Theater an der Parkaue

With about 90 employees, Germany’s largest children’s and youth theatre is located in a listed building complex in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. Originally a school building, it was converted after WW II to serve as “House of Culture of the Soviet Union, Children’s Branch”. From then on, the building served as “Young Pioneer Palace” with up to 130 working groups for children and youths until Germany’s reunification in 1990.

Today, the Theater an der Parkaue puts on performances on three stages and has a total of over 600 seats. In the meantime, the repertoire covers more than 35 plays that are geared to the different age groups. The smallest ones are introduced to theatre with imagination and enthusiasm in fairytale plays. In addition, there are special performances for children from the age of 10 as well as youth theatre for teenagers.

The stage programme is supplemented with additional offers that deal with real-life circumstances of the young people in the audience. Children and youths have the opportunity to work on their own texts or try out their acting skills in workshops. Numerous projects invite young people to participate, and discussions with the audience after some performances are an established part of the programme.

The range of repertoires of the Theater an der Parkaue includes “subjects from overseas, myths of days gone by, fairytales known to everyone, freshly translated texts and well-known and classic plays from 2000 years of literature”. Among these are new adaptations of well-known plays as well as first performances of German-language plays. This is how the versatility of theatre is conveyed to a young audience in a playful way.

Infos for school classes

Accompanying learning material as well as a small book on theatre etiquette is available for downloading on the theatre’s internet website. School classes pay 6.50 Euros up to the 6th grade per pupil, older pupils pay 8 Euros. Special conditions apply to Berlin school classes.