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The following text has been machine translated from the German with no human editing.
On three Mondays in June (15, 22 and 29 June), Maria Milisavljević will give three public lectures on her plays and her concept of theatre – at the Saarländisches Staatstheater, the Schlosskeller (in Saarbrücken Castle) and the Filmhaus Saarbrücken. She will then engage in a discussion with the audience. Maria Milisavljević’s magnificent and moving new play “Blutschwester” has been running at the Alte Feuerwache of the Saarländisches Staatstheater in parallel with the professorship (since its world premiere on 27 March 2026).
Maria Milisavljević, born in Arnsberg in 1982, studied English and art history before working as a director and dramaturg, initially in Germany and London, and went on to complete a PhD on author-led theatre at London’s Royal Court Theatre. From 2013 to 2015, she lived and worked in Canada as a dramaturg and director at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. There, she was also International Playwright-in-Residence from 2013 to 2020, and in 2021/22 she was resident playwright at Theater Regensburg. Her plays have been performed at renowned thea-tres in Europe and worldwide and have already been translated into many languages. She has received numerous awards for her now more than 20 stage works, including the Kleist Förder-preis für junge Dramatik in 2013, the Autoren-Preis des Heidelberger Stückemarktes in 2016, the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Stückepreis in 2016, in 2025 with the Drama Prize and the Audience Award at the Mülheim Theatre Festival, and in 2026 with the Else Lasker-Schüler Playwright Prize for her entire body of work.
Maria Milisavljević’s plays combine poetic and precise language with everyday communication, tragedy with anger and humour, offering unconventional, complex yet touching and moving narrative forms. Her debut *Brandung* (2013) was at once a thriller, a play for young people and a love quadrangle; *Beben* (2018) focused on the much-threatened, shaken present, caught between escapism and the onset of violence and war. Whilst Brynhild (2023) offers a reinterpre-tation of the Nibelungen saga, Staubfrau (2025) tells of insults, humiliations and experiences of domestic violence against women that span generations, of a femicide and of the struggle to break the cycle of violence. Blutschwester (2026) reveals the inner life of a woman in her early sixties who has been diagnosed with cancer for the second time, now with no chance of recov-ery; it shows her in anger and despair, in powerlessness and helplessness, and accompanies her as she looks back on her life and faces death.
Under the title “Unconditional Writing. A Plea for the Urgent Preservation of New Dra-ma in Contemporary German-Language Theatre”, Maria Milisavljević will reflect on her own theatre work in three lectures, read from her plays, and speak on the indispensabil-ity of new drama in German theatre. At the same time, she will outline her understanding and concept of author-led theatre and provide an insight into her own as well as international working methods: “Author-led Theatre. An Impossibility in the German Theatre Scene?” (15 June) will be followed by “This Playwright and Her Two Hearts. On Different Ways of Work-ing in German- and English-speaking Theatre” (22 June) and “Unconditional Writing. On the Indispensability of New Drama in German-speaking Theatre” (29 June). Following each lec-ture, she will be available for an open discussion with the audience.
The lectures begin at 8.00 pm and last approximately one hour; an open discussion will follow. Admission is free. All interested parties are warmly invited.
Background:
Since the 2011/12 winter semester, Saarland University has been the first university in the Ger-man-speaking world to organise, in collaboration with the Saarländisches Staatstheater, the state capital Saarbrücken and the VHS Regionalverband Saarbrücken, the only annual ‘ ’ poetry lec-tureship dedicated exclusively to drama. The aim is to invite outstanding contemporary play-wrights and theatre practitioners from Germany, Switzerland and Austria to Saarbrücken to ar-ticulate and reflect on their poetics and their concept of drama and theatre in public lectures.
Prior to Maria Milisavljević, the lectureship was held by Rimini Protokoll, Roland Schim-melpfennig, Kathrin Röggla, Albert Ostermaier, Falk Richter, Milo Rau, She She Pop, Rebekka Kricheldorf, Ewald Palmetshofer, Philipp Löhle, Susanne Kennedy and Armin Petras.
The lectures from the first ten Saarbrücken Poetics Lectureships for Drama are available in print: Rimini Protokoll: ‘ABCD. Saarbrücken Poetics Lectures’ (2012), Roland Schimmelpfen-nig: ‘Yes and No’ (2014), Kathrin Röggla: “The Wrong Question” (2015; all: Theater der Zeit, Berlin), Albert Ostermaier: “Off the Rails. On the Dramaturgy of Procrastination” (2016), She She Pop: “Becoming a Stranger to Oneself. Contributions to a Poetics of Performance” (2018), Falk Richter: “Disconnected. Dance Theatre Politics” (2018), Milo Rau: “The Historical Feel-ing. Paths to a Global Realism” (2019), Rebekka Kricheldorf: “Laughing in the Face of Death. A Plea for Comedy and the Celebration of the Absurd in Theatre” (2022), and Ewald Pal-metshofer: “Body.Writing.” (2024), Philipp Löhle: “True Is What Was/Is” (2025), Susanne Kennedy: “I AM (A STRANGE LOOP)” (2026, in press) (all: Alexander Verlag, Berlin).
Dates, starting at 8.00 pm each evening:
Monday, 15 June 2026: Opening lecture
“Author’s theatre. An impossibility in the German theatre world?”
Saarländisches Staatstheater, Main Auditorium, Central Foyer
Monday, 22 June 2026: 2nd lecture
“This Playwright and Her Two Hearts. On Different Approaches to Work in German- and English-Language Theatre”
Schlosskeller, Saarbrücken Castle
Monday, 29 June 2026: 3rd lecture
“Unconditional Writing. On the indispensability of new drama in German-speaking theatre”
Filmhaus Saarbrücken, main cinema auditorium
Contact:
Dr Johannes Birgfeld, Acting Director of Studies, Saarland University, Department 4.1 German Studies
j.birgfeld@mx.uni-saarland.de
https://www.uni-saarland.de/fachrichtung/germanistik/veranstaltungen/poetikdozentur-fuer-dramatik.html
Photo:
The press photo is available to download for use free of charge in connection with this press release. Please ensure that the photographer’s credit (Copyright: Clemens Porikys) is always included.
