The Ruhrtriennale is the festival of the arts in the Ruhr region. Every summer, the festival transforms impressive industrial architecture – former machine halls, coking plants and power stations – into stages for extraordinary productions. Here, music theater, drama, dance, performance, concerts and visual arts meet in spaces full of history and create new, surprising connections. International artists create a program that explores boundaries and opens up new perspectives.
The Ruhrtriennale is one of four independent programmes of the Kultur Ruhr GmbH and was founded in 2002 to utilise the disused collieries and industrial halls for new forms of artistic exploration. The artistic directorship changes every three years and with it the festival’s programme. Artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale 2024-2026 is Belgian theater director Ivo Van Hove.
The 2025 season will take place from 21 August to 21 September.
Thu28.8.2025
7 p.m.Theatre, Ruhrbühnen for DemocracyKraftzentrale, Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord
Oracle
Łukasz Twarkowski, Anka Herbut, Dailes Theatre Latvia
A theatrical multimedia exploration into Alan Turing, AI, and the dark soul of technology.
Alan Turing was a pioneer of modern computer technology: he cracked the Enigma code and helped the British government to shorten the Second World War. Nonetheless, the same government persecuted him for his sexual orientation. After Respublika in 2022, Łukasz Twarkowski returns to Ruhrtriennale with Oracle, a multimedia theatre piece by playwright Anka Herbut. Together, they explore Turing’s tragic life and legacy. Set in post-war Britain and a timeless digital realm, Oracle examines the politicization of technology. Through immersive soundscapes and cinematic projections, it blurs reality and illusion, questioning whether advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Visually stunning and provocative, Oracle reflects on Turing’s secrets, prophetic insights, and the AI-shaped future he helped create.
Oracle is part the democracy campaign of the RuhrBühnen network.
Produced by Dailes Theatre Latvia and Ruhrtriennale. Cooproducers: Newerror, Comédie de Genève, Piccolo Teatro di Milano -Teatro d’Europa.
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Thu4.9.2025
8.30 p.m.Music theatre, Ruhrbühnen for DemocracyJahrhunderthalle Bochum
We Are The Lucky Ones
Philip Venables, Nina Segal, Ted Huffman, Bassem Akiki, Bochumer Symphoniker, Dutch National Opera
, Jahrhunderthalle Bochum
A portrait of a generation – moving, tender, funny and of great depth.
Somebody remembers a first kiss. Another talks about loss. A third says just one sentence – and yet it echoes a whole life.
We Are The Lucky Ones is a touching mosaic of real stories, dreams and memories. Based on interviews with people born in Europe between 1940 and 1949, an emotional chronicle is created – between hope and disappointment, gain and loss, tenderness and anger. Philip Venables’ music lends these voices a playful intensity. It penetrates what is said, opens up spaces for the unsaid – and brings to life what words cannot grasp. Between orchestral outbursts and intimate moments, an invitation is created to review one’s own history.
The focus is on the authenticity of the narrative. The singers lend their voices to the memories, manoeuvre collective crises and universal moments of happiness, playing everyone and yet no one.
We Are The Lucky Ones is an invitation to listen – and to think further. What do we leave behind? What responsibility do we bear?
We Are The Lucky Ones is part the democracy campaign of the RuhrBühnen network.
Co-produced and co-commissioned by Dutch National Opera and Ruhrtriennale. By permission of Opera Edition Ltd.
Fri19.9.2025
8 p.m.Theatre, Ruhrbühnen for DemocracyJahrhunderthalle Bochum
Guernica Guernica
FC Bergman, Toneelhuis Antwerp
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A wordless multimedia stage production about the impossibility of representing war.
Inspired by Picasso’s painting Guernica, theatre collective FC Bergman, Silver Lion winners at the Venice Biennale 2023, created a daring exploration of how we watch war. From raw footage to art and film, media shapes our perception, yet the spectacle confronts the impossibility of truly representing war. Do images bring us closer to reality, or alienate us? The stage becomes a war zone – part theatre, part living artwork – framed by two opposing grandstands. The innovative theatre piece Guernica Guernica works exclusively with images, music, and mass scenes. The production focuses on the threefold roles of victim, perpetrator, and ultimate the spectators. FC Bergman higlights the absurdity of war representation and critiques the commercialization of war imagery as well as societal paralysis in the face of conflict.
Guernica Guernica is part the democracy campaign of the RuhrBühnen network.
Produced by FC Bergman, Toneelhuis and private producer Dirk Raes in co-production with Ruhrtriennale and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg.