Polyphon Pervers

Béla Rothenbühler to appear as a guest at the ZwischenStücke

To help pass the time until the next edition of the festival in May 2027, the Mülheim Theatre Festival is presenting selected guest performances and readings by playwrights from the theatre world throughout the year as part of its ZwischenStücke series.

The series kicks off on 2 October with a special performance making its German premiere: author Béla Rothenbühler, together with musician Stephan Schönhölzer, will be appearing in Mülheim with ‘Polyphon Pervers’.

‘Polyphon Pervers’

Literary rap performance by and starring Béla Rothenbühler feat. Stephan Schönhölzer

7 October 2026, 7.30 pm at the Theater an der Ruhr

In a tranquil small town in Switzerland, something astonishing is happening: barely off the ground, Sabine and Schanti are shaking up the cultural scene with their association ‘Polyphon Pervers’. Taking risks and acting shrewdly, they rise to become national figures as theatre producers and gather an illustrious circle around them: from the vain director Lucien to the drunken ghostwriter Yves, the bon vivant and DJ Milan, and the opportunistic acting star Chantal, right through to Jules and his hemp farmers, who unexpectedly shine as performance artists. As the story unfolds, the ‘Association for Entertainment’ subordinates everything to success, and so the initial shenanigans are soon followed by all manner of fraud.

With his second novel, Béla Rothenbühler breathes new life into the tradition of the picaresque novel – this time featuring quick-witted con artists. His satirical journey through culture, entertainment and money is not only clever, but a masterpiece of entertainment in its own right. The novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Swiss Book Prize and won the 2025 Swiss Literature Prize. The Standard German version made it onto the 2025 Hotlist of independent publishers and was published in French as well as in its Standard German translation.

For the ZwischenStücke series, author and theatre maker Béla Rothenbühler performs alongside his rapping partner in crime, actor and musician Stefan Schönholzer, aka Rotchopf: literature meets rap, and the reading becomes an energetic performance accompanied by live music. The text will be read from the version translated into Standard German, whilst Stefan Schönholzer will rap his verses in Lucerne German. The audience can look forward to a polyphonic, polyglot evening of flow and poetry in a language that is both familiar and unfamiliar.

“The most brilliant cultural satire I’ve ever read … hilariously funny!”
(Joachim Scholl, Deutschlandfunk Kultur)

The ZwischenStücke are a collaboration between the Mülheim Theatre Festival and the Theater an der Ruhr. Tickets costing 15 euros or 9 euros (concession) are available here.