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Talking Heads

Three people, three stories – and the abyss they have to face.

” It´s fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking brilliant.” (Jacinta Nandi in her EXBERLINER blog)

Talking-Heads-Large_Web ENGLISH THEATRE BERLIN presents three pieces from Bennett´s brilliant and masterful Talking Heads, a series of poignant yet hilarious monologues peeling back the veneer of respectability to revel in – and of course laugh at – the private foibles of everyday life. These tales of loneliness and eccentricity range from hilariously funny to bitingly satirical to poignantly reflective, sometimes all in the same monologue.

Alan Bennett wrote the first six pieces in the mid 80s for BBC-TV, where they became a huge success and received several prestigious awards. More than ten years later, another six monologues followed, and this time Alan Bennett confronted his protagonists with severer problems like murder, or a husband who is into S/M. English Theatre Berlin presents three of the later pieces: The Outside Dog, Playing Sandwiches and Nights in the Gardens of Spain.

Bridge Markland: faust in the box

faust_in_the_box Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust as a one-woman-show featuring hand puppets and pop music. With an intense physicality, Bridge Markland performs high speed changes between Mephisto, Faust and Margarete/Gretchen using the puppets as her opponents. She acts to a sound collage made up of the text of the play and popular music from different generations.

“… With almost demonic facial twitches and contortions, she paints a Joker-like, mad… world, changing between the three characters of Faust, Mephistopheles and Gretchen …” BBC Scotland

“… it works so well I became fascinated to see and hear just what was about to happen next. … It is superbly performed and very very cleverly written and designed …”
www.one4review.co.uk

“… The parallels between the well known text and it’s translation into pop songs of the past four decades are impressive and funny at the same time. Bridge Markland walks on the rather narrow edge between modern debate and persiflage. When Margaret recognises at the end that she is on AC/DCs “Highway to hell”, this borderline finally becomes blurred in a great and new attempt to interpret the classic for many generations. This comprehensive attempt was successful. “ Mannheimer Morgen

Bridge Markland, the Berlin dance-theatre performance artist, is a virtuoso in role-play and transformation. An artist who effortlessly crosses the boundaries between sub- and high culture, between dance, theatre, performance, children’s – and puppet-theater.

faust in the box saw several successful international tours over the years

Photo: Dirk Holtkamp-Endemann

ACILE IN WNOEDRLNAD

ENGLISH COMMUNITY THEATRE

presents its version of Lewis Carroll´s classic tale

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re more than a little curious. But are you ready to take a tumble? Who knows where you’ll end up – this is Wonderland after all. We’ve all been following our own White Rabbits and we’re all simply terrified of the Queen of Hearts. Or are we? Saying what we mean is the same thing as meaning what we say, isn’t it? Mind the step or you’ll lose your mind. Enjoy the pepper, play croquet, try your best to speak the right way. Avoid the time, don’t cry when you’re sad, don’t talk to the Hatter or you’ll see that he’s mad. But you can’t help that – we’re all mad here… The day you become Alice is a very special day indeed.

“It all started long before I came here … It started all in my mind … It started with a magic speell…”

“My first impression of Wonderland was absolute freedom.”

Acile_web1 “The first thing was the cold. Minus 14, bone chilling cold. I waited by the station watching the glide, almost silently along the tracks. I had forgotten the instructions. I didn´t know what train to get and i´d worn entirely the wrong kind of shoes.”

“I first came to Wonderland with friends in 1986 when I was still in High School.”

Top photo: Thomas Farr / all other photos: Hannes Frueh

till someone sneezes

Berlin International Youth Theatre´s 2012 show

loosely based on The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

The Skin of our Teeth, written in 1942, a time of strife for many people in the world, was meant to be a tribute to human endurance. In the original play, at the center is a family facing one apocalyptic catastrophe after another,

But in looking at the play through the eyes of an adolescent, the word “catastrophe” has different connotations.

How will the family survive when everyone is so preoccupied with pizza ? Does Playstation really help in times of panic? And why do the actors keep on interrupting the show? And what have they got against Guinea pig?

Although warned in the daily news of the coming Hurricane, epidemic or war, the family becomes caught up in their own personal problems making their chances of survival look – not very good.

BIYT has turned this classic play into a dark comedy full of Simpson-like symbolism and created another one of their signature epics.

The play bounces and boings with the ingenious music of Natalia Lincoln and whimsical design of Silie Heeschen and a cast a talented youth ages 11-17 from 9 different countries. An event for the whole family – or not.

Between

Fourword Productions (South Africa)

Lost somewhere between love and lust – a man, a boy, a couple, a teacher and his student .

When is sex exciting, slightly naughty, arousing and playful?
How does sex suddenly turn into a ritual, an act, a sacrifice… into emotional pain form which there is no coming back? An emotional dead end from which a relationship is hard pressed to return from.
Three separate, yet suggestively interlinked, stories explore how love can transcend sexual boundaries and what happens when the love disappears and the loss becomes acute.

Between has been nominated for two prizes at the 2012 Dublin Gay Theatre Festival: The Oscar Wilde Award for Best writing (Oskar Brown) and The Micheal Mac Liammoir Award for Best Male Performance (Nick Campbell)

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

William Shakespeare

I, Ca$$ie… or The End of Days

by Matthew Earnest

cassie3 “Hi, I’m Ca$$ie, standard-bearer of the apocalypse! May I take your order?”

