pleasures of life and each other…
Read moreWALDKINDER
Kitti Zitti, a young homeless woman, is getting ready for the night in a backyard. From the property she hears beautiful music that puts her in such a high mood, that when she shakes the pillow she makes a kind of doll out of it: a child who wants to…
Read moreWALL
A personal and historical tale about life on both sides of the Israeli West Bank barrier, which is four times the length of the Berlin Wall. Published with the monologue BERLIN about the berlin wall.
Read moreWALL, THE
This play is an adaptation of John Hersey’s novel about life in Warsaw’s ghetto in the years between 1940 – 43.
Read moreWALLFLOWERING
Wallflowering traces the uncertain steps of Cliff and Peg Small, an ordinary couple, as they attempt to save their marriage. One time prize-winning ballroom dancers, they now find themselves out of step with each other, and with the changing values of the world around them. Through the metaphor of dance,…
Read moreWANDA’S WORLD
Wanda Butternut is the popular host of the hit TV talk show “Wanda’s World,” where kids call in to get advice from Wanda to solve their problems. Wanda is beautiful, confident and always knows what to say…in her fantasy. In real life, Wanda is a middle school girl with a…
Read moreWANDERNUTTEN
A small group of men are sitting around a table: The handsome Albert, who has a tendency to reject women, Olaf, who is addicted to being high, Rainer, who is a foot fetishist and finally George, who makes bets about his wife’s fidelity. On the other side of the street…
Read moreWAR AND PEACE
With an exquisite British feel for what functions and what is effective, Helen Edmundson has dramatized Lev Tolstoj’s mighty epic from the Napoleon wars. Rather than dealing with one general story the plot consists of several parallel stories. We follow the doings, the complexity and development of five Russian families.…
Read moreWAR OF THE ROSES, THE
Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny De Vito starred in the movie based on Warren Adler’s tragicomic novel. Oliver and Barbara Rose have been married for 18 years. Now, Barbara wants a divorce, but when it comes to the house none of them want to give it up. Their lawyers…
Read moreWAR ZONE I-V
From five perspectives, this radio piece demonstrates the impact of structural violence on the individual. The material is impressions from a trip to Kosovo.
Read moreWARTEINWEIL
A sort of Hell or Paradise depending on how you see it, where Ulrich Hub has gathered a number of characters inspired by Brothers Grimm.
Read moreWARUM LÄUFT HERR R. AMOK
Mr. R. has no reason to complain. He has a meaningful job at an architectural studio, a wonderful wife and a son. He lives in a nice apartment with his family. In the evening the couple watches television and in the weekend the family in laws comes to visit. Everything…
Read moreWAS GESCHAH, NACHDEM NORA IHREN MANN VERLASSEN HATTE ODER STÜTZEN DER GESELLSCHAFT
Ibsen’s “Nora or a Doll’s House and Pillar of Society” form the basis for this very free continuation and modernization of his characters and themes. This “didactic play in the tradition of Brecht” picks up where the original Nora ends: She leaves her husband and her children to set off…
Read moreWAS KOSTET DAS EISEN?
A critical allegory on Sweden’s position in the build-up to World War Two. It was written in 1939 while Brecht was in exile in Sweden. The play is set in the shop of a male character named Svenson, who is repeatedly visited by a gangster-like figure wanting to purchase iron.…
Read moreWASSER IM EIMER
A children’s play about pollution. On their holiday in the country side two big city children experience that they get red cheeks of bathing and it’s not a healthy complexion.
Read moreWASTE. A DOCUMENTARY FAIRY-TALE
Entertaining and dramaturgically experimental comedy about the environment and how hazardous waste is recycled or not at all, and where waste is the new valuable asset in a criminal like business world.
Read moreWAT IS ER AN DE HAND MET DANIELA DUÑOZ (WAS IST LOS MIT DANIELA DUÑOZ?)
