Playlist project: students make musical theater

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Creating characters, writing dialog, generating tension: these are not exactly everyday tasks in theater studies courses, where the focus tends to be on theoretical knowledge and textual analysis. Even more rarely do students write libretti for musical theater. And bringing one’s own piece to the stage to be performed and sung by actors – that is a far-off dream for many.

This makes „Playlist“, a joint project between students from LMU, the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, the August Everding Theater Academy, and the Otto Falckenberg School, all the more attractive. The upshot of the intensive collaboration, which is taking place this year for the fifth time, is eight miniature works of musical theater, each twelve minutes long. They will have their premiere on 5 July on the Studiobühne stage for theater students at LMU.

Since March, the students have been working on libretti and compositions and designing the program. Text outlines had already been drafted during the winter semester under the guidance of bestselling playwright Nora Abdel-Maksoud, and the two-week rehearsal period on the small but well-equipped Studiobühne stage near the Münchner Kammerspiele began at the end of June.

Ideal conditions? Not always!

Organizing the project was not without its difficulties. Students had to navigate the different timetables of the various institutions, organize regular meetings, and not neglect their studies for all their passion for practical theater-making.

Complicated coordination processes, sudden illnesses, scarcity of time: Experiencing that “you cannot always work under ideal conditions” is part and parcel of theater practice, explains Professor Christiane Plank-Baldauf, who heads the project at LMU.

The main research interests of the theater scholar and dramaturge include musical theater and opera and how they are conveyed to the public. She regrets that opera has the reputation of being elitist and exclusive. After all, forms of theater that involve music are “unbelievably accessible at the emotional level. Singing and music-making have something that appeals to people.”

In the Playlist project, the theater students wrote the libretti. How do you write a small musical scene? How short must the text be for a piece of musical theater that lasts twelve minutes? How do directors work, and how do composers work, and how do they interact? At the end of the day, says Plank-Baldauf, you only really learn these things by doing.

Small crises, big lessons

“In the project, the students learn the nuts and bolts of theater practice,” says Plank-Baldauf. Moreover, they acquire a wealth of experience. How should they respond to criticism? Or to encroachments on their artistic freedom? And what should they do when changes are coming thick and fast and it looks like the piece will never be ready on time? “At the start of a career, people experience many things as crises,” observes Plank-Baldauf. “Later, they’re better able to categorize experiences. And they learn to trust that they’ll find a solution.”

The result of all this effort promises to be exciting. There is The ‘F’ in Women Stands for Funny, for example, a piece that tackles the logic of common dating rituals, as it says in the program written by the students themselves. Or An Inheritance, a Like, and the Price of Parting, “a bittersweet comedy about a funeral that gets completely out of hand.”

Another piece is about a small carpenter’s workshop in Munich, where an idealistic student searches for the meaning of life among wood shavings. Umbrellas, meanwhile, is about two survivors of a nuclear accident striking up a relationship.

Emotional exposure

And then there is a piece by theater student Stella Curcic, which revolves around memories that are tinged with shame. “Brace yourself for emotional exposure,” the program warns.

Curcic already took part in Playlist last year. In writing for the stage, she likes the “space for fantasy” that opens up. Overall, she likes changes, progress, creative freedom, and working with others in a project. Her original text, she recounts, was full of stage directions. She has since cut them all. “Naturally, that’s painful,” she says. “But I understood why they had to be cut. The director explained it to me and it makes sense.”

“Playlist is a terrific project,” says Michael Leitner, who is doing a master’s degree in composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. “Every text is fresh, exciting, internally consistent, and accomplished.” Although he has already composed works, he is learning a lot of new things. “Musical theater commissions are few and far between. This makes it all the more important to seize the opportunity to acquire experiences in a protected production.”

Leitner wrote the music for a libretto by Sânziana Maximeasa, who studied architecture originally and then completed the theater studies course at LMU, before obtaining a place on the directing studies program at the August Everding Academy. She recalls how she would play theater with her siblings as a child, stage little performances, and sell tickets to her relatives.

The radicalization in her home country of Romania inspired her play Echo Chamber, which the program describes as an “experimental work about emotions, reinforcement, and the formation of collectives.” It was Michael Leitner who introduced the term “echo chamber.”

In this evening rehearsal, the author and director wants to establish where the five actors and singers on the stage should direct their voices: more at each other or toward the audience? Patiently, they try out different scenarios until it becomes clear that facing the audience feels more effective.

In fact, you could go on like this for weeks. Developing ideas together, taking risks, experimenting. But at some point, says Plank-Baldauf, pragmatism takes hold. You just have to get it finished! But what does finished mean? Playlist, everyone agrees, retains its workshop character even beyond the premiere.

Premiere Playlist

Premiere ist on 5 July 2025, 3:00 p.m.

Location: Studiobühne TWM, Neuturmstraße 5 (entrance: Am Kosttor):

Additional performances: 6 and 7 July 2025, 7:30 p.m.

For more on the Studiobühne theater, see:

The Studiobühn theater: a space for experimentation