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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

The Other/Promised Land

“Maybe it’s just a myth.
You have your own history.
I have my own history.
And now we are just sharing the bathroom.”

Shlomo Lieberman and Ulrich Leinz confront three very different love stories in their performance: the disturbing memories about the grandmother who survived Auschwitz, the painful love letters of the German grandfather from Warsaw in 1943 and their own attempt to survive their relationship as a gay German/Israeli couple in Berlin.

LeinzLieberman are the performance makers Shlomo Lieberman (Israel/Germany) and Ulrich Leinz (Germany). Over the last three years, their work has been included in three consecutive Expat Expo | Immigration Invasion festivals and we premiered their groundbreaking The Other/Promised Land in the fall of 2016. We are very excited to host them – collaborating with colleagues – as our fall artists in residence, presenting three different works in September, October and November.

Lovers1 will be performed on September 29 and the first public presentation of their newest work-in-progress, Olam HaBa – The Next World, will be presented in THE LAB on November 3.

Improv Comedy Showcase

Hosted by GLB (formerly known as Good Luck, Barbara), featuring Berlin’s favorite improv comedy teams and presenting the very best of English-language improv in the German capital.

Rollercoasters is Berlin’s first and only musical improv group. Formed in 2017, the international cast has played a number of sold-out shows at venues across Berlin. Inspired by an audience suggestion, they create a full-length narrative musical replete with improvised songs, masterful acting and top-class comedy.

Cat Video is a German-Australian improv comedy duo. Their style might best be described as grounded insanity. They enjoy a slow burn just as much as a quick laugh. Peter and Jakob combine depth and hilarity in their characters to create wonderfully strange moments out of thin air.

Photo by Mariana Feijó Fernandes

 

Hand

Tape Loops, Heartbeats & Super 8 – A Triple Record Release Event!

With his first solo project, Sascha Bachmann aka Hand combines tape loops and moving images to create a contrast to the fast, loud world we live in, making space for emotions, self-reaction, calmness as well as excitement.

Alongside the release of Hand’s album Debut, the evening will also include performances by Janek Sprachta and Lars Hemmerling, who are also both releasing albums.

Watch Hand perform a live set

https://youtu.be/zIq0Bjxdx5k

Watch the music video for Loop 0.4

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A documentary with Hand all about Debut

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Lovers1

A distillation of “love” by Shlomo Lieberman & Tomer Zirkilevich: a performance for three blindfolded performers, a tv set and surtitles

What happens when two are no longer enough? Is there still the same intimacy as before? Other lovers appear. How to continue now?

In the second version of the performance they created last year as a duo, Shlomo Lieberman and Tomer Zirkilevich invite Austin Fagan for a trio.

The setting remains the same: the performers are blindfolded on an empty stage. Their task is to lift or to be lifted. And they repeat this procedure over and over as a ritual they cannot avoid. But unlike the performance last year, the roles are not clear as they were. Who is lifting whom? What should one do when he is left out? Does one should find a new role for himself? What are the options?

The performance provides insight into the fragility of relations, shows how aggression is easily evoked and can turn into grief. And how grief can establish power.

“Love is like a toy. If you play too much with it, you’ll break it. But if you don’t play with this toy, why should you have it?” (Surtitle at 5:43 min)

LeinzLieberman are the performance makers Shlomo Lieberman (Israel/Germany) and Ulrich Leinz (Germany). Over the last three years, their work has been included in three consecutive Expat Expo | Immigration Invasion festivals and we premiered their groundbreaking The Other/Promised Land in the fall of 2016. We are very excited to host them – collaborating with colleagues – as our fall artists in residence, presenting three different works in September, October and November.

The Other/Promised Land will be performed on October 13 and the first public presentation of their newest work-in-progress, Olam HaBa – The Next World, will be presented in THE LAB on November 3.

Watch an excerpt of Lovers1

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Latent Dreams

Latent Dreams is a performance about the future.

Or more specifically the possible futures for the human race beyond the system of capitalism. The performance grew out of the quote “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, often cited to Frederic Jameson in his essay Future Cities.

Intrigued by this quote, I began to research possible alternatives to the capitalist system, and came across a “widespread lack of conviction in the possibility of transcending capitalism, and indeed, a difficulty in even imagining such a task”[1]. I wanted to encourage more discussions around alternative systems, and so I created Latent Dreams, about the futures we allow ourselves to envision, as a provocation to envision alternative ones.

Using the frame of Hollywood films, Latent Dreams unravels the inherent capitalist ideologies embodied in popular concepts of the Apocalypse. It involves a solo performer typing a “plot summary” of a disaster film, which is rewritten and rewritten, erased, repeated and deleted throughout the performance. The text is humorous, occasionally poignant, often misspelled and always human.

Latent Dreams aims not to provide a solution, but instead open a dialogue on imagined futures, and alternative systems.

[1] Hahnel, Robert & Wright, Erik Olin, Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a Democratic Economy, p5.

Latent Dreams was conceived as part of the MLitt Theatre Practice at the University of Glasgow. It was first performed at the Gilmorehill Theatre, Glasgow, in September 2016. After presenting the show in its original form in the 2017 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion festival, we are proud to present a run of this extended, revised Berlin-specific version.

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Katrine Turner is a performance maker based between Berlin and Glasgow. She creates performance for different social contexts, settings and audiences. In November 2016, she graduated from the University of Glasgow in MLitt Theatre Practice with Distinction, where she was the College of the Arts Bellahouston Scholar 2015/2016.

Merciless

Johnny Armstrong is a quick-fire one-liner comedian from England’s deep, dark North.

He is known for his unique brand of black humor delivered with a hefty portion of self-deprecation. A veteran of the London comedy circuit, he has taken Germany by storm with TV appearances and sold-out shows across the mainland. Many say that he has internalized the Monty Pythons, but it looks more like he’s eaten them.

Johnny has made quite a name for himself performing in German and we’re very excited to be able to present him performing in his native English!

Test your German and check out Johnny performing Ein dicker Hipster in Stuttgart:

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And you can find even more right HERE!

Clever

CLEVER. The live comedy panel game show with Berlin’s funniest comedians!

Covering a wide range of games, puzzles and topics, this is Berlin’s best and only live game show. Be it astrophysics, history, geography or sports, local heroes from the lands of improv and stand-up comedy will be put to the test. Hosted by Canada’s Lee White (Crumbs), he challenges the comical combatants to prove who’s the cleverest. A correct answer will get you points… unless someone gives a funnier one. At the end of the day, being the smartest or funniest isn’t enough: in this exhilarating, interactive comedy quiz you have to be CLEVER to win!

Featuring contestants Noah Telson, Matilde Keizer and Björn Harras, with Amy Jane in the judge’s chair

CLEVER. The game show where the audience always wins laughs.

Check out some excerpts from the last iteration of CLEVER from July 2017!

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Noah Telson – Raised in Woodstock, NY. Living in Berlin and has worked with ComedySportz Berlin. Now busy running and performing at Comedy Cafe Berlin, a hot bed of English-language comedy in Berlin. He also teaches through The Hive, writes and hosts Piffle! Podcast. Noah played in the Sport edition of Clever and was the champion.
Matilde Keizer – Matilde has lived many places from Italy to New York to Berlin. She has been wowing audiences all over. Known in Berlin for her work with GRILL TALK who are the winners of the first offensive, Guillotine Berlin’s first Harold team, Comedysportz and It’s that Time of the Month. Matilda is a one-time champion of Clever.
Björn Harras – A fantastic funny Improviser with Berlin finest, Die Gorillas. He has played on many stages around Berlin and has done much work on TV including portraying the evil Patrick Graf in the Daily Soap Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten. He is also a one-time champion of Clever.
Amy Jane – New Zealand born and Berlin-based, Amy has performed on The Kiwi TV show So you think you are Funny and all over Berlin. She is the strict but fair judge of the show. Nobody gets a point they don’t deserve when Amy in the judge’s seat.

#Instalove

Is it love? Is it weakness? Hope or desperation? Why do we do it? Again and again.

In this interactive show, one woman finds herself on the brink of love, lust, fear and hope. YOU, the audience, are her dates. YOU decide how her story unfolds.

