Open Call for Texts

Münchner Kammerspiele and Institut für Neue Soziale Plastik are collaborating around the theme MK: 100. We are looking for fictional opening speeches with which you would inaugurate the 101st season of Münchner Kammerspiele.

This call addresses Jewish and other authors critical of antisemitism.

Context:

Münchner Kammerspiele celebrate an ambivalent anniversary this year, in September and October. It was in 1926 that Kammerspiele – founded as a private theatre by a number of jewish Munich families – moved to the representative building in Maximilianstraße. Up until today the theatre is one of the best preserved Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) theatres in Germany. The move there was based on the belief that contemporary and innovative theatre should be right in the centre of the city. During the Weimar years Münchner Kammerspiele was an international theatre open to the world collaborating intensively with partners in Central and Eastern Europe. It was a place of aesthetic innovation and artistic freedom, joyfully witnessing the times. With all of this, Kammerspiele’s early years remain an important point of orientation for our theatre work today.

However, not long after the move to the centre of the city Münchner Kammerspiele were „purged of Jewish and foreign elements“ – this included the founders, share-holders and many employees who were persecuted as Jews. Only the artistic director Otto Falckenberg made it through the years of the Nazi-regime, profiteering greatly from their policies. Under Hitler, in 1939, Kammerspiele became „the stage of the capital of the Nazi movement“: no longer a privately owned theatre but a theatre owned and run by the city council of Munich – a structure that remains to this day. What followed after the defeat of Nazi Germany were decades without memory, and also at Münchner Kammerspiele much remained unsaid, silenced and “forgotten“.

Further information in German and English about the history of Münchner Kammerspiele can be found HERE.

Offer:

The chosen texts will be read by actors of Münchner Kammerspiele during the event “100 years & 1 night“ on 24th October 2026, and will then be published on the theatre’s website. Authors whose texts are chosen receive a fee of 400 EUR (incl. VAT).

Application:

Please hand in the following materials

· Your fictive opening speech (about 6.000-8.000 characters, incl. spaces)

· A short description of yourself or a short CV

The materials must be provided in German or English. Please send them in as one pdf document naming it in the following manner: Family Name.Name.MK100.pdf

Please send your submission exclusively via e-mail and no later than Sunday 13th September 2026 to dramaturgie.mk@kammerspiele.de and info@neue-soziale-plastik.org.