What the Rhinoceros Saw When It Looked Over the Fence
by Jens Raschke
puppet theatre for 9 year olds and older
Director: Matthias Thieme
Stage design and costumes: Mila van Daag | Puppets: Merle Smalla
Composition and Sound: Jonas Wolter and Sebastian Bode
Cast: Mo-Elia Stock, Heinrich Bennke, Paul S. Kemner, Tomas Mielentz
Directing internship: Maricel Polixa, Anton Ole Zang
Premiere: 26 September 2025, at 7:30 p.m.
There is a zoo near Weimar from where the animals can look out onto a strange area. A large chimney smokes there, and there are two kinds of people - striped and booted. Submissive order reigns in the zoo and none of the animals want to bother themselves with what is happening on the other side of the fence.
Jens Raschke‘s award-winning play tells of the events in the Buchenwald concentration camp from the surprising perspective of its zoo animals.
The realisation of this production is supported by the Sparkassenstiftung Erfurt.
Performance rights: Theaterstückverlag im Drei Masken Verlag GmbH München
Residents
based on the records of the psychiatrist Christoph Held
in cooperation with schauspiel erlangen and the international figuren.theater.festival Erlangen Nuremberg Fürth Schwabach
puppet theatre for 16 year olds and older
Director: Moritz Sostmann | Stage design and costumes: Klemens Kühn
Puppets: Hagen Tilp | Music: Albrecht Ziepert
Cast: Johannes Benecke, Tomas Mielentz
Premiere in Erlangen: 23 May 2025
Premiere in Erfurt: 7 November 2025, at 7:30 p.m.
An actress, a banker, an Italian guest worker, a drug addict, a depressive – they all live in a dementia ward, and dementia lives in them. They only remember fragments of their lives. Nevertheless, their stories want to be told. The biographies of the residents reflect different aspects of human existence, although or precisely because the dementia patients are thrown back to the mere essence of their personality.
The realisation of this production is supported by the Förderverein Theater Erlangen.
Performance rights: Dörlemann Verlag AG
The Dragon
by Jewgeni Schwarz | German by Günter Jäniche
stage adaptation by Frank Alexander Engel
puppet theatre for 12 year olds and older
Director and stage design: Frank Alexander Engel
Puppets: Nadine Wottke | Costumes: Ira Hausmann
Composition and Sound: Sebastian Herzfeld
Premiere: 27 February 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
A dragon has been tyrannising a town for four hundred years. As tribute, he demands huge herds of cattle, gardens full of vegetables and a virgin once a year. This time he has chosen Elsa, the only daughter of the archivist Charlemagne. For many years, no one has dared to question the dragon‘s rule. On the contrary, he is accepted as a useful evil, even respected and revered by many. However, the knight Lancelot, whom chance has brought to the city on his travels, challenges the dragon to battle. He receives little thanks for this and when the dragon is defeated, a new ruler seizes power.
“The Dragon” from 1943 is a parable of dictatorship and subjugation that has portrayed many societies since its creation and reflects the zeitgeist here and now.
The realisation of this production is supported by the Ingenieurbüro Susann Schwarzenau.
Performance rights: henschel SCHAUSPIEL Theaterverlag Berlin
Cloud Pictures
by Mike Kenny
German by Andreas Jandl
puppet theatre for 6 year olds and older
Director and designs: Atif Mohammed Nour Hussein
Premiere: 17 April 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
Theo and Beeny are friends - best friends. They live in the same house in very different apartments. At Theo’s, they eat cheese-on-toast and baked beans in front of the TV and never have to clean up. At Beeny’s, they eat curry with rice and samosas at the kitchen table and always have to tidy up. They play lots of games. Their favourite game is called cloud pictures, where they can dream together. One day Beeny moves far away, to a warm place, and for a long time both boys live their own lives. They miss each other very much, but when they finally meet again, things are no longer the same.
“Cloud Pictures” is a play about differences and similarities, about friendship and loss and about finding each other again. With this work, director and designer Atif Mohammed Nour Hussein creates a sensitive world full of emotion and fantasy that will delight children and adults alike.
Performance rights: Felix Bloch Erben GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin | www.felix-bloch-erben.de
Anything Is Possible
based on the book Tutto è possibile © 2011; text by Giulia Belloni
German by Romy Bouché
first release | puppet theatre for 3 year olds and older
Director: Karoline Vogel
Designs: Kathrin Sellin
Premiere: 6 June 2026, at 3:00 p.m.
Sheep looks up at the sky and dreams. “How lucky these birds are!” she thinks and runs to her friend Wolf to build a flying machine with him. Wolf is sceptical at first but then gets involved in the joint adventure. They plan and build meticulously and finally take off for the first time in a home-made machine. But building flying machines is not that easy and so it takes some time before their dream of flying becomes reality.
The play is based on the children‘s book of the same name by the Italian author Giulia Belloni. It lovingly tells of big dreams and how to fulfil them.
Performance rights: originally published by ©Kite Edizioni, German edition published bei ©Jumbo Verlag