Theater Laboratorium

In the location's words:

Barbara Schmitz-Lenders and Pavel Möller-Lück met over 30 years ago at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart. It was the newly established "Puppet Theater" course that brought them together. Equipped with scholarships from the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation, they were given the freedom to find their own individual path.

After touring numerous countries, their path finally led them to Oldenburg. In 1995, with the help of the city of Oldenburg and the state of Lower Saxony, they finally found a permanent home for their theater in the former isolation barracks of the Peter Friedrich Ludwig Hospital.

The "Scandinavian charm" of the building immediately appealed to the two puppeteers. Nevertheless, it took a great deal of courage, idealism and not least artistic self-confidence to open a new theater in times of reduced subsidies. The aim was to establish a repertoire for adults alongside the already very successful theater for children. A mixture of elements of drama and puppet and object theater created a very unique atmosphere that captivated audiences far beyond Oldenburg's borders. With over 30,000 spectators a year, the theater quickly became the most successful private theater in Lower Saxony. For thirteen years, the Theater Laboratorium's venue was located at Wilhelmstraße 13, where many premieres were celebrated, some of which can still be found in the repertoire today.

Due to the great popularity with audiences, the Laboratorium moved to a larger venue in 2008. After three years of renovation, the former first gymnasium of the Oldenburg Gymnastics Association of 1869 was opened as a theater. The renovation was carried out in careful steps in the spirit of monument protection and the spirit of a venue that wants to be discovered. The "new" Laboratorium now has 182 seats and stages around 250 performances a year, increasing the number of visitors to almost 45,000.

The Theater Laboratorium is dedicated to puppet theater, but also works with the means of object theater and elements of classical drama. In recent years, new media, such as video mapping, have also been increasingly used for the productions. In terms of content, the team works on contemporary adaptations, but is also increasingly writing its own plays, such as "The Man Who Never Cried" or "This Day a Life". In the field of tension between clownish lightness and Eastern European-influenced melancholy, a unique world of contemplation is created.

"I am small but important" is the title of a film about the Polish pediatrician, writer and educator Janusz Korczak. In the production "When I am small again - A memory of Janusz Korczak" , Theater Laboratorium describes the life of this extraordinary man. "I am small but important" is also the philosophy of the theater, which sees itself as an advocate for the small moments, the small gestures, the small things that contain the big things. It has always been very important to him to fight for the necessity of children's theater. One that does not exclude any topics, but seeks ways and words for a debate. It did not want to conform to spasmodic efforts to convey something, to meet pedagogical demands or to see pre-formulated knowledge confirmed. It wants to be honest, not artificial. After all, play is something elementary in the lives of children and a theater.