2013 has been a big year for us so far and, to quote Bachman-Turner Overdrive, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! It’s Berlin, it’s summer, so let’s start off with our new look. Snazzy, no? We couldn’t be happier with the complete makeover from website to brochure to social media that we just got from studio adhoc.
Hand-in-hand with our new look is our new artistic concept – expanding English Theatre Berlin into an international performing arts center for the Hauptstadt – the only producing and presenting organization in town dedicated to English, the 21st century lingua franca, as a working language. With the Producing Series – Made in Berlin, the Presenting Series – Brought to Berlin, the Performing Series and Pedagogy Series, we’ve got something for Urberliner, Wahlberliner and visitors from around the globe.
For our season opener in August, we’ve put together a block of programming called Introducing the International Performing Arts Center. Things kick off on August 9 with a staged reading as part of our partnership with New York’s renowned Performance Space 122 and continue on with comedy, the first film from international theater director Daniel Fish, THE LAB’s second installment of New Work From New People, a concert from Creatures and a staged reading from our Science & Theatre Series.
In September and October, you can look forward to the first half of Aliens of Extraordinary Abilities?, our Hauptstadtkulturfonds-sponsored project investigating the converging and diverging experiences of so-called “expat” and so-called “immigrant” in Berlin and the Hauptstadt’s rapidly changing cityscape. ECHTER BERLINER !!!! IHR NICHT FUCK YOU is a documentary theater piece performed by an ensemble of six performers, each connected to a specific “expat” or “immigrant” group. Every word spoken on stage will come from over sixty interviews conducted by the ensemble with their respective communities.
The project continues off-site in November and December with New Weird Berlin, a thrilling collaboration with DISTRICT Kunst- und Kulturförderung, the arts space in Tempelhof-Schöneberg’s Malzfabrik dedicated to the investigation of urban space and modes of its appropriation. Situated within the greater context of DISTRICT’s ongoing project dissident desire, we will join forces with international curators Susanne Husse (DE) and Lorenzo Sandoval (ES) to continue to explore the question Wem gehört die Stadt? (Who does the city belong to?) with an exhibition, artistic neighborhood tours and more!
What else can you look forward to before the end of year? We’ve got a lot up our sleeves – with a bunch more from our Performing Series, THE LAB and some groundbreaking work from abroad in the Presenting Series!
We can’t wait to see you on August 9 to help us kick everything off in style!