Festival for contemporary Czech theatre in Berlin
The festival Ein Stück: Tschechien, organised by Drama Panorama e. V., is a platform for contemporary Czech theatre in Germany and has been taking place in Berlin since 2014. It presents current Czech productions as guest performances and staged readings of plays by contemporary Czech playwrights, that have been translated into German for the first time for the festival and are presented as world premiere readings. Many of the plays translated for the festival have been published in book form in the Drama Panorama series by Neofelis Verlag.
In preparation: Festival 2026
In 2026, we will prepare – subject to confirmed funding – the following festival activities:
Ein Stück: Tschechien: The Gleanings 2026
Tomáš Ráliš: Ophelia OnlyFans
(staged reading + afterparty with DJ Liarosa from Prague)
Sunday 14 June 2026 | 7:00 pm | Grüner Salon | Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
Translated from Czech to German by Maira Neubert, directed by Eberhard Köhler
Followed by a discussion with the author and his translator Maira Neubert + afterparty with DJ Liarosa. DJ Liarosa is a member of the Prague electropop band Viah, who played at the Prague premiere of Ophelia OnlyFans at Divadlo Komedie in 2025. DJ Liarosa, alias Rosalie Malinská, plays the role of Ophelia in this production.
Ein Stück: Tschechien: Frankfurt Special 2026
Foto: Astra Zoldnere
Trollmama / Ausgewohnt / Spottschau – staged readings
Critical, queer and topical – three staged readings of contemporary Czech plays by Hana D. Lehečková, Tomáš Dianiška and Tomáš Ráliš as part of the festival Ein Stück: Tschechien: Frankfurt Special 2026, with a book presentation of the newly published anthology Am Wannenrand. Czech Contemporary Drama” (Berlin: Neofelis, 2026).
Sunday, 10 October 2026 | 8 pm
Internationales Theater, Frankfurt am Main
directed by: Eberhard Köhler
Stage/design: Danila Korogodsky
Dramaturgy: Barbora Schnelle, Henning Bochert
Cast: Naomi Abukha, Henning Bochert, Thea Rasche, Alexander Weinstein
With a public discussion with all authors and a book presentation of the newly published anthology of contemporary Czech drama, Am Wannenrand (Berlin: Neofelis, 2026), edited by Barbora Schnelle in the Drama Panorama series.
Reviews – Ein Stück: Tschechien 2025
The Ein Stück: Tschechien 2025 Festival took place at the Theater unterm Dach in Berlin in June 2025 Here are some press reviews:
In the taz of 30 June 2025, Yelizaveta Landenberger wrote in her article Von Wuchermieten und Trollmüttern: “Während viele Tschech:innen Deutsch verstehen, beherrscht hierzulande kaum jemand die Sprache der Nachbarn. Man kennt und schätzt ihr Bier, aber nicht ihre reiche Kultur. Es ist ein Verdienst, dass das tschechische Theaterfestival in Berlin dieses asymmetrische Verhältnis umkehrt.”
Please find the entire article here.
Radio Prague International broadcast on 27 June 2025 an interview with festival director Barbora Schnelle, in which she said: “Wir haben in Prag das Prager Theaterfestival deutscher Sprache, das viele Inszenierungen zeigt. Und es werden generell viele deutschsprachige Theaterstücke auf den tschechischen Bühnen gespielt. Deswegen habe ich gedacht, es wäre spannend, hier in Berlin tschechisches Theater vorzustellen und tschechische Dramen ins Deutsche zu übersetzen. Also haben wir das Festival 2014 ins Leben gerufen. Wir haben damals festgestellt, dass Berlin eine Drehscheibe für das europäische Theater ist. Es ist wichtig, gerade im mitteleuropäischen Raum eine deutsche Übersetzung von einem Stück zu haben, weil das deutschsprachige Theater eine große Ausstrahlungskraft innerhalb Europas hat.“
Please find the entire interview here.
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General information about our festival:
Background
There is a new generation of theatre-makers in the Czech Republic whose texts and productions are highly relevant across Europe and yet who are hardly known abroad. Drama Panorama: Forum für Translation and Theatre e. V., in collaboration with the Czech Centre Berlin and the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Berlin, seeks to close that gap with this festival.
The project aims to establish the regular presentation of contemporary Czech drama and theatre in Berlin, and in many respects, it has already accomplished this. The first Festival for New Czech Theatre took place in 2014 with considerable success; one of the plays presented (Bekenntnis eines Masochisten; engl. Confessions of a Masochist by Roman Sikora) was subsequently produced in Dortmund. Many other plays and playwrights were presented to the German public in the years that followed. In 2018, Neofelis Verlag Berlin and Drama Panorama e. V. published an anthology of contemporary Czech drama titled Von Masochisten und Mamma-Guerillas (Of Masochists and Mamma Guerillas; ed. by Barbora Schnelle), a collection of many of the plays that had been presented at the festival in German for the first time.
