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International Performing Arts Center




Blog Archive

When I Was Old/When I Get Young

A 100-year-long life span of who we are, here, right now

A special community performance, where a small group of local residents (from Berlin but not from
Berlin) will step out onto the stage.

From newborn baby to senior citizen, the project weaves together personal reflections and ambitions, past and future lives; to create a story of a lifetime.

When I Was Old/When I Get Young was originally conceived in response to William Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” speech and captures what we’ve come to understand about being human.

Women Who Changed The World

A surreal cabaret duet

Opera Chaotique and their utterly unique crossover cabaret show pay homage to the lives of Camille Claudel, Nina Simone, Isidora Duncan, Sarah Kane and many others which are interrelated with the Voodoo Drummer’s governess and Tenorman‘s psychiatrist in an exciting and as always revealing post-surreal humorous show!

 

Noraland

the freedom of darkness

A long fascination with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House sends Orlando and Shlomo on a journey to Noraland by searching after their own reflections in the play.

Are we trapped in our own perception of our lives? Could we really ever follow Nora’s footsteps and achieve independence? Are we willing to pay such a high price? Is it possible for a male performer to step into Nora’s shoes?

A colorful interpretation of the exciting yet fearful moment when one is standing in the darkness behind a closed door without knowing where to go.

The 2018 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion: A Showcase of Wahlberliner

SAVE THE DATES!

The 2018 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion Festival will be take place from Sunday, April 22 through Saturday, April 28, 2018!

Complete program and ticket information will be online soon; and here is the complete schedule of programming:

 

ExpLoRE (April 22)

Gruesome Manifesto – Cher Nobyl

The Living And Our Ghosts – Noirphiles (Adrian Marie Blount)

Dancing With The Shadows – A Work In Progress – Julia Vandehof & Company

The Hearing Test – Shanti Suki Osman

Brunch Lady – Katie-Rose Spence

integrate ‘er – Iva Topolovec and Salber Williams

We Can Do It Moaning – ABA NAIA

Monday, April 23

Noraland – LeinzLieberman

Tuesday, April 24

When I Was Old/When I Get Young – Lucy Ellinson

Women Who Changed The World – Opera Chaotique

Wednesday, April 25

We Just Moved You – Alissa Rubinstein

Thursday, April 26

Landscapes Of My Inner Diaspora – Rosalie Wanka

Unfolding Universe – Heiner&Lindsig

Friday, April 27

Firewater – Tape Version

Menu – Ethan Folk and Ty Wardwell

Saturday, April 28

Skin Deep In Zaraniya – //slasheverything

Star Captain: Through The Dark You’ll Find The Light – Miss Natasha Enquist

2018 Expo Info Abend and Artists Mixer

Calling all Berlin-based performing artists! We’re holding an information night and artist mixer for our annual festival! Come by on Tuesday, January 9 beginning at 7pm to meet potential collaborators, see our space and find out everything you need to know to apply to have your work included in the festival! Over the past five years, numerous Expo productions have been created as a result of artists meeting at the festival’s Info Abend and deciding to make new work together.

The Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion: A Showcase of Wahlberliner is an annual festival conceived and curated by Daniel Brunet that debuted in 2013. We put our Miete where our mouth is with this festival featuring our most important resource – the community of international artists and the English-language Freie Szene.

Over six evenings, the Expo features a curated selection of one or two professional performances per evening on our stage (in every genre imaginable) and on Sunday, April 22, we invite you to ExpLoRE, the format for newcomers, featuring 10 shorter performances and work-in-progress taking place throughout our entire facility, from our stage to our dressing rooms to our breathtaking courtyard.

The 2018 edition of the festival will be held from April 22 – 28, 2018.

This year, we’re looking to showcase one or two professional productions by Berlin-based artists each evening from Monday, April 23 through Saturday, April 28. Works should be between approximately 45 and 105 minutes in length.

We can also consider shorter works for performance throughout our facility or courtyard during the day on April 22, 2018.

Learn more about the festival and see the lineup from last year right here!

Applications for the 2018 Expat Expo are due by midnight on Monday, January 30, 2018 and the complete lineup will be announced on or about February 15, 2018.

When I See You I Think of…Dentist

A search for identity

Life is weird, mine is too. My passport says I’m British. But I was born here. My parents are British. My name is as well. My first language is German. I think it’s easier than English. People in the UK call me “the German”. People in Germany call me “the English girl”. I’m confused. What am I? Where do I belong? And where am I?…..ahh, no I know where I am. Leeds. West Yorkshire. England. But what does it take to be British? To become British?

This theater performance deals with the feeling of belonging somewhere – or not.

2017 EXP(L)O(RE)

A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY
This format opens the festival and is dedicated to newcomers, shorter performances and work-in-progress. Spend an entire afternoon taking in twelve performances on stage, in dressing rooms and all around the theater. In between the performances, you can enjoy fantastic food, luxurious libations and magnificent music by international, Berlin-based musicians. Performances start at 2pm and we open our doors at 1pm.

