Die Welt im Rücken

Theatertreffen 2026 | 10 remarkable productions

Die Welt im Rücken – Bühnenperformance mit mehreren Personen in glitzernden roten Kostümen; im Vordergrund eine farbenfroh verkleidete Figur mit großen, überdimensionierten Requisitenhänden und buntem Dekor, umgeben von grellem Bühnenlicht.

by Thomas Melle

In a stage adaptation by Lucia Bihler and Gwendolyne Melchinger

Schauspiel Stuttgart

Premiere: 27.9.2025

 

In Die Welt im Rücken, Lucia Bihler and her team translate a thrilling account of bipolar disorder into a Gesamtkunstwerk that finds powerful abstract images for mental states and turns body text into a literal body-text.

A writing self leads a life of extremes – at times bursting with energy to the point of excess, at times imprisoned in tortured emptiness. This is caused by a bipolar disorder where manic episodes alternate with depressive ones, and which catapults the self beyond society’s conventional routines. The restless self writes in an effort to make sense of what is happening to their life, ranging from sex with Madonna and a desire for extinction. In Die Welt im Rücken Thomas Melle’s virtuosic and sensual verbal images offer a vivid insight into a disease that he has personally experienced. Lucia Bihler adapts the novel into a visually and emotionally thrilling Gesamtkunstwerk in which music, lighting, the stage and choreography interlock and emotions and stories are abstracted and transposed into expressive physicality. With a sensational performance that ranges from physical exhaustion to emotional transparency, Paulina Alpen is at the heart of the action, supported by a group of lookalikes as a chorus of bodies. Together they create powerful images that burn themselves into our memory. 

Jury Statement

“The entire stage here mutates into a psycho-physical space; from Paula Wellmann’s breathing and at times blushing pink curtains to the driving sounds of Sixtus Preiss, everything contributes to making Thomas Melle’s text full of pain and humour visible and tangible. At the heart of this Gesamtkunstwerk is the wonderful Paulina Alpen. In Victoria Behr’s red body armour – and at times against it – she acts out both the weight felt in periods of depression and the thunderous hail of neurons in manic phases. And none of this is overdone. She even makes losing it a matter of elegance. Six Alpen lookalikes represent Melle’s ‘hybrid agents’: satellites like echoes of her own self that also reflect the reactions of the majority society to inadequate behaviour. The evening has the pop aesthetic familiar from Lucia Bihler, but is never reliant on effects, instead it is deeply humane and takes its audience on a rollercoaster of emotions.”

– Sabine Leucht for the Theatertreffen-jury

To the video statement (in German)

 

Artistic Team

Lucia Bihler – Staging

Paula Wellmann – Stage Design

Victoria Behr – Costume Design

Sixtus Preiss – Music

Björn Leese – Choreography

Mats Süthoff – Outside Eye

Felix Dreyer – Lichting Design

Gwendolyne Melchinger – Dramaturgy

Cast

Paulina Alpen – Thomas Melle 

Tim Bülow – Double

Pauline Großmann – Double

Felix Jordan – Double

Mina Pecik – Double

Karl Leven Schroeder – Double

Silvia Schwinger – Double

Performing rights: Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Hamburg

Audience Talk

on Thursday, 14.5.2026 after the performance

There are indications of sensitive and/or health-relevant content.

Next date:

• Date Wednesday, 13/May/2026 19:30 (1 more date)
• Venue Haus der Berliner Festspiele - Große Bühne
• Address Schaperstraße 24, 10719 Berlin-Wilmersdorf