#Instalove is a joyful, electrifying, and at times stormy celebration of all the reasons we seek love – from the playful to the pathetic, the pragmatic to the passionate. It transposes the quest for love into a live competitive game, in which Catherine competes with herself – her many selves – for the audience’s affections. The audience are her co-players and vote for a winner, so every night is different.

Laugh, sigh, dance, and cry. Expect to make one hot mess. Together, you and Catherine will explore the modern search for timeless romance.

After presenting Catherine’s performance Celebrity Bound first as part of the 2014 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion Festival and then in two separate additional runs, we are thrilled to bring back our production of the world premiere of #Instalove freshly from a 20-performances run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe!!

Special thanks to Lovoo for their support! There will be a post-performance event in conjunction with Lovoo on  October 26 exploring the topics of “Love in the Digital Age – Insights by LOVOO and an External Research Project” and Love is Risky vs. Love is Predictable in the Era of Dating Apps”.

There will also be a post-performance discussion in conjunction with Theater Scoutings Berlin on October 27!

Berlin-based US-American performer, writer, director Catherine Duquette specializes in audience-performer relations and improvisation within scripted drama. She creates intimate participatory works that draw on autobiographical materials to share contemporary experiences with active audiences. Curious about expanding notions of performance, Catherine fuses theater, interactive poetry, scripts, and choice-based narrative for video games. She is currently exploring game design as a dramaturgical approach to theater in order to allow audiences more emotional and personal investment in what happens on stage.
Based in Berlin, her work has been supported by MOMENTUM Gallery, Camden People’s Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, theSpaceUK, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Poland, a Fulbright Fellowship in Spain, the International Festival of the Delphic Games in Greece, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado, and the Subterranean Art House in Berkeley, California.
Artist and agitator Ruth Sergel creates compassionate works that explode out the boundaries of traditional mediums. Inspired by rebels, visionary pedagogues and magicians, Ruth’s work bridges art and technology, memory and wonder to incite individual and social transformation. Ruth’s films, public interventions and interactive installations have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, New-York Historical Society, Gray Art Gallery, Anthology Film Archives and 3LD Art + Technology Center. Her work has been shown internationally including Clermont-Ferrand (France), Shift Festival (Basel) and Théâtre de la Ville, (Paris) as well as broadcast on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) and PBS.
Ruth’s projects have been supported by the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Experimental Television Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the 21st Century ILGWU Heritage Fund. Ruth was the Resident Researcher in Video at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) where she received her Master’s degree and a fellow in Public Humanities at Brown University. Additional residencies include Yaddo, Squeaky Wheel, CESTA (Czech Republic), Digital Performance Institute, and Here Arts Center. Her work has been widely covered in the press including the New York Times, NY Daily News, NPR, CNN, and the Huffington Post.

Tom Drury

The U.S. Embassy Literature Series

Tom Drury reads from his Grouse County trilogy.

Klett-Cotta published the German translation of Tom Drury’s Grouse County trilogy (The End of Vandalism, Hunts in Dreams and Pacific) together as Grouse County in August 2017.

Tom Drury is the author of Pacific, The End of Vandalism, Hunts in Dreams, The Driftless Area and The Black Brook. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s and the Mississippi Review. Drury has been a Guggenheim Fellow and was named one of Granta‘s “Best Young American Novelists.” He is an alumnus of the American Academy in Berlin and lives in New York.

Photo by Annette Hornischer, courtesy American Academy in Berlin

Ich Kann Nicht Atmen

What do you do if you can’t do anything?

Taking its cue from Václav Havel’s seminal 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless, the performance-lecture Ich kann nicht atmen [IKNA] gives an insider’s account – bitter, hilarious and savagely satirical – of what it’s like to live inside the immersive, sensurround scam that various lobbyists, eco-hypocrites and political pygmies have defined as energetische Modernisierung.

The profit-led and undesired changes to one particular apartment building, for which the inhabitants ultimately pay, serves as an example of how the face of an entire capital city is being fundamentally and irrevocably altered for generations to come.

Followed by a post-performance discussion in collaboration with Theater Scoutings Berlin!