Palace Theatre

The Theatre im Palais is a small musical salon theatre in central Berlin between the German Historical Museum and Humboldt University. It occupies a historic palace built beside the Festungsgraben moat. Sixteen of its own productions are performed each season, mostly world premières with Berlin themes. The theatre was founded in 1991 by Barbara Abend, Siegfried Wein, Gabriele Streichhahn and others. Siegfried Wein served as its first director, followed by Gabriele Streichhahn in 1999 and Alina Gause in 2022. Since 1998 it has received annual concept funding from the Berlin Senate. A yearly June festival called Heimat_Kunst explores a different cultural focus. Visitors find staged portraits of Berliners, musical readings of Kafka or Thomas Mann, and operettas with aerial ballets. The youth ensemble Junge Bühne im Palais presents one new work each year. Programme talks, audience discussions and special cultural events accompany the performances. The theatre’s repertoire ranges from cabaret songs about Marlene Dietrich to courtroom scenes drawn from 1920s Berlin journalism.