The fourth edition of the PAD Festival: Performing Arts & Digitality will once again captivate audiences from October 22 to 25 with a highly topical and diverse program at five different venues in the city center of Wiesbaden, the state capital.
It is Germany’s leading German-language theater festival, offering a cross-disciplinary overview of the current state of digital practice in the performing arts.
The PAD 04 festival features hybrid formats, mostly combining live performance with installation or VR immersion. Its partners are the Academy for Theater and Digitality in Dortmund and the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden.
This year’s festival features eight productions by national and international artists that address pressing questions in the context of artificial intelligence and the current debate surrounding it. “While the last edition, PAD 03, two years ago focused on the question ‘What can AI do?,’ this year the debate is shifting toward ‘How do we want to live with AI?’” explains festival director Daniela Ginten.
The productions on display open up spaces of experience in which the relationships between people, technology, and society are renegotiated. They view technology primarily as a condition for shaping our present and create situations in which the audience makes decisions, assumes responsibility, and becomes part of the artistic experiment itself. Spanning AI, simulation, sound, and performative interaction, the works demonstrate how reality emerges, who holds the power to act, and what forms of coexistence we wish to design for the future.
The detailed program for PAD 04 is now online, and advance ticket sales have begun.
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
The participatory installation *TOWARDS A HYBRID CHOIR OF RESISTANCE* by Michael von zur Mühlen at the WARTBURG of the STAATSTHEATER WIESBADEN explores what would happen if so-called AI were used not for optimization, but for resistant thinking?
Virtual avatars, drawn from archives of social movements, encounter the audience as reincarnations of historical struggles. How does resistance organize itself under constant surveillance and algorithmic control?
The Graz-based performance collective “Das Planetenparty Prinzip” invites audiences to explore the tech industry’s spiral of addiction with *DAS ENSHITTIFICATION GAME* in the FJODOR DOSTOJEWSKI HALL at the KURHAUS. The theater game examines the mechanisms of digital platforms through a performative and entirely analog card game.
“The 2OØJÄHRIGE” by Kristina Malyseva in the SCHWURGERICHTSSAAL at the HEIMATHAFEN is an interactive courtroom drama in which the android Andrew fights for recognition as a human being. The audience can become part of a powerful council capable of redefining life and conduct the cross-examination of the android to ultimately deliver the verdict.
The interactive mixed-reality artwork *I HAVE BEEN MIXING IT UP* by Liis Vares & Taavet Jansen in the Crypt of the Marktkirche is an installation that invites the audience into a shared experiential space. Through the interaction of the visitors, literal meanings, symbols, and signs emerge, change, and overlap.
During the thirty-minute experience, the installation changes as a result of the participants’ actions. Each person leaves traces behind, thereby contributing to a temporary archive that is passed on to the next audience.
The interactive 3D sound adventure SONA - SEEING SOUND by the artist collective SONA, presented on the PROBEBÜHNE at the WARTBURG, allows visitors to experience orientation through sound alone. Equipped with motion-capture sensors, headphones, and a microphone, the audience is guided through a wild story set in a squatted shopping mall, where mutated vines can be hypnotized with an echo beam and puzzles posed by talking supermarket products can be solved.
SUNBEAM IN A HEAD OF Lettuce—a sound theater piece based on a work by Holger Schober and produced by the Flamboyance collective—has been nominated for this year’s OPEN PORT PRIZE and can be seen at the STUDIO of the STAATSTHEATER WIESBADEN. This installation-style theater performance, intended for audiences ages ten and up, centers on David, who has dementia. He’s constantly misplacing things, forgetting appointments, and getting lost in his own apartment—while inside his brain, the two amino acids Tyra and Argi battle against forgetfulness. What might it look like inside a mind where memories are slowly fading away? And what remains once everything that has been experienced has been forgotten?
Also nominated for this year’s OPEN PORT PRIZE is THE SERVICE by Lili Süper, an installation in which Lili Süper makes herself available to the audience as an avatar and becomes a bot. During the festival, she walks through the city, carrying out tasks assigned to her live by visitors who watch her in real time via video stream. A service that is limited only insofar as it must not harm either her or others.
