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Blog Archive

Fear Industry

What are we afraid of?

2 performers and 1 mezzo-soprano reveal a living archive of 21st century fears: we now fear anything from killer bees to pedophiles, deadly diseases and online spying, avian flu, old age and mad cows, immigrants, anthrax, wrinkles, environmental collapse, and, lest we forget, terrorists.

Enthusiastically received by audience and critics during its world premiere as part of the opening festivities at the European Capital of Culture and Cyprus Fringe, the performance explores the concept of fear and its orchestrated manipulation through economic and political forces, its dissemination by the media and its subtle proliferation in contemporary society. The staging blends theater with elements from opera and Lieder and combines stand-up performance with stylized movement to walk the tightrope between our instinctive fears and those amplified and manipulated by our surroundings.

Watch the trailer here:

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“The atmospherically dense staging places us in a vigil state of recognizing a culture of fear everywhere in all its glorification and with all its personal, political and cultural dimension…  …Achim Wieland manages to move this performance in the category of art as a vehicle of reawakening.”  –ANEF Magazine, Christina Georghiou
“An invasive and pervasive testimony.” –TimeOut Magazine

The production as well as some sections of the European project tour are supported by the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture, the Cultural Funding Program of the City of Stuttgart, Diablog.eu, the German Embassy Nicosia, MITOS Center of Performing Arts, Kulturabteilung der Republik Zypern in Berlin,  the University of Nicosia, the Goethe-Institut and Columbia Shipmanagement

Featuring a post-performance discussion on Wednesday, February 17 as part of Theater Scoutings Berlin!

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Inkblot Berlin – Berlin Writers Read

Inkblot Berlin gives you the chance to hear the voices behind the words. Working writers from the city read their drama, poetry and prose.

Formed in the furnace of the writing scene in Berlin, Inkblot seeks to shine a light on what is happening in the writing groups and draughty garrets of this vibrant capital. For this inaugural event we present Mary Kelly, twice published playwright from Dublin, Madhvi Ramani a polymath who writes for children and adults and Ben Maddox, who turns his bitter gaze onto rural life. Let us tell you our stories.

March 2016 International Comedy Showcase

In recent years, Berlin’s transformation into the cultural capital of Europe has also brought about an explosion of English-language comedy.
While most open mics and showcases feature stand-up comedy in bar venues, ETB | IPAC’s monthly International Comedy Showcase combines international headliners with multiple forms of comedy by local artists, including stand-up, short-form and long-form improv as well as musical comedy in our gorgeous 120-seat auditorium.

Featuring stand-up comedy headliner Paco Erhard (Germany), musical comedy by Luke Burrage (UK), cabaret comedy by Otto Kuhnle (Germany) and stand-up comedy by Rohit Bhatia (India), hosted by Paul Salamone (USA)

In cooperation with Egg & Bear Comedy Productions

Watch Paco Erhard on YouTube:

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February 2016 International Comedy Showcase

In recent years, Berlin’s transformation into the cultural capital of Europe has also brought about an explosion of English-language comedy.
While most open mics and showcases feature stand-up comedy in bar venues, ETB | IPAC’s monthly International Comedy Showcase combines international headliners with multiple forms of comedy by local artists, including stand-up, short-form and long-form improv as well as musical comedy in our gorgeous 120-seat auditorium.

Featuring musical comedy headliner Stephen Paul Taylor (Canada), stand-up comedy by Helen Bauer (UK) and Daniel Louis Vezza (USA), improv comedy by Good Luck, Barbara (USA/Canada), hosted by Paul Salamone (USA)

In cooperation with Egg & Bear Comedy Productions

Anthony Marra

THE US EMBASSY LITERATURE SERIES:
Anthony Marra reads from The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories (2015)

$_35Anthoyn Marra´s collection of stories introduces a cast of remarkable characters whose lives intersect in ways both life-affirming and heartbreaking. A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs, deep underneath Leningrad, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina. A chorus of women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled their Siberian mining town. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love. Young men across the former USSR face violence at home and in the military. And great sacrifices are made in the name of an oil landscape unremarkable except for the almost incomprehensibly peaceful past it depicts. In stunning prose, with rich character portraits and a sense of history reverberating into the present, The Tsar of Love and Techno is a captivating work.

Anthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of a National Book Awards Longlist selection, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. He is the winner of a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, The Atlantic’s Student Writing Contest, and the Narrative Prize and his work was anthologized in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow, he now teaches at Stanford University. He has lived and studied in Eastern Europe, and resides in Oakland, CA.
Photo Anthony Marra: Heike Steinweg / Suhrkamp Verlag

Transcendence

Einstein, Kafka and Planck vs. Time, Space and Conventions

World Premiere of a new play by Robert Marc Friedman

ETB_Transcendence7_pic_Gerald_Wesolowski_smallThe foundations of European society were being shaken and World War I was about to deal them a final blow when Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity in Berlin on November 25, 1915 – now even space, time, gravity and the cosmos were no longer what they used to be. Everything seemed to be relative, all conventions were crumbling and God had left the building.

ETB_S+T_Logo_onBlue_small_RGBWithin a few years, Einstein emerged as an internationally-acclaimed scientist comparable to Copernicus or Newton. In Stockholm, however, the Nobel Committee for Physics resisted the massive support for his theories of relativity. What was at stake was whether or not a prize should go to Einstein and his “corrupt Jewish science,” as it was called by those who would soon instigate the next European catastrophe.

At the same time in Prague, Franz Kafka whittled away at the conventions of literature – transforming sons into beetles, examining the fate of people lost in indecipherable bureaucratized societies and making the strange look normal.

Einstein and Kafka met in Prague. They had things in common.

Einstein had been recruited to Berlin by the highly-revered leader of German physics, Max Planck. Beyond their devotion to theoretical physics and classical music, however, they had few things in common.

Transcendence Probe 18.11.15_35 - small

Robert Marc Friedman’s new play tells a tale of strained friendships, the search for new perspectives and scientific integrity against a backdrop of a fierce battle between uncompromising opponents in a decaying society.

ROBERT MARC FRIEDMAN is a scholar and playwright born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York, and now living in Norway. After studying physical sciences and theatre at New York University, he earned a doctorate in history of science at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently professor at University of Oslo and professional member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Friedman researches the history of modern physical and environmental sciences in their social and cultural contexts. Among his numerous publications are Nobel Physics Prize in Perspective in Nature (1981), Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology (1989), and The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prizes in Science (2001). Friedman’s dramatizations of his research include a television film, Vitenskap i motvind (1982), for Norwegian State Broadcasting [NRK] and stageplays performed in several countries: Remembering Miss Meitner (2002), Becoming Albert Einstein (2005), and Amundsen vs Nansen (2011). Friedman’s numerous honors for both scholarly and artistic contributions, include Tetelman Fellow at Yale University (2009) for public understanding of science and the University of Oslo’s Public Outreach [Formidling] Prize (2015). He will be an artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Artist Residency (California) in 2016.
Transcendence Probe 18.11.15_24 - small       Transcendence Probe 18.11.15_17 - small
Pics: Gerald Wesolowski

Mars One – Venus Zero

a one-and-a-half-man show by A Fish Needs A Bicycle exploring the complications of modern masculinity and the recent outbreak of “Meninists”; Men’s Rights activists who troll the Internet to harass women and undermine their rights and progress.

We step into the world of our misguided protagonist, Mike, as he prepares his audition video for the “MARS ONE” space program while pondering the state of the Earth and his fear of the pending female takeover.

MARS ONE – VENUS ZERO sets out to highlight a real and ever present danger using storytelling, live music and emotional statistics.

Gem Andrews

is an English writer, director and professional musician from Liverpool, UK and has been creating work across the UK since 2004. Gem also works within the participatory arts sector between Berlin and Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; facilitating music and writing workshops for young offenders and is particularly interested in creating theater work through the voices of society’s most disenfranchised, in particular the LGBTQ community and the British working classes.

