Productions | English Theatre Berlin

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Talking About the Fire

Presented by China Plate and Staatstheater Mainz

Nuclear weapons could destroy us all, right now – so why aren’t we talking about them?

Sometimes the threat slides into view – Russia invades Ukraine – but that doesn’t make the weapons more dangerous. They’re always dangerous. And one day, deliberately or accidentally, they’ll be used again.

From the team that created the award-winning Status and Confirmation comes a show about a new nuclear weapons treaty – one that’s trying to give the power to eliminate nuclear weapons to the states, and people, who don’t possess them.

It’s a show and a conversation. We’ll talk about where we are, where we live, and why it’s important that people like us talk about this at all.

Created by seven-time Fringe First winner Chris Thorpe and Claire O’Reilly (Abbey Theatre) and developed with Tony Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin.

Join us for a post-show panel discussion on the themes of the show on Saturday, April 26 with writer and performer of Talking About The Fire, Chris Thorpe and Senior Arms Advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Delegation to the United Nations, Véronique Christory.

“It’s all masterfully put together… this show culminates in an encounter that really puts the ‘alive’ into ‘live theatre’.
– Time Out

“It’s precisely the feeling of community and comfort in the room that makes the horror of what Thorpe is describing so powerful.”
– Broadway World

“Informative and deeply affecting… Thorpe is an assured and tremendously engaging performer.”
– The Stage

“Chris Thorpe does what he does with a performative skill that is off-the-charts brilliant. It is an extraordinary evening of theatre.”
–Theatre Reviews Hub

Supported by Battersea Arts Centre, the Albany, Véronique Christory and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Intelligent Movement

This special three-day event brings together dance, theater, writing, hip-hop and calligraphy! Dancers are invited to sign up and show what they’ve got in allstyle battles while the audience takes in panel discussions, jam sessions, battles and showcases!

Special Guest: Mhanna Letters

Amigo, who has long been exploring the connection between movement and writing,
will lead the event. Together with his friend Tako Baba, he has gained valuable experience
at the Funkin’ Stylez Festival paving the way for hip-hop theater.

Exhibition: Following the event, Bouzuqee Studio will present a small exhibition on the topic of dance & writing.

FRIDAY – BATTLE CULTURE

Topic: Battle Culture – Creative Exchange and the Exploration of New Spaces for Dance

Battle Culture is an important part of hip-hop culture, focusing not on competition, but instead on creative exchange, repartee and the experiencing of special moments. The goal is to discover new spaces together and bring the creativity to a new level.

Schedule of Events:

Hosted by Iman (Walashe)

6pm – Presentation by Saman Hamdi: Hip-Hop’s Organic Educators

A look at the philosophy and educational approaches that distinguish hip-hop culture.

6pm-7pm – Registration of the Dancers

Dancers can sign up to take part in the allstyle battles.

7pm – Cypher Jam with Music

Dancers are invited to show what they’ve got in an open format. The focus here is placed on creativity and spontaneity. The goal is to develop new ideas and support exchange. Seven dancers will be selected by the jury.

Judges & Panelists: Pez, Kupra, Penny K, Chica – J

Featuring DJ Peeps

7:45 pm – Locking Showcase

Featuring Cris, Penny K, Laura, Dani, Kupra, Philipp, Eylo & Amigo

8pm – Panel Discussion: Battle Culture: Souldance & Locking

With Penny K, Kupra, Penny, Chica – J & Amigo

Host: İman

This panel discussion will explore Japanese dance culture and the significance of souldance as well as the influence of Campbell locking on souldance and the global hip-hop community.

8:30 pm – Battles: 7 to Smoke Allstyle

Music by DJ Peeps

9pm – JAM with DJ Peeps

An open dance session with music by our DJ, offering a free space for creative expression.

10pm – End

SATURDAY – PERFORMANCE DAY

Many creative dancers are active in the battle scene. The performance session gives these creative minds a platform on stage. The session is open to all dancers who want to try out choreographies or concepts in front of an audience. Improvisation is just as welcome as a finished concept.

Schedule of Events:

7pm – Short Pieces by Berlin Dancers

Different dancers from Berlin present short choreographies that bring their dance style and personal stories to the stage.

Six short performances from Berlin & feedback from the audience

Hosted by Iman (Walashe)

With visuals by Geso

8:30 pm – Digital Calligraffiti Performance with Harshini, Mhanna Letters, Parole & Amigo

The Digital Calligraffiti project is initiated by Susa Pop | Public Art Lab and curated in cooperation
with Don Karl | From Here to Fame Publishing with the artist Michael Ang.