Inspired by Cassandra, the shrill prophet of doom from Greek mythology, Matthew Earnest’s piece features Ca$$ie – head cheerleader, homecoming queen, and soon-to-be-named valedictorian of Troy High School – doing community service hours in a fast food drive-thru. Ca$$ie is on probation for driving drunk after last week’s homecoming game, and ever since the resulting car accident that injured most of her friends and put her brother Hector in a coma, Ca$$ie has been having “the freakiest dreams,” horrifying visions about the end of the world. The most persistent one, about a tall horse at the gate, is especially annoying, and all Ca$$ie really wants is sleep.

“Somebody please just pour gasoline on my life and strike a match.”

Impervious to her nightmares, Ca$$ie files her nails, plays war games on her phone, calls her friends and takes orders at the cell-like window of the drive-thru. She has no idea that this night will be her last. After a series of economic meltdowns, brazen displays of breathtaking greed and corruption, and massive cuts in education to fund imperialistic wars, her formerly great nation is vulnerable and ill equipped for the modern world. Armageddon is encroaching just outside. The riots and looting have already begun. Great cities are in flames from coast to coast. The bankers and congressmen are already tanning on the beaches of Caribbean resort communities. And this is where it all ends: with a spoiled, oblivious teenager in a disposable building.

The First Time

Close your eye. Close them.
Can you remember it like it was yesterday, or is everything blurred and indistinct?

Your first day at school?
Your first bike?
Your first kiss?
Your first dance?
Your first job?
Your first fight?
Your first love?
Your first hate?

The winners were:

Golden Gates by Rosie Skan

My First Apocalypse by Maxwell Flaum

The Red Couch by Marie Franz

Spin the World Around by Kate McCane

Authorization Breakdown by Martin Esters

Erika Hughes studied at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts/Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the University of Wisconsin. She has over fifteen years of experience as a director, designer and performer.

Designer Jeans Genes

Biopolitical scenarios from a terribly blessed future

Will synthetic biology provide us with ”improved” children, never-seen-before pets and ideal partners? Will we no longer accept our naturally-given characteristics, but rather enhance ourselves to become an ideal version of ourselves to reach our goals in life? Will the genetically engineered, beautified and improved half of humanity rule, while the other not so fortunate (or rich) half serves? Will we be able to eradicate deadly genetic diseases?

The answers to these and similar questions will come not in some distant utopia, but within our lifetimes. There will be unpredictable social consequences and challenges that our children will soon have to deal with. In the Science&Theatre school project ‘Designer Jeans Genes‘, some of them are already starting today!

The project was part of SCIENCE & THEATRE 2012 and consisted of performances and an exhibition exploring synthetic biology, developed by students of Heinrich-Schliemann-Gymnasium, Humboldt-Gymnasium, and Leibniz-Schule.

supported by

The exhibition on genetic experiments and artistic studies of the DNA as well as ethical viewpoints on the subject by students of the three schools opens on February 6 at 6pm and is open on performance days one hour before showtime until March 10th.

„Vielen Dank für dieses Erlebnis! Es sollte viel mehr solche Projekte geben die den Schülern nicht nur Englisch und Schauspielern beibringen, sondern sie auch noch mit einem so komplexen Thema vertraut machen. Die Debatte über die Gentechnik ist ideologisch so aufgeladen und die Vorurteile in den Köpfen sind so festgefahren, dass es mich sehr verblüfft hat mit welcher Offenheit und Sachlichkeit die Schüler an dieses Thema herangegangen sind. Aus dieser Offenheit kamen sehr phantasievolle und interessante Ansätze die mich wirklich begeistert haben. Solche Erfolge haben wir mit vielen Jahren Aufklärung in Schulen nicht erreicht! Euch ist es gelungen, die Wissenschaft zum Thema der Schüler zu machen und nicht zu einem Lehrfach in der Schule. Ich wäre sehr froh, wenn man so etwas auch für die Grüne Gentechnik machen könnte.“ – Inge Broer, Professorin für Agrobiotechnologie und Begleitforschung zur Bio- und Gentechnologie, Agrar-und umweltwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Rostock

Photograph 51

by ANNA ZIEGLER

A science play about a revolutionary discovery – and how the boys took over

In the early 1950s the young Jewish scientist Rosalind Franklin had to struggle with a frustratingly male-dominated science establishment at King´s College in London. Some of her colleagues even refused to acknowledge her doctoral title, while access to the faculty club, which was reserved to men, remained denied to her.

After months of work, she succeeded in taking the X-ray photograph that became the turning point for elucidating the DNA double helical structure: photograph 51. However, the credit for this revolutionary scientific discovery was given to the men who used the picture without her knowledge; Franklin´s crucial contribution went unacknowledged for decades.

When James Watson, Francis Crick and Franklin´s colleague Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel prize in 1962, she had been dead for four years.

In a nutshell, Anna Ziegler‘s play shows the making of an outstanding scientific discovery in a bone-dry, ritualized and women-excluding male establishment, in which an emotional minefield, social coldness and hierarchies, antisemitism and ferocious fighting for recognition and scientific priority went hand-in-hand with scientific curiosity, meticulousness and juvenile enthusiasm. (in 1952, James Watson was just 24 years old, Rosalind Franklin was 32 !).

Photograph 51 was the third production in our Science & Theatre program.

Supported by Druck

Image: Magnus Hengge / Photos: Christian Jungeblodt

Dark

by S. D. Clifford

Dark_Web Here is Terry, an obsessive-compulsive depressive with a fear of light. In order to cope with the terror of everyday living he forces himself to remain in an almost constant self-induced psychosis, maintaining only impersonal superficial relationships with inanimate objects like his boots and radio.

Terry´s world comes crashing down when out of the blue he is informed that he is to be executed with immediate effect. He is also given the task of organizing it himself. This includes the execution, the funeral and the payment of his outstanding debts.

But there is nothing to fear. There never has been.