Altes Schauspielhaus

The Alte Schauspielhaus stands in the middle of Stuttgart, behind a semi-circular Art Nouveau facade from 1909. Albert Eitel and Eugen Steigleder drew the building, which rose on the grounds of a former legation barracks. The theatre opened its doors there on 6 November of that first year.

Claudius Kraushaar led the young house through a golden era until the Nazi regime cut his tenure short over his Jewish heritage. In the 1960s actors such as Elisabeth Flickenschildt, Edith Heerdegen and Erich Ponto played on its stage. When the State Theatre's drama division moved to the new Kleine Haus in 1962, the building fell into decay. A renovation under Roland Ostertag brought it back in 1984. Elert Bode, who had run the Komödie im Marquardt since 1976, took the directorship and rebuilt the theatre's standing.

The programme joins classical and contemporary plays with musical productions. The house shares the Schauspielbühnen in Stuttgart with the Komödie im Marquardt, and the two stages lead spoken theatre attendance across Baden-Württemberg. The entrance works without steps, so a wheelchair gets you in. Outside, the semi-circular front still waits, a piece of 1909 to stand in front of before the curtain rises.