Sophiensæle
Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin
We recommend purchasing tickets online via our webshop. The online presale ends two hours before the start of the respective event. Payment can be made by bank transfer or credit card. Tickets purchased online are generally excluded from the right of exchange and return. No replacement will be provided for expired tickets.
The box office opens two hours before the start of the first event of the day. There is a waiting list for sold-out events. Any reserved tickets that have not been collected can then be purchased as remaining tickets. The waiting list for all events of the day opens two hours before the start of the first event. Tickets are generally excluded from the right of exchange and return.
No further proof is required for the reduced ticket. We trust that you are the best judge of whether you need a reduced ticket.
These ticket prices are comparatively affordable. We would like to keep it that way, because culture is for everyone. To ensure that we can continue providing this, we recommend that visitors who are financially able to do so purchase a ticket for 20.00€. For all those who would like to and are able to support our work and the work of the artists beyond this, there is our dream price of 25.00€.
Disabled persons receive a reduced ticket. If an accompanying person is required, they will receive a free ticket. The accompanying ticket can be booked online, by telephone or at the box office in combination with a ›Reduced‹ ticket.
Children up to the age of 12 receive a ticket for 5.00€.
Holders of ›Berechtigungsnachweis‹ will receive remaining tickets at the box office at a price of 3.00€, subject to availability. A prior reservation of the ticket is not possible.
With the Tanzcard you receive a 20% discount on the regular admission price of dance events. For more information about the Tanzcard, please click here.
Elevators accessible to wheelchairs
WC accessible to wheelchairs
Further information on accessibility can be found here.
There are no parking facilities at the Sophiensæle. For people with disabilities, parking spaces are available in the nearby area: One parking space at Sophienstraße 21 (approximately 50 m away); two parking spaces at the corner of Rosenthaler Straße / Neue Schönhauser Straße (Neue Schönhauser Straße 9, approximately 230 m away).
Since its founding in 1996, Sophiensæle has been one of the most important production houses for the independent performing arts scene in Berlin and beyond. For the 13th Berlin Biennale, the building that houses today’s Sophiensæle will become a ›blueprint for Berlin‹, exemplifying the history of the city over the course of the 20th century. It not only tells of the rise of social democratic forces and workers’ associations and their destruction by the National Socialist dictatorship, but also of the redevelopment of democratic principles and the occupation of spaces in the center of the city by artists. Built between 1904 and 1905 as a craftsmen’s clubhouse, the building was originally dedicated to the education of workers, but soon developed into a meeting place for the revolutionary Left. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Erich Mühsam and Clara Zetkin spoke here; and it was here that Erich Mühsam warned against the rise of fascism in Germany in the early 1920s. After the NSDAP came to power, the craftsmen’s association was hastily banned and the clubhouse closed. A few years later, the rooms of the Sophiensæle—mainly the Festsaal—were misused during the Nazi dictatorship as a forced labor camp to produce propaganda leaflets for the fascist regime. Traces of this can still be seen on the walls of Sophiensæle today.
In the years of the GDR, the workshops and painting rooms of the Maxim Gorki Theater moved into the space, before Sophiensæle was rethought as an independent theater in the autumn of 1996 by Sasha Waltz and Jochen Sandig together with Jo Fabian and Dirk Cieslak—a place by artists for artists. Since then, Sophiensæle has been presenting the diversity of contemporary performing arts beyond genre boundaries, including established positions as well as up-and-coming artists, local as well as international perspectives.