The dance performance *ZONES OF SIMULATION: CHOREOGRAPHIES OF CIVILIAN BODIES IN MILITARY TRAINING* by Mel Brinkmann examines a place where war is trained, imagined, and inscribed into civilian bodies: the U.S. military training area in Hohenfels, Bavaria. The performance, which features integrated artistic audio description, weaves together a digital world with the narratives of former “Civilians on the Battlefield” and historical research, all expressed through a language of the body that embodies resistance. The production will be presented at the KLEINES HAUS of the STAATSTHEATER WIESBADEN and is also nominated for this year’s OPEN PORT PRIZE.
The award ceremony for the OPEN PORT PRIZE 2026 will take place during the PADFestival on Saturday, October 24, at 8:00 p.m. with free admission at the WARTBURG of the STAATSTHEATER WIESBADEN. In collaboration with the Dortmund Academy for Theater and Digitality, the German Academy of Performing Arts first established this award for young directors in 2024, with the aim of providing new impetus for the artistic exploration of theater in the digital age. The call for entries was open to collectives, students of directing and dramaturgy, and those just starting their careers. Three productions have been nominated this year.
The awards ceremony evening begins with the lecture “RECLAIM DATA - RECLAIM AI” by Nils Corte, author and creative technologist. The talk focuses on AI systems that are based on humanity’s collective knowledge but are controlled by only a handful of companies. The author asks: How do we overcome this power imbalance and regain democratic control? Following the talk, the jury will announce the winners of the OPEN PORT AWARD 2026 and present them with their awards.
The festival will also be accompanied by a conference that offers theater professionals and interested members of the public a platform to exchange knowledge and experiences. It will take place on Saturday, October 24, at the STUDIO of the STAATSTHEATER WIESBADEN.
The conference day begins with the keynote address “BETWEEN INTUITION AND ALGORITHM—NEW FORMS OF COLLABORATION” by Marcus Lobbes, artistic director of the Academy for Theater and Digitality. He explores the role that artistic experience, intuition, and responsibility play in an increasingly algorithm-driven culture.
Following this, four projects funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of the “Art & AI” program will be presented and discussed in showcases. This will be followed by an artist talk with the participants titled “WHO DECIDES HOW WE LIVE WITH AI SYSTEMS?” Admission to the PAD 04 conference is free. However, seating is limited.
On Sunday, October 25th, the final day of the festival, the THEATERNETZWERK.DIGITAL MEETING will take place.
The networking event is open to anyone interested in exchange and networking in the context of theater and digitality. Various discussion formats are planned on topics related to the arts, administration, and education. Admission is free, but registration is requested via email at: info@performingarts.digital
The PAD – Performing Arts & Digitality festival is an event organized by the German Academy of Performing Arts in cooperation with the Academy for Theater and Digitality in Dortmund and the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden. It will take place from October 22–25, 2026 at the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden, the Kurhaus, the Marktkirche, and the Heimathafen in the state capital of Wiesbaden.
PAD 04 is funded by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and the state capital of Wiesbaden, and supported by the National Performance Network for Theater Tour Funding, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and the state ministries of culture and the arts. Media partners are Die Deutsche Bühne and SENSOR WIESBADEN.
Further information on the event locations, as well as dates and times, can be found in the program.
The detailed festival program for PAD 04 is now available online.
It is also available for download there.
https://performingarts.digital/programm
Tickets are available at: www.performingarts.digital/tagesprogramm
You can also find the latest updates on the festival’s social media channels
on Instagram www.instagram.com/akademiedarstellendekuenste and
on Facebook www.facebook.com/darstellendekuenste
INFORMATION ABOUT THE GERMAN ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS (Organizer) The German Academy of Performing Arts was founded in 1956 as a nonprofit organization. Its goal has always been to set the tone and establish standards for cultural life through discussions, statements, and events on current topics and developments. This encompasses all disciplines of the performing arts, such as theater, opera, dance, film, television, and radio. With its current membership of approximately 500, the Academy possesses expertise that is second to none. The president is Prof. Hans-Jürgen Drescher (former president of the August Everding Theater Academy in Munich); the vice president is Caroline von Senden (head of the ZDF Television Drama I editorial department); the vice president is Marcus Lobbes (artistic director of the Academy for Theater and Digitality in Dortmund); and the treasurer is Barbara Schäfer (former project and format developer for radio drama, features, and radio art at DLF Kultur). www.darstellendekuenste.de
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Press contact: Romina Neu | 0174 3901133 | presse@darstellendekuenste.de