Manker's initial engagements while still at drama school took him to the Viennese Burgtheater (1979, Arthur Schnitzler's Comedy of Seduction with set design by Hans Hollein and costumes by Karl Lagerfeld), then to the Vienna Festival (1980, The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus), and on to participation in the "co-determination model" at the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt (1980/81), to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg (1982, Jean Genet's Deathwatch and also to the Residenztheater in Munich, where in 1983 he first worked with director Peter Zadek (Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder with Barbara Sukowa), where he became a long-term member of Zadek's famous ensemble.

He was also Bassanio in Peter Zadek's production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (with Gert Voss as Shylock and Eva Mattes as Portia), and Pozzo in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot).

[citation needed] Manker's performance as Shakespeare's Richard III (1997), staged by Peter Zadek at the Münchner Kammerspiele, generated most heated discussions, where conflict arose with the theatre and its director Dieter Dorn,[5] whereupon the production was cancelled despite its huge success with the public.

[citation needed] In 1996, Manker and Israeli writer Joshua Sobol, who became his most important artistic partner, created Alma – Widow of the four Arts at the former Sanatorium Purkersdorf, a simultaneous drama about artists' muse Alma Mahler-Werfel and her men, which became a cult play[6] and has since been played every year at a different venue, having already crossed three continents and had over 400 performances in Vienna, Venice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Berlin, Jerusalem and Prague.

[citation needed] In 2000, with the cyber-show F@lco at the Viennese Ronacher Theatre, Manker and Sobol created a multimedia musical about the pop star Falco.

[citation needed] Paulus Manker engaged in more theatre work with Luc Bondy (Ödön von Horvath's Figaro Gets a Divorce, 1998), with Christoph Schlingensief (Foreigners Out!

Schlingensief's Container, 2000) and on repeated occasions with Peter Zadek (White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, 1996, Polonius in Hamlet, with Angela Winkler and Otto Sander, Hamburg, 2000), The Jew of Malta (2001) as well as in plays by Botho Strauss.

[citation needed] In 2010 Manker appeared in the Salzburg Festival as Theseus in the acclaimed production of Jean Racine's Phèdre, playing alongside Sunnyi Melles.