Early in the morning Daniela Duñoz is arrested by the police. She is suspected of having kidnapped and illegally adopted the three children who lives with her. Before they lived a carefree life in a suburb of Buenos Aires. Now they’re taken in the custody of the authorities and placed…
Read moreWATCH ON THE RHINE
The work plays out in 1940 and portrays an idealistic German, Kurt, who flees Hitler’s Germany with his American wife and children and finds sanctuary with his wife’s family in the United States. He hopes for a respite from the dangerous work in which he has been involved, but his…
Read moreWATCHING AND WEIGHTING
A fine monologue for an actress, who skillfully reveals, changing between graveness and humour, how body fixated most women are and also how their self-esteem often dives after an ended love affair.
Read moreWATCHTOWER, THE
Set in a Blue Mountains TB sanitorium from 1939 to 1945. The story of what happens to a group of TB patients who must wait to be cured as the world is engulfed in the second world war. The disease has determined everyone’s lives. Some patients die, others live, and…
Read moreWATER ENGINE, THE
The Water Engine is set in 1934. Its central character, Charles Lang, is a young amateur inventor, who designs an engine that runs on water. He plans to patent it, make a fortune, and live happily ever after with his sister Rita Lang, but his dream begins to unravel when…
Read moreWAY UPSTREAM
What could be more pleasant than cruising through the picturesque English countryside? This voyage combines the comedy touches that make Ayckbourn one of the world’s best-loved playwrights with a darker thread of menace.
Read moreWE ARE SORRY
Hirdwalls artistic comment on the News of the World scandal. The late British writer Dennis Potter pops up in media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s sleep for a critical dialogue about the case and Murdoch’s dominance in the media world. The title refers to the heading of the letter, where Murdoch apologizes…
Read moreWE HEAR YOU – GRETA THUNBERGS TAL
A montage of Greta Thunberg’s words from her book NO ONE IS TOO SMALL TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE – a collection of 11 speeches about the climate crisis and global warming. First performed at Dramaten in January 2020. Authorized by Greta Thunberg.
Read moreWE WILL ROCK YOU
Featuring more than 20 hit Queen songs including “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Killer Queen,” “We Will Rock You,” “Somebody To Love,” “We Are the Champions,” “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and many more, WE WILL ROCK YOU follows two revolutionaries as they try to save rock ‘n’ roll…
Read moreWEDDING IN VENICE, THE
The Wedding in Venice is a comedy set in the 1980s. Cosimo is a flight attendent and apparently a prince. Lady Rosalind Suttor, the doyen of Sydney society, takes him under her wing in the hope that he will marry her daughter Hettie. She does not realise that Cosimo lives…
Read moreWEDDING PORTRAIT
Richard and Sarah are celebrating their 19th anniversary. Joining them on their big day, are their daughter Judith, her boyfriend Raymond, as well as Sarah’s parents, Simon and Olivia. A camera crew, in the process of shooting a documentary about marriage is also present. Two generations of married couples and…
Read moreWEEKEND, THE
Michael Palin’s first stage play takes a look at family values, which is not only funny but also has its darker side. It is about an elderly gentleman, Stephen Febble, who must endure a weekend with his daughter, her dreary husband, and their precocious child
Read moreWEIBERVOLKSVERSAMMLUNG
A free version of Aristophanes’ “Assemblywomen”. A group of women, led by the wise and redoubtable Praxagora, has decided that the women of Athens must convince the men to give them control of the city, as they are convinced they can do a better job. Disguised as men, the women…
Read moreWEIBSTEUFEL, DER
A woman lives in the mountains with her debilitated husband. She is very keen to have a baby but all she gets is silk. Her husband earns his money by smuggling, which is soon noticed by a frontier guard, who shortly gets to seduce the woman. She, however, quickly realizes…
Read moreWEIR, THE
A handful of single men are all regulars in a remote Irish pub where they in turn, excel in telling ghost stories. Then one day, when a woman named Valerie moves into the neighbourhood, they eagerly compete to impress her with the best story. However, she takes them all by…
Read moreWEISSBROTMUSIK
A play inspired by the authentic events regaring the so-called “U-Bahn thugs from Munich”. It’s about the three teenagers – Sedat, Aaron and Nurit – who live in a world filled with themes and conflicts they cannot identify with and which overwhelm them. Everyday situations are getting more and more…
Read moreWELCOME HOME
The theme of Tony Marchant’s WELCOME HOME is the guilt and anger of war survivors – staged in 1983 and later filmed by the BBC. The play follows the course of four squaddies in the Parachute regiment and their corporal from the time they prepare to disembark until their return…
Read moreWELCOME TO THE MOON
The title piece, Welcome to the Moon, is a reunion among friends at a Bronx bar, where sooner or later, everybody confesses their secret love.
