Kriegs­spiele

In the organizer's words:

A theater tour about the fascination of weapons and the possibility of peace

Do you dream more of war or peace? Do you sometimes think that there should be other solutions than producing and supplying more and more weapons? And what do you think? Is man a peace-loving or a violent being?

In "Kriegsspiele", the perspectives of experts from the German armed forces, politics, science and peace activism meet people who have weapons as a hobby: Sport shooters and first-person shooter players, collectors of knives or plastic guns and more enthusiastic Dungeons & Dragons players. But where does the fascination with weapons come from? Is it something fundamentally human? And do military conflicts always have to be fought on the battlefield or can we move them into the world of gaming?

Equipped with headphones, the audience embarks on a theatrical journey through the cellar vaults of the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus - a search for war and peace between hobby and reality. After all, war has moved into our immediate consciousness at the latest since the attack on the whole of Ukraine in 2022: tanks face each other on European battlefields and the Middle East conflict has the world struggling for words. In Germany, Defense Minister Pistorius speaks of "war capability" and negotiations for peaceful solutions are turning into political trench warfare.