Wallenstein

A seven-course feast of battle

based on Friedrich Schiller

• Münchner Kammerspiele
• Premiere: October 4, 2025

During the Thirty Years’ War, Wallenstein leads numerous mercenary armies as commander-in-chief. He pays them by plundering the conquered territories and profits from it himself, in keeping with the motto “War feeds war.” When Wallenstein reaches for political power, the emperor has him murdered. In 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, “Putin’s chef” and head of the Wagner mercenary group, sets out with his troops on a march to Moscow. The uprising fails; a plane carrying Prigozhin crashes shortly thereafter. With an exuberant abundance of creative ideas, allusions, and styles, Jan-Christoph Gockel links Friedrich Schiller’s monumental Wallenstein trilogy with two years of research by the production team on ex-mercenaries in the present day. At the heart of this inventive production are the people in Wallenstein’s camp: soldiers, merchants, children, and peasants from the baggage train—along with their modern-day counterparts. How do they approach war as a way of life? With a feast on stage, a party, live video, puppets, acting, and a lecture performance, Gockel and his ensemble create a spectacle for all the senses.

Jury Statement

“A double exposure of the mechanics of war and an exuberant celebration of theater: this Wallenstein achieves that and much more. Jan-Christoph Gockel and his team of individualists take seven hours to do so. The fact that it doesn’t feel long is due to the multitude of perspectives on the material, which sometimes clash but always resonate wonderfully with one another. It’s about mercenary armies past and present, about military puppet masters who themselves hang by fragile strings, about loyalty, and the difficulty of ending wars. Central to the evening’s imagery and humor are Schiller’s famous line, “War feeds war,” the figure of the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigoschin, and the Harry Potter spell “Riddikulus,” which transforms frightening things into something comical and dispels paralyzing fear. In this immersive masterpiece—spanning investigative and literary theater, performance, spectacle, and puppetry, with subtle irony, satire, and gravity—everything, however, remains in motion. Even the hope for the human being within the warrior.”

Sabine Leucht for the Theatertreffen Jury

Artistic Team

• Jan-Christoph Gockel – Director
• Julia Kurzweg – Set Design
• Janina Brinkmann – Costumes
• Maria Moling – Music / Composition (Live Music)
• Lion Bischof – Video Design
• Christian Schweig, Stephan Mariani – Lighting Design
• Michael Pietsch – Puppet Construction
• Annette Paulmann – Piccolomini Menu
• Viola Hasselberg, Claus Philipp – Dramaturgy
• Sergei Okunev – Dramaturgical Collaboration and Research
• Cico Beck – Musical Collaboration
• Yvonne Griesel (SPRACHSPIEL) – Surtitles

Cast

• Katharina Bach – Illo
• André Benndorff – Questenberg
• Johanna Eiworth – Isolan / Zhenya
• Nadège Meta Kanku – Thekla, Wallenstein’s daughter
• Samuel Koch – Wallenstein
• Annika Neugart – Max Piccolomini, Octavio’s son
• Annette Paulmann – Octavio Piccolomini
• Michael Pietsch – Count Terzky
• Leoni Schulz / Eva Bay – Countess Terzky
• Maria Moling – Seni and live music
• Sergei Okunev – Serge – a guy from Russia in a coat and with a magic wand
• Pari Garvanos / Daniel Hascher – Butler

(In German with English surtitles)