etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

This is a coming of age story. At age 47.

Once upon a time, there was an Italian adventurer who sailed the Pacific and fell in love with a Tongan princess. They moved to Australia, where they raised a family to help demystify the culture (sport) and food (vegemite) shock. It took them 20 years and 4 children to begin to understand the language (lingo). One of their daughters was very interested in drama and language and bossing people around. She grew up to be a talented and exciting young actress and was headed for glory…just when life happened. Dammit!

That girl is now an ESL (English as a second language) teacher in Berlin who has taught the present perfect tense over and over for/during/since the past 200 years and is now well and truly over it.

Fiona is a full time professional foreigner, wife and mother who is sometimes also an actor, writer and English teacher. She has always tried to be respectful and forgiving, and understanding, and patient and tolerant and knowledgeable about her own cultures and her husband’s culture and each of her kids’ cultures, and of her new culture with its many rules; as well as being mindful of her kid’s feelings, and her neighbors feelings and even the feelings of her old drama school classmate Cate Blanchett. But now…she’s over it!

In this uplifting, amusing and soul searching autobiographic solo show, Fiona takes us on a world tour of her extremely questionable, crazy and ever-challenging life. Journeying through some of her favorite countries and introducing us to a myriad of delicious characters she reveals some of her most colorful stories and demonstrates why she is just so over teaching the present perfect, learning German articles, parenting third culture kids and teenagers in Berlin, dealing with female civil servants in Italy, attending international school PTA meetings in India…and saying “Si” to Cate’s stupid Armani ad. She is definitely over that!

Now work in groups to the find examples of the present perfect tense, the meaning of the phrasal verb “I’m over it” and any hints of desperation in the above life description.