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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

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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October 2015 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 double headliners (stand-up) Sarah Franken (USA/UK) and Daniel-Ryan Spaulding (Canada), hosted and curated by Paul Salamone (USA)

Celebrity Bound

Do you want to be famous? Do you want to be a star?

Success. Access. Excess. All of it can be yours.

You were born famous. It’s just that no one knows it yet.

Fashion. Fortune. Freedom. All of it is yours.

You don’t create fame. Fame creates you.

But do you have what it takes?

The trick. The secret. The rule book.

USA bred writer-director, Catherine Duquette, has the secret. In her interactive, one-woman show, Celebrity Bound, she’ll show you how it’s done. Over the course of three nights, blending movement, video, scripted and improvised text, as well as audience interaction, a star will be born. Who will it be? Perhaps YOU are the next hot celebrity.

Watch the trailer here:

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In a time dominated by social media, rapid data consumption and curated identities, Berlin-based performer and writer <strong>Catherine Duquette</strong> strives for closeness and connection. She specializes in audience-performer relationships, movement and improvisational scores. Her performances exact moments of heightened awareness and honesty on stage in an effort to dissolve the barriers that shape how we perceive and (dis)connect with the world around us. Her solo work has been supported by MOMENTUM Berlin, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, a Fulbright Fellowship in Spain, the International Festival of the Delphic Games in Greece and the Subterranean Art House in Berkeley, California. Catherine studied theater at Arizona State University and the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England. She earned her master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University prior to relocating to Germany. Despite frequent moves, Catherine calls the Sonoran Desert of Arizona home.

Tom Leveen

 The U.S. Embassy Literature Series

Tom Leveen reads from his young adult novel Random (Ich hätte es wissen sollen, Hanser Verlag)

Random

Who’s the real victim here? A tense and gripping exploration of cyberbullying and teen suicide.

Late at night Tori receives a random phone call. It’s a wrong number. But the caller seems to want to talk, so she stays on the line. He asks for a single thing—one reason not to kill himself.

The request plunges her into confusion. Because if this random caller actually does what he plans, he’ll be the second person connected to Tori to take his own life. And the first just might land her in jail. After her Facebook page became Exhibit A in a tragic national news story about cyberbullying, Tori can’t help but suspect the caller is a fraud. But what if he’s not? Her words alone may hold the power of life or death.

With the clock ticking, Tori has little time to save a stranger—and maybe redeem herself—leading to a startling conclusion that changes everything.

 

 

Tom Leveen is the author of Random, Sick, manicpixiedreamgirl, Party, and Zero (a YALSA Best Book of 2013). A frequent speaker at schools and conferences, Tom was previously the artistic director and co-founder of an all-ages, non-profit visual and performing venue in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is an Arizona native, where he lives with his wife and young son.

September 2015 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 by Johnny Armstrong (UK), improv comedy by Good Luck, Barbara (USA/Canada), featuring headliner Imaan Hadchiti (Australia), hosted and curated by Paul Salamone (USA)

Watch the Imaan Hadchiti on YouTube:

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A Date With Catherine Duquette

A Date With Catherine Duquette is a live game / an improvised speed-dating event / a quest to find love in one hour or less!

This participatory performance explores love and attraction and the personas by which we pursue them. Catherine Duquette has created four distinct dating profiles based on four personas abstracted from her everyday identity.

YOU the audience are her date. You are full of possibility. You are an invitation for an intimate encounter, self-projection, or an awkward exchange. YOU the audience are also her competition. You are her gauge. You are an invitation for self-evaluation and self-deprecation.

YOU shape the way Catherine’s story unfolds. Laugh, lie, dance, and sigh. Expect to make one hot mess. Together, you and Catherine will explore the modern search for timeless romance.

—
This work springs from the idea that social media and online dating sites have changed the way many of us look at love. Such platforms have created a hypermarket of desire, where users perform agency in the vast assemblage of potential mates. Users curate personal profiles, often tendering the best, most marketable versions of themselves, while identifying desirable partner attributes and browsing their options. Despite a clear commodification of self and relationships, we cannot dismiss online romance altogether as a mere commodified process of the “real thing”. In fact, its systems of commodification may help us understand and come to terms with the exact nature of attraction and the complexities of self-identification. Join Catherine to navigate love through a contemporary lens.

In a time dominated by social media, rapid data consumption and curated identities, Berlin-based performer and writer Catherine Duquette strives for closeness and connection. She specializes in audience-performer relationships, movement and improvisational scores. Her performances exact moments of heightened awareness and honesty on stage in an effort to dissolve the barriers that shape how we perceive and (dis)connect with the world around us. Her solo work has been supported by MOMENTUM Berlin, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, a Fulbright Fellowship in Spain, the International Festival of the Delphic Games in Greece and the Subterranean Art House in Berkeley, California. Catherine studied theater at Arizona State University and the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England. She earned her master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University prior to relocating to Germany. Despite frequent moves, Catherine calls the Sonoran Desert of Arizona home.

ISAAC’S EYE

by Lucas Hnath

Sex, drugs & science in the 17th century

Three additional performances of the best science comedy out there!

Watch the video trailer HERE

Isaac-Logan2Isaac Newton wants to become a member of the Royal Society. Robert Hooke wants to know what Newton knows. Catherine wants to have a family. The guy with the plague wants to stay alive. They conduct a risky experiment.