Currently living and working in the Neukölln and Kreuzberg districts of Berlin, Gem’s ongoing projects include writing the score for Chicken Pox Fox’s upcoming play Betsey Ann and promoting her new critically acclaimed album of original songs, Vancouver.

Richard Gibb

Richard Gibb is a theater maker and storyteller from Aberdeen, Scotland and has been creating work in the UK since 2008. In Newcastle, England he was a part of several theater companies that created original and thought provoking work ranging from walkabout festival performances to immersive storytelling theater. In England, Richard also worked for 6 years in the participatory arts sector, using the context of theater to engage with a wide range of people, from children with disabilities, to adults struggling with homelessness.

Richard is most interested in creating work that is original, relevant and engages with the community in which it exists. He currently lives in Prenzlauer Berg and works all over Berlin.

The Story of a Tiger

Nanzikambe Arts (Malawi)

Inspired by the 2011 Malawi protests against the government which resulted in 20 deaths and nearly 100 injuries, leading Malawi theater company Nanzikambe Arts responded with an adaptation of Dario Fo‘s 1978 play La storia della tigre.

Geoffrey Mbene Tiger - Photo by Philipp Hamedl Web

Originally inspired by Fo‘s 1975 trip to China, this dramatic monologue tells the story of a revolutionary Chinese solider wounded during Mao‘s Long March and left to die by his comrades. Nursed back to health by a mother tiger, he returns to civilization determined to cure its ills.

In Thokozani Kapiri‘s international adaptation intended for both African and European audiences, Geoffrey Mbene provides a tour-de-force performance relying heavily on pantomime and physical theater.

This production of The Story of a Tiger, commissioned by Theater Konstanz as part of its three-year partnership with Nanzikambe Arts – Crossing Borders, von See zu See – received 10 different presentations in Germany in 2012. It was also performed at Mwezi Wawala International Arts Festival, Blantyre Arts Festival and Malawi Cultural Arts Festival, in Austria and in Ireland in 2013.

Photo by Philipp Hamedl

Women On A Mound

A woman is on stage.

 

What do we notice? What do we like? What do we see? Who is she? Does she have ambition? Does she belong? What is her status? Did she party last night?

Should she tell us a story? Sing a song?

 

Women on a Mound is a theatrical experiment, a choose-your-own-adventure inspired experience.

 

The performer asks questions. The audience answers. Partially improvised, part game show, part monologue.

Let’s get to know her. Would she complain if she was on the middle seat of a plane?

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

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Gillian Grassie

When Grammy-winner Marc Cohn first saw her perform, he called himself “an instant Gillian Grassie fan,” observing, “it’s rare to hear a young singer with such control and understated soulfulness, and even more rare to hear a harp provide such a deep percussive groove. I was immediately captivated by her sound.” Traveling the world with her harp on her back and her heart on her sleeve, Gillian’s music challenges the conventions of her instrument and showcases a knack for “turning seemingly insignificant events […] into songs worthy of everyone’s attention,” (Origivation Magazine).

Her innovative use of the harp, expressive vocals, and sophisticated but accessible songwriting have earned her grants from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation and the U.S. State Department, a slew of awards, and the fervent support of her fans, who collectively funded Grassie’s second album, The Hinterhaus, produced by Todd Sickafoose (Andrew Bird, Ani DiFranco, Erin McKeown, Anaïs Mitchell). Grassie graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Comparative Literature. A natural storyteller, her music is often inspired by literary works and has been featured on radio, film, and television. She has toured across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia at performances ranging from a moving train in Mumbai, to a private gala for HRH Prince Albert of Monaco, to an opening slot for Amanda Palmer and a sold out club in Siberia.

One fan described her as “an awesome combination of Pippi Longstocking, drinking buddy and the Mata Hari. Trust me, you never saw anything like this.” A Philadelphia native, she currently hangs her hat in Berlin.

With support act Hannes Maschado

SupportHannes Maschado is a 27 years old singer/songwriter born and raised in Sweden, based in Berlin. His music is best described as “Scandinavian Blues”- rooted in traditional African-American folk with clear, typical nordic melancholic themes and lyrics.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch Gillian Grassie on YouTube:

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