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THE LAB: Artist and Audience Development

Bathe in wine, bathe in milk,
Bathe in horse broth, bathe in silk.
Ice, steam, sauna, spring—
Let your body sizzle and sting.

If you’re a bird: you use dust!
If a snail: a puddle’s a must.
Come one, come all, we must get clean.
Elly the Batheness of Berlin
Invites you to her bathing dream.

Bathing is glorious: water grants daily rebirth, soap frees us from what want to leave behind. Elly the Batheness of Berlin is enamored with it—in tubs, hammams, mountain springs or saunas; with a sponge, a brush, hands or a stone.

All bathers are welcome to this work-in-progress lecture-performance exploring:
What is a bath? What is bathing? A historical, a cultural, a social, an artistic and an American bath; and even bathing across species!

Bathing has deep waters—with topics like PURITY, FERTILITY, (RE)BIRTH, HYGIENE, OLFACTION, MODESTY and the FEMALE DOMAIN. Elly the Batheness of Berlin is going deep into bathing lore and invites you to join.

In 2026, bad ideas are great again!

Followed by a post-performance discussion

Puddles

What language does love speak? Does speaking multiple languages give us multiple personalities? What goes beyond language and right into our bodies?

Set in Berlin between the 1990s and now, Puddles is about a love triangle between three university friends, Judith, Max and Nora. Max and Judith were childhood sweethearts but broke up when Judith went traveling. Max and Nora got together, stayed together, married, bought a flat and are trying for a baby. These best-laid plans, however, as well all know, often go awry…

In this version, Max only speaks German, Judith only English and Nora switches between the two.

The LAB reading will be the very first work-in-progress presentation of the new multilingual version of the play, followed by a post-performance discussion.

Trigger warning: the play addresses sensitive topics, including discussion of miscarriage.

No One Comes Back

When one twin goes to war, can the other escape it?

When her twin brother is deployed as a fighter pilot, a sister finds herself in a war she never signed up for. Bombings, cornfields, deer eyeballs and shamans, No One Comes Back is a story about war, twinhood and what it means to save each other when no one really comes back.

The play moves between rural US-American childhood and the wildly different paths the twins take as adults. One heads into military service, the other into art school, Berlin and a string of questionable survival strategies. With humor and candor, it asks how families carry violence by proxy, how love persists under pressure, and if late-night phone calls can bridge the distance between two twins at risk of losing themselves.

This raw and unforgettable new play explores the ways we wage war and the complicated love that shapes us, whether we want it to or not.

omfg hamlet do i look like i care

William Shakespeare and the Bechdel Test

How much agency do female characters have in works of fiction? In 1986, US-American cartoonist Alison Bechdel provided a simple set of rules for figuring this out: the Bechdel test. Are there at least two female characters in the work? Do they speak to each other? About something other than men?

In all of William Shakespeare’s thirty-six plays, there is exactly one overlooked scene in a mostly overlooked play (Richard II) where two women converse.

With this in mind, omfg hamlet do i look like i care questions the supposed universality of Shakespeare’s themes. Combining Shakespearean language with modern dialogue and original text by creator/actor Kay Marie, the production investigates what happens when women are finally allowed the stage — and the conversation — all to themselves.

Two powerhouse performers take on a multitude of roles, including queens, noblewomen, podcast hosts, karaoke singers, dancers and professional bowlers. A male actor appears in a deliberately sidelined supporting role, used purely as a narrative device. What begins as an absurdly comic interview between two clueless influencers soon spirals into a chaotic, heartfelt, and surprisingly tender journey through female experience — both real and imagined.

Ein Sumpf bildet sich

“I love Germany. But in Germany now there is a swamp forming. At the moment just a swamp. But give it just a few more years. The swamp becomes a lake. The lake becomes a sea. And it swallows everything up.”

Staying with a German family while running a project in their local village school, a British-Iranian teacher contends with ancestral guilt, a possessed scarecrow and a rising tide of Islamophobia.

Followed by a post-performance discussion with playwright Charlie Dupré, moderated by Daniel Brunet

Cynthia

A drag-puppet-theater spectacle about the world’s first non-human influencer from 1937

Cynthia was a model, an influencer, a socialite, a celebrity and a household name in the USA in 1937. But unlike other celebrities of her day, she was dismantled into pieces at the end of her day and stowed away in a body bag. Cynthia was a mannequin. Her creator, Lester Gaba, a window display designer in New York City, became her manager, puppeteer and chaperone. He escorted her to dinner clubs, theater premieres and fashion shows, as well as performing for her and responding to her adoring fans on her behalf.

Let this delightful fever dream of a show take you down the slippery slope from entertaining spectacle into the uncanny valley.

Featuring Berlin Drag King Alexander Cameltoe as Lester Gaba, with his world animated by an ensemble of puppeteers.

Letters From Chiran

Letters from Chiran is a piece of mask theater performed by Tomoya Kawamura, inspired freely by the historical facts of the last world war and the stories left behind by young Japanese soldiers at the local shokudo (canteen) just outside the military airbase of Chiran in southern Japan.

The play delicately reveals the difference of perspectives between the lives of ordinary people in the midst of a largely devastating war and those who lightly make the decision of joining a conflict, compromising the lives of millions in the name of false ideals and personal satisfaction.

In 1945, the pilots of the Japanese Special Attack Units, commonly known as kamikaze, would share some of their stories, hopes and dreams with the owner of the shokudo while having a meal or a green tea before beginning what was, for many of them, their final mission.

Thanks to the owner of the shokudo, some of their last letters were hidden from the military censorship. She secretly delivered them to pilots’ families once the war was over.

Letters from Chiran forces us to ask: is there any scenario where sacrifice like this is acceptable?

A Suffocating Choking Feeling

Would you lie for likes?

A Suffocating Choking Feeling is a razor-sharp, satirical deep-dive into the warped world of Insta-“truth”, where fact and fiction blur and what wins is having a story worth telling.

Inspired by Australian con artist Belle Gibson (the subject of Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar & BBC’s Bad Influencer), who lied about having cancer to earn likes as a wellness influencer, this award-winning explosive solo show smashes together live theater with interactive social media experiments, inviting you to scroll, troll and cancel Simone Hamilton.

A Suffocating Choking Feeling plays with the boundaries of truth and ethics, testing audiences’ willingness to believe.

“Not shying away from the provocative”– The Guardian

“A notorious collision between social media and the truth” – The Age

“TomYumSim walk the fine line between madness and truth” – ★★★★ The Plus Ones

Winner of the Australian Green Room Award for best experimental and contemporary performance.

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Parataxe – International Literature

A PARATAXE presentation featuring the BERLIN ASIA ARTS CLUB:

The art of building bridges with words – a reading with Dasom Young, Mui Pooposaksul & Christina Ng. A special literary evening in English spoken language with sections in Korean, Thai and Chinese, hosted by Martin Jankowski.

Eine Veranstaltung der PARATAXE in Zusammenarbeit mit dem BERLIN ASIA ARTS CLUB und dem ENGLISH THEATRE BERLIN | INTERNATION PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, gefördert von der Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.

An event by PARATAXE in collaboration with the BERLIN ASIA ARTS CLUB and ENGLISH THEATRE BERLIN | INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, funded by Berlin’s Senate Department for Culture and Community.

Twelfth Night (BIYT)

“If music be the food of love…”

Get ready for Berlin International Youth Theatre to whisk you away on a wild ride of romance, mischief, gender-bending and 1980s bangers in their new production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Welcome to the kingdom of Illyria. While the lovesick Duke Orsino pines, the wealthy Countess Olivia mourns and the pompous steward Malvolio dreams of greatness. Then along comes Viola, washed ashore from a shipwreck and separated from her beloved twin Sebastian.

To survive in this foreign land, Viola must disguise herself as a boy and go to work in Orsino’s court. However, in doing so she will create a love triangle so tangled, only time will tell how it ends!

Expect fun, frolics and some big karaoke numbers, as the BIYT ensemble return to the stage, putting their rambunctious spin on Shakespeare’s much-loved comedy.

“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction”

Due to the large size of our ensemble, five of the larger roles are double cast, which means the following actors will play the following parts on each set of performances:

Thursday, June 26 and Saturday, June 28

Viola – Eloise Torabi

Olivia – Elissa Weber

Toby Belch – Ever Morshed Solouk

The Fool – Ava Riding

Malvolio – Aro Hübner

Friday, June 27 and Sunday, June 29

Viola – Sheila Sadigova

Olivia – Selya-Melek Özer

Toby Belch – Clara Meinecke

The Fool – Nidal Bradlow

Malvolio – Ines Köhler

The following parts will be played by the same actor at every performance:

Orsino – Yvette Avierinos

Maria – Frieda Hoch

Andrew Aguecheek – Yaroslava Gerasymenko

Antonio – Eden Rosenthal

Sebastian – Isabella Härtel