Ja, Mai 2027
The festival for early and contemporary musical theatre
Leave the Nationaltheater, go to new venues, get talking about different arts and create space for the experimental, the unconventional and contemporary discourses, while also envisioning the origins of musical theatre – our Ja, Mai-Festival, already in its fourth edition in 2027, has it all. This time we’re exploring new ground hailing the motto, “Resistance”: Three contemporary musical theatre pieces at once provide the festival’s centrepiece, including, for the first time, the world premiere of a work commissioned especially for the Ja, Mai-Festival. Liberty is the new opera by the young Mexican composer Diana Syrse, with a libretto by the renowned Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen. Together the two examine patriarchal structures in the family context, and mechanisms of resistance to domestic violence. Koma by Georg Friedrich Haas deals with the resistance of the comatose body to the loss of memory. Questions of political resistance also apply here of course: For this we will bring Gordon Kampe’s Die Kreide im Mund des Wolfs from Hamburg to Munich – a scenic project with a text based on 31 propaganda speeches by the dictator Vladimir Putin.
In no particular order over two and a half weeks from 24 April to 13 May 2027, the festival’s wide-ranging support programme also focuses on resistance in all its facets. We’ll link up here with previous editions, and once again organise a cinema series together with Monopol Kino, among other activities. For the further discursive support programme, for the first time we’re cooperating with Lothringer13, whose current programme hailing the motto, “ANTI DOOM LOOP KULT”, also focuses on the resistance and resilience topics. It offers artists (visual) a platform here as a space for international contemporary art of the city of Munich, cross-generational and transnational. Together we develop a discursive and participatory support programme, which both connects opera and art, and also offers a space for chats, discussions and questions about resistance in all its manifestations.
