The still photograph shows a person with outstretched hand pointing to a large-format program placard of West Berlin’s State Theatres. The placard lists performances from the Municipal Opera, Schiller Theatre, and Schlosspark Theatre—including works such as *Othello*, *The Tales of Hoffmann*, *Caesar and Cleopatra*, *Faust*, and *War and Peace*. The dense, diverse program of these three state-sponsored houses exemplifies West Berlin’s cultural self-conception as a vibrant metropolis in the midst of the Cold War. In 1955, West Berlin’s theatres served deliberately as a cultural showcase of the free West in opposition to the East—an element of that “showcase of the West” that the city sought to project in the divided world.