9pm – Panel Discussion: The Future of Theater with Harshini, Moe & Amigo

10pm – End

SUNDAY – Exhibition At the Bouzuqee Studio – 2pm

MOVEMENT & LETTERS

Works on paper by:

MINA / STOHEAD / MOSA87 / MHANNA / 2501 / PARİS URTEIL

PAROLE / THEOS / ZASD / ZEPHA / VINCENT GRUNWALD / AMIGO

So Many Ideas

So Many Ideas is a performance that explores a moral crisis we cannot quite name: a silent, self-destructive malaise, an obscure calamity.

Set in a crumbling portside hotel room at the edge of their civilization, three women—one terminally ill—take refuge in their shared space. One plays the violin almost absentmindedly, another sings, while the other murmurs, dreams, pleads and remembers. Together, their words overlap, complete, and challenge one another like a Baroque cadenza—a reflection of culture, a nervous tic, an urgent search for meaning: how they got there; how we all got here.

Drawing inspiration from Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, and musically from Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto, So Many Ideas confronts the present moment: in a world overflowing with brilliance, beauty, and invention—so many choices, so much creativity—why do we keep ending up in the same places, with so little to show for it?

85 minutes, sung and spoken in English, German and Italian, partially subtitled in German and English

Pop! Andy Warhol & The Velvet Underground

Part 3 of our series of “Conversations with a Cultural Icon”

With the band RED LARGO and a cast of five actors, Pop! Andy Warhol & The Velvet Underground, attempts to provide a performative answer to the question of how Pop became Culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Following Jaws and Bowie in Berlin, we play and dance and sing the pain away!

Five curators are planning an art exhibition: Andy Warhol’s Underground Years 1965 – 68. Tricky. What do they want to exhibit, what can they agree on? A Factory reenactment? Cover versions of Velvet Underground songs played live in the museum? Underground films in video format? One thing is sure – just like the Velvets, there will be much more discord than harmony.

Sixty years ago, pop artist Andy Warhol suddenly shapeshifted into a filmmaker. Flanked by his so-called “Superstars”, he shot flicks like Blow Job, Chelsea Girls and Lonesome Cowboys; crude, daring, offbeat black-and-white movies walking the fine line between pornography and arthouse film. Along with these “underground films”, he presented the ultra-wild and ultra-loud performance series Exploding Plastic Inevitable as well as produced the debut album of the rock band The Velvet Underground with the German singer Nico – the album cover featured the most iconic image of those few “underground years”, the yellow banana.

The art world responded with a collective shrug, but was more than happy to serve as a permanent guest at Warhol’s hustling, bustling factory where the art was made in the front, the shagging was taking place in the back and amphetamines were taken everywhere.

Hardly anyone wanted to see the films, the performance series earned scathing reviews and no one bought the album.

Six decades later, however, they have become cherished cultural icons like the works of Picasso, Wagner or Fellini, while the Factory is now deemed a central historical site for queer emancipation. How did that happen?

Pics: ETB (pic 1) / Stefania Migliorati (pics 2 + 3)

Alan Murrin

reads from his novel The Coast Road.

Set in 1994, The Coast Road tells the story of two women—Izzy Keaveney, a housewife, and Colette Crowley, a poet. Colette has left her family for a married man in Dublin. When she returns to her home in County Donegal to try to pick up the pieces of her old life, her husband denies her access to her children.

The only way she can see them is with the help of neighbour Izzy, acting as a go-between. Izzy also feels caught in a troubled marriage. The friendship that develops between them will ultimately lead to tragedy for one, and freedom for the other.

With a depth and compassion that rivals the works of Claire Keegan, Elizabeth Strout, and Colm Tóibín, The Coast Road is a story about the limits placed on women’s lives in Ireland only a generation ago, and the consequences women have suffered trying to gain independence. Alan Murrin reminds us of the price we are forced to pay to find freedom.

“I loved this novel. All the female characters are complex and fascinating, and full of anger and hope. I found it an addictive read.”— actor Gillian Anderson

Alan Murrin is an Irish writer who has lived in Berlin for several years. He graduated from the prestigious Masters in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. In 2021, he won the Bournemouth Writing Award for his short story The Wake; the story was also shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards’ Short Story of the Year. As a cultural critic, he has written for The Irish Times, TLS and The Spectator, among others. Coast Road is his debut novel.