 

AHNENAMT/MINISTRY FOR ANCESTORS by Club Real (Austria)

This long-term project about a new aesthetic practice of elective kinship is a scenic installation – a parallel reality which needs to be entered by visitors to come to life. It examines a new cultural practice: the possibility to adopt an ancestor.

 

 

 

 

CARLOS WHISPER by Katie Lee Dunbar (UK)

A one-on-one performance in which individual audience members are whisked off into a sonic wonderland, all centered around a table of seemingly random objects. The connections are only made clear once you put the headphones on.

 

 

 

 

EPILOGUE by Noemi Berkowitz (USA/Poland)

What might life after death look like… and what implications would that have for life before death? In this two-woman play, a girl finds pieces of herself in stories from across the world and across time. A performance about the ways we develop in our journeys forward.

 

 

 

 

HYO (효) by Haenny Park (South Korea)

This piece was inspired by a famous Korean folktale, very often told to the artist by her father as a child. It tells the story of a son who digs up a grave to steal a human leg, which he will use to save his dying mother.

 

 

 

 

I DON’T WEAR SKIRTS BECAUSE I NEVER LEARNED TO CROSS MY LEGS by Angela Millano (Spain)

This performance is a protest against the normalization, legislation and control of our bodies and the need to fulfill standards perceived as natural. It is a rebellion by a vulnerable and violent body that feels beyond the social, professional and personal limitations imposed on it.

 

 

 

 

INTIMATE ARSENAL (A QUARTET) by Claudia Grigg Edo (UK/Catalonia)

Sit down at the table. On the other side of the table is HER. Stay with her as she navigates one of four situations. If you like, you can watch it loop round again in this interactive video projection.

 

 

 

 

LATENT DREAMS by Katrine Turner (Scotland)

This performance is about the Apocalypse. About the rising sea waters, and the invisible plagues. About when Cillian wakes up from his coma, and there’s no one about so he breaks into a vending machine for a can of Coke. About the futures we allow ourselves to envision.

 

 

 

 

MOUTH CONTROL by MILK (USA)

Sometimes it’s easier to be honest when no one is around. We are more open in text messages and status updates than we are in face-to-face interactions with others. In Mouth Control, we ask the audience to test the limitations of distance and vulnerability in real time. We invite you to play a game with us.

 

 

 

 

SKEWED by Shanti Suki Osman (UK)

A solo performance using song, storytelling and sound. Using live and prerecorded voice and field recordings, Shanti
Suki Osman presents 4 songs documenting her exploration of self-fetishization as a means for empowerment.

 

 

 

 

SWEETS FOR A STORY by Bees Knees Sweets (Canada)

An exploration of connecting with strangers and their stories using food as a catalyst. Food is universal. It’s something we all want and need as human beings, and therefore is something that unites us as people. Food can tell our stories, as well as inspire them.

 

 

 

 

THE FOURTH UNITY by Renen Itzhaki (Israel)

A room. A bookshelf. A small group of people. They walk in circles. They are all one. They read a book. Sometimes out loud. Sometimes they stop. Sometimes a memory.

 

 

 

 

THE WHEEL by Connecting Fingers (UK/Italy)

From the script by philosopher Sara Fortuna, inspired by Dogville from Lars von Trier, four dancers explore a circular conceptual space organized in several steps in this work-in-progess showing: sleep/pre-birth/origin, child-like openness to the adult world in its tensions, contradictions, competitions, failures and eventual coming back to the starting point.

Clowns’ Houses

Puppet theater for adults by Merlin Puppet Theatre

One building, five apartments, six characters. The audience watches them live their conventional lives in a dark, claustrophobic setting, with their fears, obsessions and loneliness.

Merlin Puppet Theatre dramatizes and demonizes their obsessions until they finally punish and liberate them in the most violent manner. They do not attempt to do existential analysis through their work. Instead, they examine modern way of living in its current form. The loneliness of modern humanity is displayed through the dark rooms of Clowns’ Houses; prison-like houses, people trapped in their routines and habits, far from their dreams.

L’ART ET LA MANIÈRE and PLANTING MEMORIES

Two dance theater performances

L’art et la manière explores the relationship between everyday movements and artistic actions in an engaging, fun and critical way. Through this this interactive dialogue with the audience, Marie questions her identity as an interpreter, a woman and the role artists have in society.

Planting Memories is a dance duet that explores the concepts of personal space and identity. Drawing inspiration from their own lives, Marie and Paula relate personal memories through text and images. By plunging into a surreal world, this piece guides the audience through a personal journey in which the unfolding of the past enables the present.

Shlomo’s Friends

Every immigrant has to form new relationships.

So did Shlomo Lieberman when he came to Berlin.

In this performance, he invites new friends to present ancient texts related to his name twin, King Solomon. These texts deal with love, desire, decency, morality and posing disturbing questions about the meaning of life.

Friends are asked to choose from these texts, to perform them as they see fit and to offer a new understanding of them. The mission is to create a new emotional landscape on the background of an old one in which people can become friends.