Festival International New Drama 2026
16 to 26 April
FIND will bring contemporary theatre from all corners of the world to Berlin in the spring of 2026. For eleven days, we will be showing works by established directors and authors as well as by new discoveries – this year’s contributions will come from Brazil, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Norway and more.
This festival edition will also once more spotlight an exceptional artist: British director Katie Mitchell is FIND’s artist in focus in 2026. She is a former Associate Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court Theatre in London as well as the National Theatre in London. She has been responsible for numerous opera and theatre productions throughout and beyond Europe and has received many awards for her work, which is notable for its innovative combination of acting, scenography and live video. By taking on original, new perspectives, she renders classics in a feminist new interpretation and often works with young female authors. She has regularly collaborated with the Schaubühne ensemble since 2010. To open the festival, Katie Mitchell is showing a stage version of Maggie Nelson’s »Bluets« adapted by the Irish playwright Margaret Perry. It revolves around the colour blue in 240 prose miniatures. Behind these ruminations about a colour, however, lies the story of a tragic love.
Mitchell’s most recent production »Cow | Deer«, which she developed together with Nina Segal and Melanie Wilson, is a daring experiment: four performers narrate from the lives of a cow and a deer with sounds and noises, but no words. It is a production in which Katie Mitchell continues to address nature, the environment and climate issues, taking a look at a world beyond the human perspective. The soundscape is performed live and allows the audience to hear the world as perceived by an animal. In addition, we are showing Mitchell’s production of »Orlando« from the Schaubühne repertoire: a queer biography that transverses four centuries of human history in an adaptation by Alice Birch after the novel by Virginia Woolf.
Two plays are visiting the festival from Norway this year. In »Arv og miljø«, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Vigdis Hjorth (»Will and Testament« in the English translation), director Kjersti Horn questions the meaning of a search for truth and credibility. The protagonist Bergljot, who is caught up in an inheritance dispute after her father’s death, is standing on an empty stage; she and the audience encounter all other figures as oversized projections. The minimalist stage design is immersive and striking: Bergljot gradually identifies a truth that had been repressed for decades. »11 Years«, written and directed by the duo Goksøyr & Martens, also captivates the audience with a radical setting: the audience looks onto a school yard from an elevated position, following situations and conversations they would not normally hear via headphones. The play recounts the story of an eleven-year-old girl’s suicide and the way responsibility is subsequently shifted.
For the upcoming festival edition, we have succeeded in bringing a formative work by Canadian playwright and director Robert Lepage to Berlin: »Needles and Opium« tells the story of a lonely man from Québec who is in a Paris hotel, trying to no avail to forget his former lover. This romantic obsession is mirrored in two further narrative lines: Jean Cocteau’s opium addiction and Miles Davis’ heroin addiction. Lepage ingeniously combines rooms, images and times, recounting Cocteau’s fascination and disillusionment during his trip to New York in 1949 as well as Davis’ concurrent stay in Paris, which enthralled Jazz fans and left a lasting mark on music in Europe.
The Italian theatre collective Kepler-452 return to the festival with a new work. The documentary theatre play »A Place of Safety« takes us aboard a search and rescue vessel in the Mediterranean Sea in order to gain a first-hand understanding of what is happening on the deadliest migration route in the world. The production is the result of field research: The directors Enrico Baraldi and Nicola Borghesi accompanied crew members of Life Support, the EMERGENCY ship and Sea-Watch, who are now taking to the stage themselves. They talk about their decision to save people on the high seas and about daily life on the civilian maritime rescue ships.
When football fans abused Black players as »Macacos« (»monkeys«), Brazilian performer and director Clayton Nascimento decided to develop a monologue with that very title. In it, he is a bare body on an empty stage recounting Brazil’s racist history, from Portuguese colonialism and slavery to everyday racism and police violence in the present day.
Finally, the German premiere of playwright and director Marius von Mayenburg’s new play, »Egal«, from the Schaubühne repertoire will be shown during the festival as well as »The Seer«, the latest production by playwright and director Milo Rau.