Berlin: Workshops terminated: Gorki Theater warns of existential crisis

Without its own production facilities, the theater would be threatened with liquidation, the staff council criticized. Around 240 colleagues in the workshops and in the theater feared for their future. “Without functioning workshops, sets and costumes cannot be manufactured or maintained.” The Verdi union also warned against the move.

What the new director says

The Maxim Gorki Theater is getting a new director this summer, Çağla Ilk. The termination of the workshop space is not an administrative process, but hits the heart of a house whose art does not only begin on the stage, but long before, said Ilk. Anyone who endangers the workshops not only endangers jobs. “It endangers a theater’s ability to design the future.”

The staff council called on Finance and Culture Senator Stefan Evers (CDU), as chairman of the foundation board, to “immediately revise this decision, which threatens the existence of our company”.

Senate administration hopes for a solution

The Senate Cultural Administration announced that the theater’s workshops were an integral part of its performance and rehearsal operations. They are located as an independent part of the business on the basis of a rental agreement between Bühnenservice and Maxim Gorki Theater in the premises of Bühnenservice Am Wriezener Bahnhof.

“Renegotiations about adjusting the rent between the contractual partners have been ongoing since 2025. These have so far been unsuccessful,” said a spokeswoman for the Senate Administration. The rental agreement was therefore terminated by the stage service. The Senate administration assumes that by the end of the notice period “the contractual partners will agree on the continuation of the rental agreement and that the termination will subsequently become invalid,” she explained.