five minutes of silence

Venue: Box - Three people find themselves in a room they can no longer leave. All they want is five minutes of rest. Listen to the wind in the cornfield. The birds in the branches. Maybe even your own heartbeat.

Five minutes without opinions, without attitudes. But silencing the constant noise of the world is proving to be harder than expected. As soon as there is silence, the outside world intervenes again — with all its voices, certainties and contradictions. But they seem to agree on one thing: Hell, it's the others out there.

Leo Meier's play Two Gentlemen by Real Madrid was awarded the Audience Prize and the SWR2 Radio Drama Prize at the Heidelberger Stückemarkt in 2022. His play In Search of the Lost Excavator has been invited to the 2026 Authors' Theatre Days at the Deutsches Theater.

As part of the newcomer series Debut in the Box, Giulia Lancellotti, assistant director at the Deutsches Theater, brings Meier's text five minutes of silence to the stage — a language-funny exploration of the longing for peace in a present that never stands still.