Read moreWELT IM SPIEGEL
A collection of early Robert Gernhardt texts from the satirical magazine Pardon.
Read moreWELTENBRAND
Weltenbrand won the prize for best youth play at Heidelberger Stückemarkt in 2015. The starting point is April 22, 1915, the day on which the Germans introduce the first weapon of mass destruction: Poison gas. The Germans did not win the war, but they changed its face forever. Starting from…
Read moreWELTUNTERGÄNGE
Nadja hasn’t left the apartment for weeks. She is careful, because she’s afraid. Nevertheless she agrees to meet with Andy, who’s full of expectations for a rendezvous with her. There’s gin and tonic and peanuts, but the evening doesn’t evolve as Andy had imagined. Joan and John are the perfect…
Read moreWENDELS HEIMAT
A provincial town in the south of Germany: Because he liked to dress in women’s clothing, Wendel was a victim of slander and send off to an asylum by the Third Reich. In the 60s, he returns to his hometown. Informers from back then are now dignitaries and Wendel becomes…
Read moreWENN ICH GROSS BIN, WILL ICH FRAULENZEN
As always, Johanna comes home from school to an empty apartment. She is a key child and already pretty independent. But she’s actually only eight years old and is afraid that the Queen of the Power, a character from her imagination, will call. After an eventful afternoon Johanna states: “When…
Read moreWESTERN CIVILIZATION! – THE COMPLETE MUSICAL (ABRIDGED)
Join Eric the Red on his expedition to Northern America, listen to Jeanne D’Arc sing gospel and see if Djengis Khan and Adolf Hitler are able to sing a duet. Travel through several world wars, from Mona Lisa to Einstein, from one great man to another – and one single…
Read moreWESTWIND
1953 in a small Bavarian town: In their new home, a group of Silesian and Sudeten Germans erect a large wooden hut as a house for the youth. They’re trying to save what can no longer stand to be saved and to pass on the memory of an old culture…
Read moreWET BRAIN
In a dilapidated home, three siblings gather around their alcoholic and brain-damaged father after the death of their mother in an attempt to keep the dysfunctional family together. During the course of the action they’re beamed to an extraterrestrial space where they all, including the mother, meet in a surreal…
Read moreWET HOUSE
When Andy, an idealistic young graduate, gets a job in a wet house, a homeless hostel where residents can drink alcohol, he is plunged into a twilight world where the rules about what is right and what is normal have become a little blurred. And that’s just among the other…
Read moreWEXFORD TRILOGY, THE
Billy Roche’s THE WEXFORD TRILOGY consists of the full length plays BELFRY, POOR BEAST IN THE RAIN and A HANDFULL OF STARS. For synopsis of the three plays please see under each title.
Read moreWHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU
A witty contemporary comedy that follows one person’s journey through a heart attack, a gay marriage, an obsession with Cher, and a trip to a concentration camp. So, yes, it’s a comedy!
Read moreWHAT IS THE MATTER WITH MARY JANE?
Based on the personal experience of the actor Sancia Robinson, this play bravely examines the nightmare of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia, from the perspective of one who has made it through to the sanity of self – acceptance. Brimming with courage, humour and poignancy. Published by Currency Press 1995 Premiere…
Read moreWHAT THE BUTLER SAW
The Prentices are not an ordinary couple. Dr. Prentice is a psychiatrist with his own hospital who believes that the best way to interview a girl for a job is to seduce her. Geraldine does her best to comply, but nothing is going to work smoothly in this nut house…
Read moreWHAT WHERE
The play was written in 1983 initially in French as QUOI OÙ and translated by Samuel Beckett himself. In WHAT WHERE, four characters appear at intervals, all dressed in the same long grey gown with the same long grey hair. Bam controls and interrogates the others, sending them off “to…
Read moreWHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? – SKUESPILVERSION
The stage play adaptation of Henry Farrell’s famous thriller novel about two aging and rival sisters. The child star, Baby Jane, soon ended in oblivion as her sister, Blanche’s career flourished. When a mysterious car accident cripples Blanche , the bitter Baby Jane becomes her evil imprisoner in their isolated…
Read moreWHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR TROUSERS?
