Throughout the year, we welcome a wide variety of artists to Mainz Residenz. Here is an overview of the various projects and artists from season 2025/26.

➢ ROOTS
In September 2025, our assistant director Dalilah Hamam worked on her project Roots together with ensemble member Iris Atzwanger and freelance actress Flora Udochi Egbonu. In it, she explores the theme of 'hair' and its representation in the media, focusing on POC/textured hair and the cultural, historical and socio-political relevance of hair, hair routines, racist insults and assaults.

➢ THANKS IT IS OVER
In October 2025, UK theatre makers Caroline Horton and Alex Swift spent a week at the Mainz Residenz exploring THANKS IT IS OVER. After a 25-year collaboration, this new piece explores the complexity, fragility and resilience of their neurodivergent friendship and what has kept them returning again and again to the alternate reality of their rehearsal rooms. What does it mean to create spaces of safety and creative possibility, of neuroqueerness and queerness and weirdness and hope in the face of a world that often feels indifferent and hostile? What is it to hide and what does it mean to be seen? A work-in-progress by two people who seem unable to stop going into dark spaces and making weird theatre. The finished piece will contain music and monsters and some madness.

➢ OM(ERT)A
In November 2025, the German-English company ThisEgg spent a week at the Mainz Residenz, researching a new project called OM(ERT)A. One day this will be a strange and anarchic exploration of rage, love and inherited trauma. It will be about grandmas and the artists themselves as granddaughters. It is a journey of discovery, questioning how the realities of life for grandmas are different from younger generations, or what these worlds have in common. From World War II to Brexit, from the misogynistic backlash and shift to the political right to the pension and elderly care system. A project about intergenerational inspiration, recognition, but also differentiation and self-identification. And lots of fun and anarchy. As collaborators were included Josie Dale-Jones, Katherina Sattler, Christina Deinsberger, Estelle Schmidlin and Shôn Dale-Jones.

➢ DigitAll Alone
In January, Simon Fuchs (assistant director at Staatstheater Mainz) worked together with ensemble members Pina Scheidegger and Joshua Grölz on the possibilities of the scenic realization of an often-tabooed topic: anxiety disorders and the big feeling of loneliness. Inspired by the novel “Und die Welt sie fliegt hoch" ("Towards a Brighter Sky”) by German author Sarah Jäger, Simon’s scenic approach follows two teenagers who would rather spend the summer in their rooms instead of playing outside with friends. The two communicate via voice messages and soon realize that there are many different reasons for hiding. Even though they could not be more different from each other, insignificant texts and voice messages quickly turn into confessions about small secrets and big fears.

➢ KINDERBLUT FÜR DEN KÖNIG / CHILDREN'S BLOOD FOR THE KING
Also in January 2026, ensemble member Holger Kraft focused in his project on the long-established parallel universe of a handful of tech billionaires and their fear of the future. Based on the non-fiction book “Survival of the richest” by Douglas Rushkoff (Professor of media theory and digital economy at Queens College, City University New York) the project explores how massive destructive business models exploit, betray, and destroy both the environment and social and moral values. And how people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are becoming increasingly involved in politics, while the same billionaires, driven by a mixture of fear and megalomania, simply want to leave us „normal people“ behind while at the same time they are being celebrated as visionaries.

➢ DESIGN FICTION
In February/March 2026, director Anne Monfort worked with a French-German team on her newest project Design Fiction, which deals with the creation of realistic future scenarios regarding the climate change while scenically/theatrically telling these stories with the help of science fiction. The team utilized scientific methods (e.g. Strategic Foresight) and "classic" dramaturgical plot devices to try different approaches to the topic:
How will our near future and reality change, and how can we portray these changes in concrete ways on stage in order to leave an impression on the audience? The goal is to present the topic in a way that makes the audience more invested in it than in a scientific lecture.

➢ FEMME PÉTRIFIÉE
In March 2026, the Berlin collective Glossy Pain were guests at the residency in Mainz with a part of their crew (actor and choreographer Claude Breton, video artist and actor Sebastian Pircher, and director Katharina Stoll) to further develop their play Femme Pétrifiée:
Sophie is a mid-level artist in her late thirties, convinced of her own genius, which she believes is being suppressed by the men in her profession. She is planning a grand artistic gesture that combines environmental activism and her art: she wants to become a fossil. Therefore, overcoming her own mortality while at the same time drawing attention to the drastic consequences of climate change. An evening about vanities and the all-consuming fear of one's own insignificance.

➢ HOME
In June 2026, the duo Bert&Nasi (Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voustsas) worked on a new project at the Mainz Residenz, in which they once again switch between absurd theater, choreography and philosophy, and in which a door and the numerous possibilities it offers on stage become the central element of the play. Two performers find themselves on stage with a simple door and start playing with it. They switch between the roles of the one who has come to tell the other something. Repeatedly, a cycle of good and bad news begins, and each time it evokes different reactions. From joy to sadness, from one extreme to the other, between intimacy and melodrama—until they eventually lose themselves in a chaos of emotions.