Romeo und Julia. Ich fühl's nicht

Director Kieran Joel | Set design Paula Noller | Music Koxette | Assistant director Lilly Pätzold
With Leonie Houber and Nils Kretschmer

Premiere: June 13, 2025 | Duration: variable (105 - 120 minutes), no intermission

Where is romantic love still intact if not in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet? But the iconic encounter between two newly in love is not only the centerpiece of every production of Shakespeare's drama, but also its biggest problem, because how can love, which is always about truthfulness, be portrayed convincingly? Can the sincerity of love be simulated? And if so, does this not devalue the most precious of all emotions at its core?

Based on the desperate attempt to stage the balcony scene, director Kieran Joel, together with the acting duo Leonie Houber and Nils Kretschmer, enters the hall of mirrors of truthfulness and projection that underlies every love relationship. Despite being blinded many times over, they will not lose sight of their goal, as the emancipatory promise of love always remains visible behind the fog that Disney films, dream weddings and dating apps use to ensure that we repeatedly confuse being in love with love. Because who and how we love is entirely up to us - and our love for our partners' differences is perhaps more politically explosive than we realize...

In a way, the theater experience is also an agreement of partnership and trust. The interactive production takes this idea seriously and retells Shakespeare's famous love drama with the means of improvisation and enriched by the stories and experiences of the audience in each performance.