This hilarious farce begins quietly enough with Howard and Penny asleep. A burglar climbs through the window and steals various items, including Howard’s suit. Awakening, Howard announces his intention to get back to his wife! But how can he in only vest and underpants? Before you can say “jockey shorts”…
Read moreWHEN THE CAT’S AWAY
Based on a very popular British sit-com, this riotously-funny play is classic British sex-farce. When Mildred and Ethel go off on a trip to Paris, the “mice will play”. Egged on by Ethel’s philandering husband Humphrey Pomfrey, George agrees to invite two charming little sex-kittens over. Well, you know already…
Read moreWHEN THE NIGHT BEGINS
In the process of getting control of her life after her husband’s death, Jane is invaded by cruel memories of the physical and sexual abuse her stepfather Cecil put her through when she was a child. Consumed with anger and pain, and with a kitchen knife in her purse, she…
Read moreWHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING
This epic piece covers four generations and two continents. The play takes place in a claustrophobic flat in London during the 1950ies as well as the windy shores of Southern Australia and the heart of a futuristic Australian desert in the year 2039. In WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING, a…
Read moreWHEN WE HAVE SUFFICIENTLY TORTURED EACH OTHER
Inspired by Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novel PAMELA – a 18th Century FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY – Martin Crimp lets his audience snoop into the roleplay of couple experimenting with sexual domination and resistance. Can a woman ever genuinely wish to be dominated by a man – or is that simply…
Read moreWHEN YOU COMIN’ BACK RED RYDER?
Here a drug smuggling gangster is forced to stop over in New Mexico while his car is being fixed. To kill time, he sets out terrorizing the other motel guests in a most manipulating and cunning manner, though despite his brutal sadism and abuse, it is obvious that he is…
Read moreWHICH ONE OF US
Magnus, Arni and Dori are brothers. Magnus is dating Gudrun. Arni is dating Halla, who is Magnus’ ex-girlfriend. Halla is having an affair with Dori. And magnus is also having an affair with Halla. Such is the basic situation in this clever and entertaining radio play, ending in murder. The…
Read moreWHICH WAY TO THE STAGE
The year is 2015 and Jeff and Judy are right where they’re supposed to be: waiting outside the stage door of If/Then to get an autograph from the star. But the experience they have while they wait will change the course of their decades-long friendship forever.
Read moreWHISKEY & SUGAR
Two mature women meet at a funeral. One is the daughter of the deceased, the other the best friend. The two women haven’t met before, and when it turns out that the urn has not yet arrived, they start passing the time sharing their memories. The memories are very contradictory…
Read moreWHISPERS ON THE WIND
These are vignettes about growing up in America of the 50’s and 60’s, linked together by a folk-rock score.
Read moreWHISTLE DOWN THE WIND
Set in America’s Deep South in the late fifties, this evocative musical fuse epic storytelling with compelling characters to create an unforgettable theatrical experience. The musical revolves around the time and place where the word teenager was invented. Swallow, struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother,…
Read moreWHITE LIARS
WHITE LIARS revolves around Sophie Lemberg, an eccentric and disillusioned fortune teller (who imagines herself to be a baroness of the Holy Roman Empire) living in a decaying seaside resort, and the two young men – Tom, the lead singer in a rock band, and Frank, his business manager –…
Read moreWHO DUNNIT
WHO DUNNIT is a comic spoof of the detective thriller genre a la Agatha Christie. This Broadway success by the author of SLEUTH takes audiences to Agatha Christie’s England, where six strangers and a butler have gathered for a black tie dinner in a wealthy lawyer’s mansion during a thunderstorm.…
Read moreWHO IS SYLVIA?
