etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

HeLa

The Poetic-Scientific Dream-Fate of Henrietta Lacks

a new play by Lauren Gunderson and Geetha Reddy

When Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American mother of five was dying of cancer in a Baltimore hospital in 1951, doctors took samples of her tumor cells and gave the cell line the name HeLa. The HeLa cells were the first ones to stay alive outside the human body and multiply. They became an extremely valuable asset in medical research, generating treatments for polio and numerous other drugs. Millions of dollars were made with Henrietta´s cells. HeLa cells are still used for research in countless labs around the world. Henrietta, however, never gave her consent to have the samples taken and was not even asked. It was not until 1975 that her family learned about the connection between Henrietta and the HeLa cells.

In a kaleidoscope of emotional flashbacks, sweet memories and bitter dreams, HeLa explores the story of Henrietta Lacks’ life and death and her posthumous life. It is a tale of love, togetherness and fate, but also of exploitation, neglect and racism.

“Once again, we see how Black families in the U.S. have served us all, at great cost to themselves.”  Theatrius.com

Thomas Chatterton Williams

The U.S. Embassy Literature Series

Race, Identity, and the Boundaries of Blackness: Thomas Chatterton Williams explores what it means to be a black man of mixed-race heritage with a white-looking daughter and a white wife.

A reading and conversation with Rose-Anne Clermont, journalist and author of Bush Girl.

Thomas Chatterton Williams holds a B.A. in philosophy from Georgetown University and a Master’s degree from the cultural reporting and criticism program at New York University. While a student at NYU, his op-ed piece, “Yes, Blame Hip-Hop,” struck a deep nerve when it ran in the Washington Post, generating a record-breaking number of comments.
Pic: Luke Abiol

Ariel Levy

The U.S. Embassy Literature Series

Ariel Levy reads from The Rules Do Not Apply (Gegen alle Regeln)

When Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true. Levy picks you up and hurls you through the story of how she built an unconventional life and then watched it fall apart with astonishing speed. Like much of her generation, she was raised to resist traditional rules—about work, about love, and about womanhood.

In this “deeply human and deeply moving” (The New York Times Book Review) memoir, Levy chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being, in her own words, “a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses.” Her story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.

 

Ariel Levy joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008 and received the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism in 2014 for her piece “Thanksgiving in Mongolia.” She is the author of the book Female Chauvinist Pigs and was a contributing editor at the magazine New York for twelve years.
pic: David Klagsbrun

Olam HaBa: The Next World

Who was this Polish Jew that pulled his pants down in front of everyone and sat on the holy book with his bare bottom?

Who was this Jakob Frank, revered by his fans as a messiah and who converted from Judaism to Islam and from Islam to Catholicism? Who was persecuted by the powerful in Poland in the 18th century, spent many years in prison in Tschenstochau and whose story came to a strange but happy end in Offenbach am Main?

The performers LeinzLieberman have searched for the motives behinds this mystical messianic movement over the course of multiple trips tracing the footsteps of Jakob Frank. And they let themselves, together with the designer and DJ Markus Wente, be inspired by it in their new performance. They bring motifs and texts of Jakob Frank to the stage and then transform it into images and movements that also reflect the feelings and desires of people in the Berlin art and party scenes. Using both subtle and expansive images, they tell the story of a search for a new world in which all parts are once again integrated into a complete whole.

 

Followed by a post-performance discussion

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 Other/Promised Land will be performed on October 13.

Songs at the Theatre

Bathe in the sonic and poetic presence of four Berlin-based singer-songwriters from England, Ireland and Estonia.

Each has a unique voice and approach to the challenge of writing the perfect song, Alex Spencer, Viktor’s Joy, Sam Dale and Kilkelly draw on a wide range of musical and lyrical influences and resources.

The evening will not be short of surprises, featuring collaboration and creative cross-pollination on stage with special guests appearing during each set.

Listen to Alex Spencer on SoundCloud and visit her artist page on Facebook

 

 

 

 

Listen to Viktor’s Joy on Bandcamp and visit his artist page on Facebook

 

 

 

 

Listen to Sam Dale on Bandcamp and visit his artist page on Facebook

 

 

 

 

Visit Kilkelly at his official homepage and on Facebook

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

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from YouTube. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

A documentary with Hand all about Debut

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from YouTube. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

 

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

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from Vimeo. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

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.

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from Vimeo. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

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.