Foreign Rights

Welcome to our Foreign Rights site!

You will find our complete foreign rights catalogue here. Please feel free to also browse our German language pages to see what’s new or to search for a specific play - if we hold world stage rights in a play you will find a link to an English language version of all information.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information or reading copies. We are looking forward to hearing from you

For publishing rights please contact the foreign rights team of our publishing house: www.rowohlt.de/verlag/rights.

If you are interested in film/tv rights, please visit the website of our media agency: www.rowohlt-medien.de.

Contact

About us

Founded in 1957 as part of Rowohlt publishing house, Rowohlt Theater Verlag quickly became one of Germany’s leading agencies. From the outset, Rowohlt focused on contemporary and political drama. Among the first plays was Wolfgang Borchert’s The Man Outside, which has long since become a modern classic. Rowohlt represents German-language stage rights of Albert Camus’ and Jean-Paul Sartre’s complete dramatic work, which have become and remain an inherent component of Rowohlt’s repertoire. In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy had its world premiere and provoked an on-going debate about the role of the Catholic Church during the Third Reich.

British contemporary drama has figured prominently in the Rowohlt programme since its inception. Today, Rowohlt Theater Verlag represents the majority of Britain’s most significant contemporary playwrights, most with their complete works. These include Harold Pinter, Alan Ayckbourn, Joe Orton, David Hare, Caryl Churchill, to name but a few. This tradition has held fast with the more recent generation of dramatists such as Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Martin Crimp, Simon Stephens, Dennis Kelly, Lucy Kirkwood etc. as well as two of the most remarkable American dramatists, Wallace Shawn and Neil LaBute. The two most important and widely performed Scandinavian contemporary dramatists can be added to these in the Rowohlt programme, the Swede Lars Norén and the Norwegian Jon Fosse.

Since the early 1990s, Rowohlt Theater Verlag has expanded especially in the direction of numerous German-speaking playwrights and is now representing the works of renowned writers such as Elfriede Jelinek, Botho Strauß, Sibylle Berg, Moritz Rinke, Juli Zeh and René Pollesch, many of whose plays have been internationally acclaimed.

In recent years, many of the authors represented by Rowohlt Theater Verlag have been awarded prizes for their dramatic work. To name but the most important ones: The Muelheim Dramatists’ Award, the most prestigious prize for German playwrights, has gone twice to René Pollesch (2001 & 2006) and four times to Elfriede Jelinek (2002, 2004, 2009 and 2011). Six writers represented by Rowohlt Theater Verlag have been awarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature: Albert Camus (1957), Jean-Paul Sartre (1964), Heinrich Böll (1972), Elfriede Jelinek (2004), Harold Pinter (2005) and Jon Fosse (2023).

Licensing

We cooperate with theatre agencies throughout the world and it is usually easiest if you obtain a performing license via a local agency. We will be happy to establish a contact if needed.

If you are located in France, Latin America or the United States of America please contact our agents:

To apply for a performing license directly with us please fill out the form below.

Title of Play*
Author*
Language*
Translator*
Director*
Venue* (name, city)
Website
Seating capacity*
Average ticket fee*
Date of premiere*
Planned number of performances*
Contract period*
Guest performances / touring production
Theatre / Group*

Contract / invoice address

Address line 1*
Address line 2
Address line 3
City / Postal code*
Country*
Represented by*
E-Mail*
In EU-countries: Intl. VAT-No.

(if applicable)

Submissions

While we have a close look at each manuscript sent to us, we hope you will understand that it may take us some time to reply as we give priority to the management of our current programme. At present we try to process the plays sent to us within eight weeks. Please send your manuscript by email (PDF file) only, and add a short exposé to your play as well as information about your past work as an author.

Our newest plays

Catalogue