Das Theater und seine Geschichte

The theatre and its history

Theater Oberhausen is a municipal theatre (Stadttheater) in the heart of Oberhausen, a city in the Ruhr region. It is located between the Alt-Oberhausen district, Oberhausen City Hall and the Marienviertel district, in a part of the city centre designed and developed as an urban area with extensive green spaces.  

A decade later, the Stadttheater was a conventional three-genre theatre with dedicated ensembles for drama, opera and operetta. In 1939, the city purchased the inn housing the auditorium and had it developed into a fully fledged theatre.

The building suffered heavy damage in World War II but the theatre continued to put on performances in alternative venues. On 10 September 1949, marking the 75th anniversary of the city of Oberhausen, the ‘Neue Haus’ was the first theatre building in the Ruhr in a position to begin holding shows again. The new multi-genre theatre now also included a small classical ballet ensemble.

In the sixties, the theatre garnered national attention under performance director Günther Büch through its numerous premieres and first performances, including the premiere of Peter Handke’s Prophecy and Self-accusation spoken-word pieces. The Threepenny Opera staged with Oberhausen miners at the same time as the closure of the Zeche Concordia mine and the production of Schiller’s The Robbers, which moved the Moors’ castle to the stage in the Villa Hügel in Essen, also drew international acclaim.

The effects of emerging structural change, with the decline of coal and steel, were also felt by the theatre at the time. The ballet was discontinued in 1965, followed two years later by the opera and finally the theatre’s own dramatic works in 1973. It carried on as a musical, with a focus on operettas and musicals, and the ‘Theater im Pott’ (TiP), a children and youth theatre that quickly became established in the region. Renewed financial difficulties in 1991 led to further discussion on the structure of the theatre and the closure of the musical theatre department. 

In 1992, theatre director Klaus Weise and his team established a new spoken theatre for the region: Schauspiel Oberhausen. TiP was integrated into this. The new ensemble quickly gained a good reputation nationally. After eleven performance seasons, theatre director Klaus Weise was succeeded by Johannes Lepper, who shaped the theatre with his stagings of the classics for five performance seasons.

From 2008 to 2017, theatre director Peter Carp led Theater Oberhausen and pushed for the theatre’s transformation into an internationally active cultural establishment. With Herbert Fritsch’s staging of A Doll’s House, Theater Oberhausen received an invitation to the 2011 Berliner Theatertreffen festival, the second in the theatre’s 90-year history. The theatre director chose to focus on aspects such as new formats of musical theatre and promoting the children and youth theatre.

In the five performance seasons that followed – also shaped by the coronavirus pandemic – Theater Oberhausen was led by theatre director Florian Fiedler and his artistic team. The events held were influenced by the discourse at the time. Through new formats, Theater Oberhausen further evolved to also become a place of access to Oberhausen’s urban community. The digital offerings made available during the pandemic garnered great attention nationally.

With Kathrin Mädler as theatre director since the 2022/23 performance season, the theatre is seeking to be an open, warm and welcoming place for the city of Oberhausen and the region: a theatre of contemporary life, both political and emotional, where major stories of our time are told with conviction, passion and the joy of performance. One focus area is new dramatic works with premieres and first performances as well as commissioned pieces, classics with a strong link to the present, works developed for Oberhausen and also interdisciplinary formats and projects with the involvement of the local community. There is particular interest in scripts from young directors and dramatists. In the first performance season under the theme With Great Hope, the focus is on Class, Women & Power and Climate. In Open Haus, everyone is invited to help shape their theatre, get on stage themselves or use the theatre as a place of community and networking. There is a special focus on age-appropriate repertoire development in the children and youth theatre. With the new core area of urban arts, dance is again part of Theater Oberhausen, complementing the artistic offering in the three performance spaces – Grosses Haus, Studio and the bar – and out in the city.