Maxim Gorki Theater

During the time of the Wall, the theatre was initially a counterpoint to Brecht’s rational-cool work at the Berliner Ensemble and was intended to be a place where the audience could empathize with stories and open up to Russian drama. However, this leaning towards socialism increasingly crumbled over time, and shortly before the fall of the Wall, the play “Übergangsgesellschaft” (Transition Society) conceptually anticipated the peaceful revolution.

Among the significant contemporary dramatists whose works were shown at the Maxim Gorki Theatre before the reunification was the regime-critical Heiner Müller.

Today, according to the theatre’s own statements, the program focuses on novel adaptations and contemporary stagings of classical drama and modern works of the 19th and 20th centuries”.