Obsessed with a girl called Sylvia, whom he kissed just once at a garden party when he was 17, Mark makes a habit of pursuing physically identical girls for the rest of his life – despite having a wife and growing son. We meet him – and Oscar, his fellow…
Read moreWHO KILLED “AGATHA” CHRISTIE
A classic British thriller with unexpected twists. The mediocre dramatist John Terry has lured the respected theatre critic Arthur “Agatha” Christie to his flat for a secret meeting. The irritable and arrogant critic is shocked to learn that his homosexual lover is having an affair with the dramatist’s young wife.…
Read moreWHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS?
This play is a series of four intertwining stories of fringe-dwellers, living in an age of social, economic and moral deprivation. Mostly out of work, and politically uninterested, they work at survival. A gritty portrayal of real life in an urban wasteland. Winner 1999 Australian Writer’s Guild Award for Best…
Read moreWHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY?
Set in a hospital room, the action revolves around Ken Harrison, a sculptor by profession, who was paralysed from the neck down in a car accident and is determined to be allowed to die. Clark presents arguments both in favour of and opposing euthanasia and to what extent government should…
Read moreWHY DO YOU SMOKE SO MUCH, LILY
The story takes place in a fashionable flat in Saint Louis. Lily is a young intellectual (and temperamental) heavily smoking woman who just finished school. Her philistine widow mother, Mrs. Yorke, is an intense critic of her hopeless daughter who refuses to marry and does not like to crochet like…
Read moreWHY ME?
Secrets, Lies & P45’s! When John Bailey loses his job as a civil engineer his life seems to fall apart. John struggles to come to terms with being a house husband whilst watching his wife Helen run a successful business of her own. He also has to cope with his…
Read moreWHY NOT STAY FOR BREAKFAST?
George Clarke is a respected member of the Establishment, a Civil Servant living in a converted flat in Hampstead. One evening, a very pregnant hippy arrives on his doorstep from a flat upstairs. At the height of their differences, Louise’s labour pains begins and so George takes charge.
Read moreWIDOWS
An adaptation of Dorfman’s moving novel set in a Greek village in 1942 where the corpses of “disappeared” men wash ashore. The village women claim the bodies as husbands and fathers, even though their faces are unrecognizable. A tug of war ensues between the local police, who insist the women…
Read moreWIELAND
Wieland is an artist and the best blacksmith for miles around. He has forged the magic ring Alberich and he is often used by the King. Wieland is in love with the king’s daughter, Bathilde. But instead of getting her he’s being tortured and banished to a desert island. To…
Read moreWIENER DIALEKTSTÜCKE
talk / nothing / people. a criminal piece / I’m looking for flowers in petrol / things. / holiday makers / doors
Read moreWILD GOOSE, THE
When the story opens, we find Jameson and Renaldo amongst table and chairs, deciding if they can live together in the world or not. They share their water and peanuts as they tear each other down to gain the upper hand. Jameson shoots Renaldo dead. Just in time, for Ramona…
Read moreWILD HONEY
The adaptation, of the early written and very long Tjekhov comedy PLATINOV, is so freely done that it is more often considered to be a work of Frayn than of Tjekhov. Obviously, the themes belong to Tjekhov; bankruptcy of the landed gentry, the intellectuals’ dilettantism, the boredom of provincial life…
Read moreWILDEST DREAMS
In this play, eight people are participating in a dangerous role play where eventually, the line between game and reality diminishes. And that makes it some what of a psychological thriller about the high-tech time in which we live. Most certainly a thought-provoker.
Read moreWILDFIRE ROAD
The action takes place aboard a hijacked plane on its way to Tokyo, where the passengers and crew open up about their lives and concerns / discussions about, among other things, the environment while watching a Europe below in flames due to climate changes. If we could go back in…
Read moreWILDFREMD
Shenja Keil’s absurd debut play takes place in a forest among huge and small creatures.
Read moreWILL ROGERS FOLLIES, THE
The ‘Follies’ created by Ziegfeld, was revues of endless female dancers walking up and down a set of steps with a variety of shows and celebrity names. This show THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES is equally rich on dancers performing on steps and from the rooftops the phantom voice of Florenz…
Read moreWIND ON THE MOON, THE
Escaping their lives in Manhattan, former college buddies Matt and Davis take off to the Netherlands and find themselves thrown into a bizarre love triangle with a beautiful young prostitute named Christina. But the romance they find in Europe is eventually overshadowed by the truth they discover at home. Written…
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