Afterwards, Newton doesn’t know any more than before but Hooke gets his sex diary back, Catherine’s skepticism is stronger than ever and the guy with the plague is dead.

Science moves in mysterious ways.

Isaac’s Eye mixes the facts of Isaac Newton’s life with an equal dose of fiction to explore what great people are willing to sacrifice to become great people.

It puts the history of science onstage, juxtaposing historical characters and facts with our 21st century based projection of them.

“I tend to write plays about people who are trying to do something that is impossible or nearly impossible. I’m interested in people who are trying to accomplish things that very few people will ever accomplish. … Huge ambition brings with it aspects of wonder, high stakes, and danger. But even more interesting than that, when you combine enormous ambitions with the small conflicts we experience everyday, the ordinary becomes illuminated. There’s a Virginia Woolf quote that I like very much: The paraphernalia of reality have at certain moments to become the veil through which we see infinity. We are neither roused nor puzzled; we do not have to ask ourselves, What does this mean? We feel simply that the thing we are looking at is lit up, and its depths revealed. Conflating the mythic with the miniscule has become my strategy for piercing Woolf’s veil.”    Lucas Hnath

10SNAPSHOT-popup-e1360599957609-300x206Lucas Hnath is one of the most promising voices in contemporary US theater. His other plays include Death Tax, NightNight, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney , Red Speedo and The Christians. A resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011, Lucas Hnath has enjoyed playwriting residencies with The Royal Court Theatre, London and 24Seven Lab, New York. He is a two-time winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for his feature-length screenplays, The Painting, the Machine and the Apple and Still Life. He received both his BFA and MFA from NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing and is a lecturer in NYU’s Expository Writing Program.

ETB_SuT_Logo_onWhite_small_RGBIsaac’s Eye is part five of Science&Theatre, a collaboration of English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center with Prof. Dr. Regine Hengge (Institute for Biology/Microbiology at the Humboldt University Berlin) and her team of young scientists.

Photo Lucas Hnath: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times  | Production photo: Casey Tower

Knick-Knack to the Future | Ruckzuck in die Zukunft (copy & waste)

off-site performance with limited seating!

ruckzuck – cupcakes & time travel | skalitzer strasse 133, Berlin (Kreuzberg)

Performance in English and German
August 27 (World Premiere) – 30, 2015 | 8pm
September 3 – 6, 10 – 12, 2015 | 8pm

Ruckzuck Concept Store Business Hours
August 28 – 30, 2015 | 3 – 7pm
September 3 – 6, 10 – 12, 2015 | 3 – 7pm

The project focuses on the processes of urban development using the Back to the Future movie trilogy as its point of departure.

In Back to the Future, Part II, the teenager Marty McFly travels to the future in a souped-up sports car and lands in 2015. There not only does Marty encounter holograms, hoverboards and his thirty-year older self; the city of Hill Valley is also wholly transformed.

The real 2015 may not look so futuristic, but cities have still changed immensely. Some neighborhoods have become impoverished while others have appreciated tremendously in value. And some impoverished neighborhoods are experiencing this appreciation right now.

First come the artists and studios, followed by the students and the cupcake cafés and then the well-to-do and boutiques. And this process takes place over increasingly shorter periods of time.

copy & waste intends to open a fictional store, a concept store: Ruckzuck – Cupcakes & Time Travel. Here customers can enjoy cupcakes and cappuccino in a Back to the Future ambiance – during the day. At night, the store also offers time travel. Like Marty McFly, the visitors can travel to the past or dash to the future to prevent certain things from happening – or from not happening.

The basic question in all of this is: what kind of city do we want to live in?

ETB_KnickKnack_VisuQuer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Featuring a post-performance discussion on Friday, September 4 as part of Theater Scoutings Berlin!

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The project Knick-Knack to the Future | Ruckzuck in die Zukunft is a co-production of the art collective copy & waste and English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center. This project is funded by Regierenden Bürgermeister von Berlin – Senatskanzlei – Kulturelle Angelegenheiten and by the Konzeptionsförderung of Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. – aus Mitteln des Bundes as well as the festival steirischer herbst Graz and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr.

Berliner Senat       Fonds_DaKu_lg_KF_4c                  

 

Teresa Bergman Trio

Teresa Bergman is not your average girly with a guitar.

With a powerful and versatile voice akin to that of Adele or Zaz, funky guitar grooves reminiscent of Ani di Franco and Wallis Bird, and a level of musical sophistication likened to Sophie Hunger and Fiona Apple – this is a front frau to watch out for! Live on stage, and on her new album “Bird of a Feather” the singer-songwriter from New Zealand has created an eclectic stylistic fusion of acoustic-folk, funk and jazz.

Bergman’s sound incorporates a twist of nearly everything – drawing inspiration from the world of blues, scat-improvisation, swing, chanson, cabaret and good quality pop. Warm acoustic guitar tones support an incredibly astute vocal approach. From soaring heights to soul dripping depths, the dynamism of Bergman’s music and live performances is infectious.

Bergman will be accompanied by her trusty Trio, with funk-fusion bassist Frank Schulze and percussive Picasso Alex Skoczowky on the drums.

August 2015 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 headliner Tamika Campbell (USA), musical comedy by Tim Whelan (UK), stand-up comedy by Captain Khalid (Tanzania) and improv comedy by Good Luck, Barbara (Berlin), hosted and curated by Paul Salamone (USA)

Watch <strong>Tamika Campbell</strong> on YouTube:

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