Dark humor, linguistic excesses, and three unforgettable female characters: With "Die Präsidentinnen" (The Presidents), Munich's Residenztheater brings a modern classic by Austrian playwright Werner Schwab to the stage—a comedy as grotesque as it is biting, about delusions of grandeur, frustration, and social constraints.
Three women of different ages sit together in a modest kitchen: Erna, Grete, and Mariedl. While the Pope preaches on television, they talk mainly about themselves—and about the world outside. With a great love of language, full of half-knowledge, moral self-assurance, and sharp barbs aimed at each other, they develop ever new fantasies about their lives and their significance.
In these imaginary worlds, they become important figures, stars of their own stories. Erna and Grete in particular become increasingly caught up in their self-created illusions, intoxicated by their own verbal cascades and self-dramatizations. But ultimately, this fragile fantasy world is shattered when Mariedl brings the two of them back down to earth from their reveries—with fatal consequences.
Austrian playwright Werner Schwab is considered a radical innovator of folk theater and a linguistic virtuoso who developed a completely new stage tone with his idiosyncratic, grotesque language. In "Die Präsidentinnen" (The Presidents), one of his so-called "fecal dramas," he portrays three women who want to defend their modest place in life with peasant cunning and a will to survive—and in doing so, repeatedly stumble over their own megalomania.
At Munich's Residenztheater, director Claudia Bauer brings this modern classic to the stage, placing particular emphasis on the musical power of Schwab's language and the interplay between the three characters, whose grotesque fantasies and abysses are both comical and terrifying.
Premiere June 12, 2026