Pic Alan Murrin: Lena Obst / Inga Busch: Christine Fenzl

Anne Welenc and Michel Wagenschütz

the lab: artist and audience development

Are we the protagonists of our own lives or merely supporting characters in larger narratives? How do the stories we tell and the roles we embody shape our understanding of agency, power, and collaboration?

During a one-week LAB, Anne Welenc and Michel Wagenschütz will explore these questions both thematically and formally, presenting a double feature of new material. Revisiting their shared history of collaboration, they reimagine their artistic roles by guiding each other on stage and dissolving traditional hierarchies.

Anne centers her investigation of classical dramatic works on the significance of female supporting characters, focusing on the substance of the Minnas, Bertas and Gretchens, while Michel, inspired by his project He’s Got It, explores creation myths and genius narratives in musical theater, addressing professionalization, societal aspirations, and personal vulnerability.

They are accompanied by Anastasia Mandel, who adds another live dimension to the performance, responding to the dynamics on and off stage with sound, music and samples, weaving an auditory layer that interacts with the unfolding narrative.

Anne Welenc, a director and playwright rooted in critical feminist research, combines classical theater with elements of dance, pop and club culture. Her works, including QUEENS and Gargoyles, reimagine gender, power and social narratives, offering contemporary perspectives on historical and literary figures.

Michel Wagenschütz, a visual artist and filmmaker, studied contemporary art and photography at the Berlin University of the Arts and performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His practice navigates the intersections of image-making, space and performative strategies, addressing social realities and their contradictions.

Anastasia Mandel is an artist, biohacker, performer and musician based in Berlin.
She began producing music and together with Sergei Kasich, coined the genre Ambient Punk. Her influences draw from performance art, musique concrète and the fair use sampling and branding strategies employed by bands like Negativland.

A Guide To Self-Synthesis

With its new performance, Opera Lab Berlin takes inspiration from pioneers of electronic music such as Wendy Carlos, SOPHIE and Pauline Oliveros in their new performance. They celebrate overcoming mechanical-acoustic sound production and going beyond heteronormative boundaries.

Together with trans singer-songwriter Marlene Bellissimo, known from The Voice of Germany, Opera Lab Berlin explores the sonic potential of electronics for defining your own parameters in A Guide To Self-Synthesis. Its transformative, transgressive power and frequencies of (self-)expression become the focus of the performance, for which composer Evan Gardner creates a pluralistic combination of notated but non-restrictive sound fields. The US-American university professor and and activist Susan Stryker, one of the foremost scholars in the field of (trans)gender studies, will take the stage as a special guest with her own contribution to the production.

What possibilities does synthetic sound production offer? How do queer harmonies and trans oscillators sound? Following the principle of Mauricio Kagel’s instrumental theater, singing and dancing, music from synthesizers, motion-tracking technology, composition and choreography come together in A Guide to Self-Synthesis, a new utopian and emancipatory celebration of electronic music.

“[Opera Lab Berlin is] one of the most experimental and refreshing musical theater groups in the Berlin’s independent performing arts community” (Siegessäule),

MARLENE BELLISSIMO is a trans woman and musician. As a trans singer-songwriter often focusing on trans voices in her work, she is interested in how gender fluidity can be expressed through the voice. On TikTok, she celebrates the diversity of trans voices, performing one-woman-duets that showcase her vocal range. In 2023, she released an EP titled christmas with my dead self, and she is known on YouTube for her documentary Finding a Trans Voice, where she discusses the philosophical and practical journey of finding a new voice through her transition. In September 2024, Marlene Bellissimo appeared on The Voice of Germany, astonishing the judges with her vocal artistry.

The Opera Lab Berlin music theater ensemble is a hybrid collective that links all creative elements together. People from all artistic fields come together in Opera Lab: whether music, acting, composition, directing, instruments, choreography, stage and costume design, lighting, stagecraft or dramaturgy – equality is a core principle at Opera Lab Berlin. Since its founding in 2013, the collective has brought over 30 original productions to the stage, featuring compositions by more than 40 contemporary composers and directed by over 18 different directors. The core ensemble has grown to more than 30 members and they collaborate with over 100 artists and production staff.

FRATZ International

FRATZ International 2024
Encounters – Symposium – Festival for the very young

FRATZ International was created in 2013 by Theater o.N. in Berlin and has since invited the international children’s theater community to Berlin six times. Every two years, FRATZ presents remarkable guest performances in Berlin. It also hosts a symposium to discuss and explore the latest developments in dance and theater for very young audiences. Colleagues from all over the world meet in Berlin for this international exchange.

