PopUp Theatre Days — Junge Bühne Mainz No. 8

Junge Bühne Mainz has established itself as a fixture in Mainz's theatre scene in recent years. It offers young actors, directors, set designers, dramatists, and performers a venue, rehearsal conditions, and an audience. The focus is on the idea of not understanding young theatre as didactic talent development, but as an independent artistic practice.

The PopUp Theatre Days are the annual festival format in which Junge Bühne presents its work to the Mainz public. Over three weeks, productions developed during the season will be shown, alongside guest performances by friendly ensembles, workshop formats, and late-night discussions. The venue is the M8 stage at Mitternachtsgasse 8, not far from Mainz Cathedral — an intimate stage with immediate proximity between audience and performance.

The motto of the eighth edition in 2026, DEMOkratie DEMOnstration, is programmatic. It bundles a generation's theatrical engagement with democracy as a practice that is simultaneously fragile, endangered, but also constantly fought for. Plays are expected that deal with political activism, citizen protests, identity debates, and the question of the relationship between stage and street — performed by a generation that grew up with climate, climate strike, BLM, and MeToo movements, and for whom theatrical means and political mobilization inform each other.

The PopUp Theatre Days are an invitation to a young, curious Mainz audience to discover theatre in a small format that cannot be seen in the state theatre — and to everyone who understands theatre as a workshop of the present.