Theater am Rand

Theater am Rand is a private house and open-air theatre beside the Oder in Zollbrücke, a hamlet in the Oderbruch region of Brandenburg. The name comes from a song by Hans-Eckardt Wenzel, who still performs there regularly. The village lies on Germany’s eastern border, where the river marks the frontier with Poland. The theatre began in 1998 when two friends turned a private reading into a public event after rights to a novel were refused. Word spread and by 2024 almost 28,000 visitors a year came to see plays, readings and concerts. Audiences pay what they wish on the way out, and the theatre has grown from a living-room stage to a solar-powered wooden hall with heated benches and an adjoining Polish-German restaurant. Inside the angular wooden building are 160 to 199 plain wooden seats arranged around a small stage. Outside, an amphitheatre of grass steps faces a second stage on the meadow. Performances run from March to December every weekend, including new adaptations of novels by Juli Zeh and John Ironmonger. The programme also hosts jazz, swing and song evenings, annual festivals, and a youth club whose shows appear on the main bill.