Launch Mehr Drama!

On Writing and Performance
A conversation about the current status of contemporary playwriting
with Sivan Ben Yishai, Ferdinand Schmalz, Gerhild Steinbuch and Paula Thielecke

How Long to Live, How Long to Love?
Mehr Drama!: Leonie Ziem + Jara Nassar

In an illustration in orange and green, two people are walking up the stairs to the upper foyer of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele

To launch the new format Mehr Drama! four distinguished dramatists take part in a podium discussion that examines the state of contemporary dramatic writing. This is followed directly by the first of three Mehr Drama! events: Leonie Ziem and Jara Nassar present their texts to the Theatertreffen audience and then talk to the authors who nominated them for the project: Gerhild Steinbuch and Sivan Ben Yishai.

Moderation Shirin Sojitrawalla
Dramaturgical Consultation Anna-Katharina Müller

Panel Discussion

On Writing and Performance

A conversation about the current status of contemporary playwriting

In the opening talk of the new format Mehr Drama! four renowned authors share their personal impressions of the current status of contemporary dramatic writing. Which voices are missing from theatre repertoires, what is being performed and how visible is contemporary playwriting in general? Is the gap between the needs of theatres and playwrights now getting too wide? And what does the audience actually want to see?

In this conversation, questions of aesthetics and cultural politics meet and are illuminated from a variety of perspectives. The playwrights draw on very different experiences; their own writings are highly diverse – and yet they are united in providing perceptive observations of the present that need to be heard and seen.

The Theatertreffen’s new format Mehr Drama! offers a personally curated view of contemporary playwriting. Six authors have each chosen one aspiring playwright whose text will be presented at the Theatertreffen in a reading with distinguished actors. The playwrights for 2026 have been chosen by: Sivan Ben Yishai, Necati Öziri, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Ferdinand Schmalz, Gerhild Steinbuch and Paula Thielecke.

Panel Discussion with

Sivan Ben Yishai, Ferdinand Schmalz, Gerhild Steinbuch and Paula Thielecke

Readings and Talks

How Long to Live, How Long to Love?

Mehr Drama!: Leonie Ziem + Jara Nassar

Leonie Ziem: Das große Gleichgültige

Leonie Ziem tells the story of Mares and Libro: they are in love and they are in a queue. This queue runs through the entire city – even though Mares and Libro are not really sure what they are queueing for – and it is getting longer and longer. 300 years of life – this, it turns out, is what people are queueing for. But is it really worth it? Will this world even exist in future? With linguistic dexterity, powerful rhythms and multiple layers of meaning, Das große Gleichgültige is about mortality, death and loss – and about how we want to live.

Reading with
Hassan Dib, Heinrich Horwitz, Lilith Stangenberg and others

Talk between
Leonie Ziem and Gerhild Steinbuch

Selection Statement

“A queue for something. What exactly? Never mind. The main thing is people are waiting. Because of social immobility and a lack of opportunities for advancement, because of broken health systems and various promises of hope. Because of a world that produces a disproportionately high number of losers so that the jackpot for the top few percent can really boom. In the midst of it all, in the world and the queue: Libro, who is in love with Mares, and Mares, who is in love with Libro. When the queue turns out to be a lottery for a life lasting 300 years donated by the current federal government, it starts to move, and there is also movement between Libro and Mares: is an extra long life their entry ticket to a very bright future or a trap door depositing them in an insane world on an endless loop?
Leonie Ziem’s Das große Gleichgültige is a terrific text that successfully articulates a complex theme – the question of equality of opportunity in an eroded system – in a highly individual manner: with humour, intelligence and at great speed. For all its reference to contemporary discourses, the text has a multi-layered at times playful, at times analytical, at times tender, at times coarsely comic language in which I discover something new every time I read it. The idiosyncratic language of her voice enables Leonie Ziem to translate theoretical discourses into quirky, entirely individual worlds in texts that surprise me, lead me along false and roundabout paths, make me think and touch me.”
– Gerhild Steinbuch

Jara Nassar: Hoch und immer höher

Hoch und immer Höher also focusses on a couple, Anse and Soufiane, whose encounter is presented in more realistic, situational terms. In a house in the mountains above the city of Beirut the threat of war rumbles over them persistently like a dark cloud. Told in a taut, filmic and cleverly achronological style, Jara Nassar shows two characters who want to be together but find out that this is impossible – how are they supposed to love each other and find a future when what awaits them is entirely uncertain and filled with violence?

Reading with
Hassan Dib, Jara Nassar and others

Talk between
Sivan Ben Yishai and Jara Nassar

Selection Statement

“In Hoch und immer höher by Jara Nassar a couple take time away from the hubbub of Beirut to find some intimacy and rest. The German audience is invited to witness how a relationship can be stripped apart in a situation where war can break out at any minute – or where perhaps it has never ended. Over the course of the play we are forced to engage with points of view that are largely missing from the German mainstream media: with lives that are marked by violence and uncertainty.
To give a form to the scarcely believable, cruel reality of a love story that takes place while leaflets are being dropped from the sky announcing an impending Israeli bombing campaign, Jara Nassar has chosen the well-made play. Its coherent dialogue and its realistic depiction of two characters who as Arab men belong to one of the most demonised groups in Western society show that in certain moments in history (let’s say … now?) and certain places in the world (let’s say … here?) clarity and comprehensibility are decisive positions and actions. Political ones.”
– Sivan Ben Yishai

Performance rights Leonie Ziem, Das große Gleichgültige: Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Hamburg
Hoch und immer höher is translated from English by Jara Nassar