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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

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No One’s Coming, Everyone’s Going!

The (Non) Festival of the Summer in Berlin – Solidarity Festival for Independent Berlin-Based Artists and Culture Makers Facing Extreme Financial Hardship

Peaches is going, Sasha Waltz & Guests and cie. toula limnaios are going, Sharon Dodua Otoo is going, She She Pop are going, Kathrin Röggla is going and Berlin’s entire independent arts community is going – but none of them are coming.

On July 31, 2020, an enormous festival will take place in Berlin where a stunning amount of artists, ensembles and culture makers working in all fields will take part – by not showing up. During the coronavirus pandemic, attendance and physical presence can be deadly. And, exactly because of this, many freelance artists and culture makers in Berlin haven’t been able to earn money for months and can no longer pay rent or buy groceries.

This is why we’re turning to you: Show your solidarity! Buy a ticket for Berlin’s (non) festival of the year and don’t show up! By buying a ticket, you can help to ensure Berlin’s one-of-a-kind artistic and cultural landscape still exists after this crisis has passed. Please help us to collect as many donations as possible to provide real support (we intend to provide relief packages of € 1,000) to as many artists and culture makers as possible.

 

The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries

Did you hear? Our friends at SummerWorks in Toronto, Canada just announced their first summer presentation The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries: Summer Passport – a remote immersive experience from Outside the March!

We are thrilled to be partnering with SummerWorks and a community of organizations from around the world to spread the word that this special presentation is available internationally for the first time and entirely free to the public.

“Made-to-measure… executed so generously… [The Ministry] asked about my world, listened and then let me slip free of it, at 10-minute intervals.” -The New York Times

Finding yourself with a little time on your hands? Missing the uplift of live arts and culture? Is there a friend, a relative or a kid in your life who could use a daily dose of adventure? The meticulous mavericks at The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries have got you covered. This customized improvised narrative experience unfolds over a week’s worth of short daily phone calls, as our intrepid private investigators delve into your very own micro mystery using the investigative power of good conversation.

In Germany, Ministry agents will be available between 5pm-7pm / 9pm-11pm / 1am-3am. Tickets are going extremely quickly and can be booked, free of charge, at https://www.mundanemysteries.com/book-now-international

The Ministry’s Departments include:

·         The Misplaced Keepsakes Division

·         The Striking Coincidences ThinkTank

·         The Missed Connections Unit

·         The Paranormal Activity Task Force

At this moment of uncertainty, leave some of the pondering to the professionals as we work with you to untangle meaning from meaninglessness in the mundane.

There are only a limited number of appointments available for international investigations so be sure to book as soon as possible to get your daily dose of adventure during these unprecedented times!

YOU-ME-HUMAN-TREE

A note on tickets: due to the current hygiene regulations, our seating is strictly limited. We can offer either single seats or double seats (for members of the same household). Double seats allow us to accommodate nearly twice the number of guests and we would be greatly appreciative if you can arrange to purchase them as much as possible. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our box office staff at tickets@etberlin.de.

A performance co-created by humans and trees of all different ages, experiences and backgrounds

Together, we are celebrating interconnectedness through interspecies storytelling that crosses time and space.

In February of 2020, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center began a community theater project open to people of all ages. Our initial question was simple: if trees could talk, what would they say? This led us on a journey of collaboration, experimentation and contemplation. Together we walked in Tegel forest, shared memories of trees, delved into mythology and the news, discussed evolution with a scientist and observed the trees in Kreuzberg.

A unique and exciting performance has grown from the seeds of play and curiosity: YOU-ME-HUMAN-TREE was devised by an intergenerational ensemble of over 20 people and contains elements of physical theater, music, storytelling, puppetry, dance, burlesque, poetry and performance art.

The project team is deeply grateful to their project partners exploratorium berlin and die gelbe Villa for their input and support and would like to give special thanks to Professor Kurt Zoglauer of Humboldt University for kindly giving us his time.

Order our Zine online!

The entire team has spent a lot of time making a beautiful 32-page zine full of pictures, insight into the creation of the performance and background information. Take a look for yourself by clicking right HERE!

Physical copies of the zine can be ordered exclusively online for the price of 6 EUR and will be given to you at the performance. If you would like to order one, simply send an email to tickets@etberlin.de with the subject Zine. We’ll confirm the purchase and make sure that your zine is waiting for you when you come to see the show.

