Fri February 27, 2026 | 19:30* (Premiere)
Sun March 1, 2026 | 15:30 *
Wed March 4, 2026 | 19:30 *
Sat March 7, 2026 | 19:30 *
Wed March 11, 2026 | 19:30 *
Fri 13. March 13, 2026 | 19:30 *
Sun March 15, 2026 |15:30
Tue March 17, 2026 | 19:30 *
Thu March 19, 2026 | 19:30
Sat March 21, 2026 | 15:30 *
* Introduction: half an hour before the start of each performance.
Bahngasse 27, 2700 Wiener Neustadt
2 hrs. 15 min. incl. 1 break
Normal price: € 45,- (Cat 1) | 38,- (Cat 2)
U25-Ticket: € 10,-
For further discounts see here
One of the most powerful works of theatre literature: Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, and the Greek hero Achilles meet and fall in love in the most unfavorable of places – the battlefield. Their personal emotional world puts the legal order of the societies they lead to the test.
» To win you, or to perish. «
In the middle of the Trojan War, a foreign army consisting entirely of female warriors appears out of nowhere. The Greeks think the women are potential allies, but to their astonishment the Amazons fight both them and their Trojan enemies. When Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, catches sight of the Greek hero Achilles, the two can no longer be separated: Against all reason, they plunge into a duel that breaks all the rules and endangers the order of politics and emotions alike. When Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, catches sight of the Greek hero Achilles, the two can no longer be separated: Against all reason, they plunge into a duel that breaks all the rules and endangers the order of politics and emotions alike.
In this storm of bloody desire and unbridled passion, Kleist tells one of the most monstrous love stories in the theater canon in a unique language that relentlessly reveals every emotion and every abyss. Across camps and genders, he paints a picture of a humanity that struggles with incomprehensible forces beyond good and evil that it discovers in and around itself.
In a version for three actors, Wortwiege presents the unconventional mythological drama by Heinrich von Kleist, which was only brought to the stage two generations after the author’s death. The production is directed by Jérôme Junod, who is at home in classical texts and now also as director at the Wortwiege.
Acting: Nico Dorigatti, Nina C. Gabriel, Petra Staduan
Director & Version: Jérôme Junod
Scenic design: Andreas Lungenschmid
Costume design: Antoaneta Stereva Di Brolio
Make-up: Henriette Zwölfer
Musik und Sound Design: Christian Mair
Body-Coaching: Martin Woldan
Lighting design: Lukas Kaltenbäck, Ludwig Drahosch
Stage construction: Andreas Lungenschmid, Christoph Wölflingseder
Dramaturgy: Marie-Therese Handle-Pfeiffer
Text: Heinrich von Kleist
A production by Wortwiege, funded by the state of Lower Austria and the city of Wiener Neustadt.
Heinrich von Kleist
Kleist (1777-1811) was born into a Prussian aristocratic family. He was destined for military service, but soon abandoned it and plunged into an unsettled life, which Stefan Zweig described as “Escape from the demon“. Berlin, Leipzig, Würzburg, Paris, Thun, Dresden, Königsberg – nowhere was he to stay permanently. In a world that was in complete upheaval after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, he tried his hand as a student, scientist, civil servant, journal editor, fiancé, farmer, possibly even as a spy, without ever being able to gain a foothold. He felt that the promise of the Enlightenment of being able to lead a sensible life and gain secure knowledge was unattainable. His work – he only began writing literature in 1802 – in which the themes of dreams, visions, apparitions, miracles and illusion play a central role, is considered to be deeply romantic. In less than ten years, he drafted a series of novellas, essays and dramas that have a contradictory and long-lasting influence: “The Käthchen of Heilbronn“ (1808), “The Broken Jug“ (1808), “Prince Frederick of Homburg“ (1811) or “Penthesilea“ (1807) which was performed by Goethe in Weimar, but was deeply rejected by him. Kleist’s meteoric career came to an abrupt end in 1811 when he committed suicide together with his cancer-stricken acquaintance, Henriette Vogel, at Wannsee in Berlin.
Jérôme Junod
Born in Lausanne in 1979, a trained pianist and philosopher, Jérôme Junod has been working as a director, playwright, translator, dramaturge and lecturer in German and French for twenty years. Starting in 2026, he is a director and scientific coordinator of Wortwiege. From 2021 to 2025, he was leading director and head dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus Salzburg, before and during which he taught for years at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, the Mozarteum Salzburg and the Manufacture – Haute École de Théâtre de Suisse Romande, among others, and directed in numerous theatres in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Im Juni 2026 wird sein neues Stück In June 2026, his new play “The Ministry of Truth“ premiered at the Sommerspiele in Melk, where in 2022 “Nero – He only wanted to play“ was on show. Junod is currently developing a new course with Wortwiege at Danube University in Krems, in which dramatic storytelling is to be expanded and applied in dialog with non-theatrical fields such as game research, exhibition development, journalism, politics, psychology, cultural studies and management. Junod entwickelt zurzeit mit der Wortwiege einen neuen Lehrgang an der Donauuniversität in Krems, in dem dramatisches Storytelling im Dialog mit nicht-theatralen Bereichen wie Spielforschung, Ausstellungsentwicklung, Journalismus, Politik, Psychologie, Kulturwissenschaft oder Management erweitert und angewandt werden soll.
In conversation. Director Jérôme Junod talks about his personal fascination with the exceptional literary phenomenon Heinrich von Kleist, the power of his antique characters and the monstrous in his work.
Victoria Nazarova
© Christian Mair