English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center is very pleased to partner with FRATZ International for the 2024 edition of the festival, serving as the venue for performances of Fields of Tender, an immersive durational dance performance for babies and children with disabilities as well as Luft, a dance performance for all ages. On October 13, at 6pm, we will also host a lecture by Dalija Acin Thelander, the artist behind Fields of Tender, exploring her research.

Fields of Tender | Dalija Acin Thelander | Sweden

An Immersive Durational Dance Performance for Babies and Children with Disabilities

Fields of Tender is an enchanting and playful, dance performance, which immerses you in an imaginary world of tenderness, affection and love. Within this awe-inspiring, sensual world, the extravagant and peculiar events interlace with ethereal and gentle ones. The performance flow welcomes the audience’s curiosity as well as provides them with a calm and intimate space for relaxation.

Duration: durational (150 minutes)

Tickets for Fields of Tender are available on Sunday, October 13 at 11am and at 3pm and on Monday, October 14 at 2:30pm

The performances on October 13 at 11am and on October 14 at 2:30pm are intended for neurotypical babies from 6 months to 24 months as well as neurodivergent babies & children and children with disabilities up to 4 years of age.

The performance October 13 at 3pm is intended for neurodivergent children and children with disabilities from 5 to 10 years of age.

On Sunday, October 13 at 6pm, Dalija Acin Thelander will present a lecture on her research Towards Sensuous Ecologies, Rethinking Ableism in Choreographic and Movement Practices, focused on developing new transdisciplinary artistic methods that are attuned to neurodivergent perception, enabling the experience of communality, inclusiveness and empowerment through immersion, choreography and body practices.

Admission to the lecture is free of charge.

Luft | Nir de Volff & Theater o.N. | Germany

A Dance Performance for All Ages

What happens to the air we breathe into our bodies? How can we use our own breath to find freedom in the body and connect with others? The breath is the simplest and yet most complex personal tool to express our self. All of our joy, happiness, fears, emotional heaviness, and traumas reside in our chest, not just in our brain or under our skin.

Tickets for Luft are available on Wednesday, October 16 at 10am and on Thursday, October 17 at 10am

Concept and Choreography by Nir de Volff | Performed by Medhat Aldaabl, Mouafak Aldoabl and Renan Manhães | Costume Design by Moran Sanderovich | Music Composed by Daniel Benyamin

Where Ye From?

By Growler

Meet Growler, the 82-year-old drum banging, shamanic vulva from the Liberties in Dublin.

Wise as witches with a tongue like a lash and a heart of gold, she will take you on an alchemical theatrical journey.

Using storytelling, song, spoken word and comedy, her mission is to give voice to the voiceless and to transmute the shite out of the female collective trauma.

The performance on November 9th will inaugurate Growler’s Sofa Sessions and feature visiting musician Damien Dempsey and Berlin-based Wallis Bird in a one-night-only event called Songs From the Holywell!

This promises to be a very special night of storytelling, song and conversation between kindred spirits.

“The beauty of Growler is in its roughness, its erratic meandering, its refusal to be one thing or another. It has a sacred chaos of its own, in which Mulrooney thrives.”
The List

Rhythm in Sediment

The very first performance of new work-in-progress by Anna Lublina, followed by a post-performance discussion.

This research seeks to access ancestral knowledge through synchronization: a process of syncing one’s body rhythms with the rhythms of other people, objects or environments. Emerging from archival research on different forms of shared Jewish-Muslim rhythm—Uzbeki Shashmaqam music, prayer, agricultural practices, etc.— we explore tap dance, extended vocal techniques and live mixing to embody specific rhythms and synchronize with the worlds they emerge from.

How do these rhythms from historical moments of Muslim-Jewish conviviality generate different physicalities, states, tensions or intelligences in our bodies? What can these convivial rhythms teach us in a time marked by separation and violence?

This research has been funded by the Ottilie Roederstein Stipendiem from the Hessian Ministry of Science, Research, Art and Culture, Frankfurt Kulturamt and Giessen Kulturamt.

Anna is a current LABA Berlin Fellow, participating in the 2024 Muslim—Jewish creative study and exchange program called “Mar’a’yeh: A Night’s Journey”. This event is part of a month-long (ending 8.12) exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, details of which can be found here. For other upcoming LABA Berlin events and more information, please visit www.laba.berlin and follow (@lababerlin) on Instagram.