The project is funded by Jugend- und Familienstiftung des Landes Berlin and Kreuzberger Kinderstiftung.

 

          

          

 

 

 

The White Plague: A Binaural Play

An immersive binaural experience developed from the play The White Plague (created in 2017 and performed in UK and Greece) as a response to the health & safety restrictions imposed in theaters during COVID19.

10 years have passed since a fiercely contagious virus spread among a major city’s population, causing a mysterious white blindness and eventually, society’s collapse. Now five survivors come forward to tell a story they were not allowed to share before. A story of unprepared quarantine facilities and dehumanizing circumstances that drive citizens to expose the very brightest and darkest aspects of their human nature. A story of government negligence, police violence and persevering humanity.

This binaural experience places the audience in the middle of the action as a state-of-the-art sound design transports them to every location of the play and inside every character’s head. A starting point to explore social coherence, gender roles and the survival instincts of a society in crisis.

Noose

… is that day in your life when you see it…

the time slips away…

and all you live is not what you have wished

is the moment when your whole world is shattered

that very moment when your dreams come back asking for all you promised

when you feel it…

the noose is moving up…further and further…it is tightening around your throat…stealing your air…stealing your breath

…because until then you thought you were alive.

A surrealistic performance somewhere in between black comedy and the theater of the absurd. With the use of tabletop puppets and cinematic narration, the puppeteers animate the puppets without being visible to the audience.

2020 EXP(L)O(RE) – Evening 1

A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY
This format and is dedicated to newcomers, shorter performances and work-in-progress. This year, we are offering four performances over two evenings.

MILKTOOTH | Performance (8:00 pm)

Created and Performed by Promona Sengupta (India)

In the not-so-distant future, when interplanetary travel, collaboration and governance is the established order of the day, a young woman on Earth, turning 30, decides to fill the emotional void in her single life by taking part in the intergalactic adoption scheme and becoming a single mom. The catch – her newborn adoptee is a gigantic extraterrestrial child who Earth-dwellers would simply refuse to accept. As they grow old together, mother and child find tenuous ways of communicating, loving, caring and intimacy that take the world by shock and raise violent alarm bells everywhere from the Kita to the playground, until a terrified neighbor calls the authorities.

This is the story of a young single mom trying to save her special-needs-child from being taken away by the intergalactic child services, all the while attempting to love someone who does not fit into the human definition of “lovable”.

 

 

 

 

THE HORROR WOMAN A.K.A. TOO DARK … TOO SWEET … TOO DEAD? | Dance Film (9:00 pm)

Choreographed and Performed by GᾹZ collective a.k.a. Noga Abramovitch (Israel), Helen Burghardt (Germany) and Zoe Goldstein (United Kingdom)
Sitting in a darkened movie theater, hunched up, limbs knotted, hands over faces, three friends wonder how it is that they happen to be seeing yet another horror movie together. It’s that fine, intriguing line between fear-horror-pleasure. This shared visceral experience also raises questions: what’s up with women in horror films? All those beautified helpless victims and sirens with dark powers. Who created them and through whose eyes are we watching? How do we connect, and to what, when these female archetypes bleed across the screen? An unlikely and frightening adventure ensues.

The Horror Woman a.k.a too dark … too sweet … too dead? is a dance horror piece, exploring feminine archetypes and expressions of femininity in horror, the female gaze in horror as well as the translation and transitions between cinematic and stage languages.

The Horror Woman a.k.a. too dark … too sweet … too dead? was developed with support from ADA Studios and Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte.

We Can Do It Moaning (ABA NAIA)

Do you want to know what lies behind the anatomy of our mouths?

ABA NAIA transforms sounds into spoken language. They build their rebellion against the patriarchy with the foundation of human voices. It gets dirty. It gets messy. It gets hilarious. It gets awkward. It gets physical. It gets sexual. It stays complicated. You are invited to a dialogue which takes place at the meeting point between science and a new post-porn soundscape when the seductive power of female tones takes over and makes things move.

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Please note that tickets are extremely limited due to the current health and safety regulations. We encourage guests to purchase their tickets as soon as possible.

