In this co-production with the Urban Theater, whose members had to experience flight and expulsion, performers from Russia, Ukraine and Germany present a play based on Shakespeare's Henry V, supplemented with texts by Niccolò Machiavelli and Hannah Arendt as a contribution to peace and understanding.

In Natalia Lapina's production, Shakespeare's historical play looks like a contemporary political drama and depicts in real time how the protagonist King Henry V, who is under domestic political pressure, persuades his advisors, the army and ultimately an entire nation to participate in a war. Despite the timelessly modern references to current world politics, the performance does not provide any easy answers, but confronts existential questions:

What motivates a ruler to force people to hate, soldiers into battle and a people to fight? Is it in our power to end a war and bring about peace? By what means of manipulation, rhetoric and demagogy does a war become a tool of politics - and what price does the civilian population pay in any case, regardless of which side it feels it belongs to?

In addition to Shakespeare's trick of having a chorus comment on the dramatic events and political developments, Niccolò Machiavelli and Hannah Arendt appear as other historical figures and enable a differentiated analysis of the currently virulent themes of power and powerlessness. The audience can and should draw their own conclusions about possible parallels with current reality - but it is possible that the positions taken in life will change, similar to those on stage.

With Henning Bormann, Tim Otto Göbel, Ilya Khodyrev, Seva Kovalenko, Oleksandr Kryvosheiev, Olha Kryvosheieva, Anselm Lipgens, Illia Rudakov, Michael Schröder, Saskia von Winterfeld

Director: Natalia Lapina, dramaturgy and text version: Natalia Skorokhod, set design: Arina Slobodianik, music: Roman Stolyar, production management: Witalij Schmidt, artistic director and translation text version: Christian Leonard, translation Shakespeare:  translators' collective ConTra Wiebke Acton and Yvonne Jäckel