The pandemic strongly impacted our festival as guest performances from the Czech Republic were not possible. We were, however, able to present staged readings and also offered interactive online formats (Talks statt Gastspiele in collaboration with Ballhaus Ost in Berlin; available to watch on the Drama Panorama YouTube channel).
We cooperate with the Theater unterm Dach and the English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, and are always looking for new partner venues where we can present our guest performances from the Czech Republic.
Looking back at the most recent years of the festival:
Ein Stück: Tschechien 2025 – Summary.
Ein Stück: Tschechien: Nachlese 2024 – Summary.
Programme: Tomáš Dianiška: Die perverse Margaret – Staged reading on 11 Oct 2024, 8 pm Theater unterm Dach, followed by a discussion with the playwright. Find more information here.
The Workshop: Practical Introduction to Translating for Theatre using the Example of Die perverse Margaret by Tomáš Dianiška took place 09 Oct 2024, 2-5 pm at the Theater unterm Dach. Find more information here.
Ein Stück: Tschechien 2023
In 2023, we resumed live events and continued our work here. We once again presented three plays newly translated into German for the festival as staged readings and invited two Czech theatre groups that we had wanted to showcase in 2020, but were unable to do so at the time. These were the theatre groups Lachende Bestien with the guest performances Wie die Löwen und Kohlhaas (Like Lions and Kohlhaas) and Depresivní děti touží po penězích (Depressive Children Crave Money) with the guest performances Maria Stuart, Maryša (schweigt) (Maryša (Silent)) and Troerinnen (Trojan Women), featuring Ukrainian actresses who had fled their country. A total of five Czech guest performances were presented.
Further information:
Festival curator: Barbora Schnelle in collbaoration with the Czech-German artistic advisory board of the festival
Assistents: Maira Neubert and Alberto Afferni
Curator: Mgr. Barbora Schnelle, Ph.D.
Artistic directors and production management: Barbora Schnelle and Henning Bochert
Advisory Board
- Dr. Matteo Colombi, Bohemian studies expert and cultural studies scholar, research assistant at Leipzig University
- Dr. Jan Jiřík, theatre studies scholar, research assistant at the Charles University Prague
- doc. Mgr. David Drozd, Ph.D., theatre studies scholar, head of the theatre studies department at Masaryk University Brno
- Mgr. Karolína Stehlíkova, Ph.D., theatre studies scholar, research assistant at the theatre studies department at Masaryk University Brno
- Mgr. Hana Hložková, dramaturg at the National Theatre in Brno
Press: Hendrik von Boxberg, contact: presse@von-boxberg.de
Dr. Barbora Schnelle, born in Brno, Czech Republic, studied Theatre Studies and Aesthetics in Brno, Berlin and Vienna and attained her doctorate at the Theatre Studies Department of Masaryk University in Brno with a dissertation on Elfriede Jelinek’s plays. She has worked as a theatre studies scholar and university assistant in Brno and was co-founder of the Internet Theatre Journal of Yorick’s Objective Anger. She has mainly lived in Berlin since 2001 and works as a freelance theatre critic (especially for the Prague magazine Svet a divadlo), journalist and translator.
Photo: private
Henning Bochert lives in Berlin and is an author, translator for English and German, dramaturg and lecturer. After studying acting, he has run a translation agency for over 25 years, is involved with Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater e. V., writes about theatre and literature, and translates film, theatre literature, prose and other genres, most recently Die Rose im Sand, stories by Susan Glaspell, published by Dörlemann Verlag. www.bochert.com and www.henningbochert.de.
Photo: Graham Hains
Alberto Afferni studied Slavic Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, was assistant director and staff member of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin 2023-2025 season and is currently employed at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater, Berlin. Before studying in Berlin, he studied Modern Philology at the Università Statale degli Studi di Torino. In his bachelor’s thesis, he translated poems by queer authors from Russian and German into Italian.
In 2022, he published his first article about contemporary Czech theater on novinki.de. He has been a production assistant at the festival Ein Stück: Tschechien since 2023.
Foto: private
Maira Neubert is a Slavic studies student at Humboldt University in Berlin and a prospective translator from Czech. Outside of university, she works as a journalist for the television channel Deutsche Welle and the campus radio station CouchFM.
For our festival panorama #3 in May 2023 she translated the play Sorex by Tomas Ralis. At Ein Stück: Tschechien 2023, her translation of Natálie Bočková’s Am Wannenrand (orig. Na okraji vany) will be presented. She is also an assistant to the festival’s production management.
Photo: private
Our thanks for years of support for the Ein Stück: Tschechien Festival goes to the following institutions:
Ein Stück: Tschechien, Festival for New Czech Theatre 2023 is a production by Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater e. V. in cooperation with the Czech Centre Berlin and the Czech Embassy Berlin, supported by the German-Czech Future Fund, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic with Plán národní obnovy programme, the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery, the European Union (NextGenerationEU programme), the City of Prague, Prague City District 3, State Cultural Fund of the Czech Republic, Johan Centre and Venuše ve Švehlovce.