To attend the performance, you must wear an FFP2 mask and present a negative antigen quick test for COVID-19 that is not older than 24 hours or proof of your complete vaccination or recovery from COVID-19. Please book a test date in advance from an official test center, e.g. www.test-to-go-berlin. Please observe our health and safety measures.

Zugang mit FFP2-Maske und aktuellem negativen Antigen-Schnelltest (nicht älter als 24 Stunden) oder Nachweis des vollständigen Impfschutzes bzw. der Genesung. Bitte buchen Sie vorab eigenständig Ihren verbindlichen Testtermin bei einem offiziellen Testzentrum, bspw. über www.test-to-go.berlin. Bitte beachten Sie unsere Hygiene- und Schutzmaßnahmen.

A Better Life

If you want a better life, you must live a better life.

The performance A Better Life, a co-production from MS Schrittmacher (Berlin) and Brain Store Project (Sofia), deals with the question what a better life can mean and what we do to achieve it.

In European society, moving and being mobile is not only important, but also easier than it was ever before. This gives all European citizens the opportunity to move to a new place if they feel like there can be better options, better living circumstances or sometimes just better weather. We, as individuals, are all responsible to ourselves to live a life that we think is fulfilled and worth living. What would we give up to raise our standards? Are we ready to trade social capital for material capital? What does a good life mean to us and what does even a better life mean to us?

The concept of the performance A Better Life is a result of the research project LUXUS-WEG, funded by the Szenenwechsel (Change of Scene) program of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and a co-production between the performance group MS Schrittmacher from Berlin and ACT Association for Independent Theater from Sofia.

Over the course of this research, the choreographers and performers Martin Stiefermann (Berlin), Iva Sveshtarova and Willy Prager (Sofia) as well as the dramaturg Natalie Baudy (Berlin) have explored the migration patterns of German senior citizens living in old-age poverty going to Bulgaria and young Bulgarians coming to work and study in Germany. The focus lies on the questions of what compromises we make in exchange for a better life and what effects our decisions have on society. What is the motivation for those migration patterns within the EU and what does a better life even mean to us?

To begin, the team met in Sofia where they started their research and made contact with German retirees living in Bulgaria. Afterward, they traveled to Varna, Baltchik, Kavarna and the Golden Beach and talked to female German senior citizens living there about their motivation to start a new life in Bulgaria. They entered into intensive conversation with them, conducted interviews and became acquainted with their living spaces and their everyday lives. In February 2019, a further intensive research phase followed in Berlin, in which a corresponding catalogue of questions was addressed to Bulgarians living in Germany.

2020 Expo Info Abend and Artists Mixer

Calling all Berlin-based performing artists! We’re holding an information night and artists’ mixer for our annual festival! Come by on Wednesday, October 30 beginning at 7pm to meet potential collaborators, see our space and find out everything you need to know to apply to have your work included in the festival! Over the past seven years, numerous Expo productions have been created as a result of artists meeting at the festival’s Info Abend and deciding to make new work together.

Since 2013, this annual festival has presented selected performances from the diverse yet often still undiscovered international independent performing arts community of Berlin with a working language of English. Over six evenings featuring one or two evening-length performances, the festival presents a cross section of this community across all performing arts genres and beyond all language barriers. Within ExpLoRE, the newcomer’s platform, the Sunday afternoon is open to smaller formats or work still under development.

The 2020 schedule of programming will be curated by festival founder Daniel Brunet, Producing Artistic Director of English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, as well as choreographer Olivia Hyunsin Kim and theater director Shlomo Lieberman, from the applications received based on the criteria of artistic excellence, internationalism and creative diversity.

The festival accepts proposals both for world premieres as well as restaging of existing productions and provides financial and dramaturgical support. Over the past seven years, numerous Expo productions have been created as a result of artists meeting at the festival’s Info Abend and deciding to make new work together.

The 2020 edition of the festival will be held from April 19 – April 25, 2020.

This year, we’re looking to showcase one or two professional productions by Berlin-based artists each evening from Monday, April 20 through Saturday, April 25. Works should be between approximately 45 and 105 minutes in length.

We can also consider shorter works for performance  during the day on April 19, 2020.

Learn more about the festival and see the lineup from last year right HERE!

Applications for the 2020 Expo are due by midnight on November 30, 2019 and the complete lineup will be announced on or about January 5, 2020.