etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

2016 EXP(L)O(RE)

New this year is ExpLoRE, a format for newcomers, shorter performances and work-in-progress. Spend an entire afternoon taking in nine performances on stage, in dressing rooms and in our beautiful courtyard.

In between the performances, you can enjoy fantastic food, luxurious libations and magnificent music by international, Berlin-based musicians.

2pm (Studio) WORK IN PROGRESS by 6 Hours Theatre Group
Directed by Amy Nolan (Ireland) | Written by Alejandro Niklison (Argentina) | With Alejandro Niklison, Alan Ward (Australia) and Jinzhao Wang (China)

2:45pm (Main Stage) RIGHT ON! by Daniela Marcozzi
Concept, Performance and Co-Direction by Daniela Marcozzi (Italy) | Co-Direction and Artistic Collaboration by Peter Rose (USA)

3:30pm (Studio) ZYGOTE CRISIS by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff
Written and Directed by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff (Canada)

4:15pm (Main Stage) IVO by 3LK
Written by Billy MacKinnon (Scotland) | Directed by Emily Kuhnke (Germany) | Performed by Tizo All (Brazil)

5pm (Studio) BABA by Gabrielle Miller
With Gabrielle Miller (Australia), Lola Fonseque (France), Zoya Godoroja-Prieckaerts (Australia/Russia) and Youka Snell (Australia, Japan)

5:45pm (Main Stage) BRUTAL ARCHITECTURE by Tegan Ritz McDuffie
Text by Keller Easterling (USA) | Directed by Tegan Ritz McDuffie (USA) | Design by Julius Zimmermann (Germany) | With Sura Hertzberg (USA), Marcus O’Shea (Australia), Nadine Trushina (Russia)

Eight individual performances THIS IS MINE. WHAT’S YOURS? by Lauren Hart
Devised and Performed by Lauren Hart (England) | Project Management by Normen Skok (Germany)

Durational (Dressing Room) HAPPINESS IS MORE IMPORTANT TO ME THAN ART by Kate McCane
Created and Performed by Kate McCane (Australia) | Found Sound Compiled, Arranged and Edited by Kate McCane

Durational (Dressing Room) ANCHORS by Jennifer Williams
Jennifer Williams (Australia)

 

 

The Present Imperfect

This is a coming of age story. At age 47.

Once upon a time, there was an Italian adventurer who sailed the Pacific and fell in love with a Tongan princess. They moved to Australia, where they raised a family to help demystify the culture (sport) and food (vegemite) shock. It took them 20 years and 4 children to begin to understand the language (lingo). One of their daughters was very interested in drama and language and bossing people around. She grew up to be a talented and exciting young actress and was headed for glory…just when life happened. Dammit!

That girl is now an ESL (English as a second language) teacher in Berlin who has taught the present perfect tense over and over for/during/since the past 200 years and is now well and truly over it.

Fiona is a full time professional foreigner, wife and mother who is sometimes also an actor, writer and English teacher. She has always tried to be respectful and forgiving, and understanding, and patient and tolerant and knowledgeable about her own cultures and her husband’s culture and each of her kids’ cultures, and of her new culture with its many rules; as well as being mindful of her kid’s feelings, and her neighbors feelings and even the feelings of her old drama school classmate Cate Blanchett. But now…she’s over it!

In this uplifting, amusing and soul searching autobiographic solo show, Fiona takes us on a world tour of her extremely questionable, crazy and ever-challenging life. Journeying through some of her favorite countries and introducing us to a myriad of delicious characters she reveals some of her most colorful stories and demonstrates why she is just so over teaching the present perfect, learning German articles, parenting third culture kids and teenagers in Berlin, dealing with female civil servants in Italy, attending international school PTA meetings in India…and saying “Si” to Cate’s stupid Armani ad. She is definitely over that!

Now work in groups to the find examples of the present perfect tense, the meaning of the phrasal verb “I’m over it” and any hints of desperation in the above life description.

Lovers 1

Two male performers explore the connection between them in a partially realistic, partially dreamlike surrounding.

They are blindfolded. Each one of them has a different mission: one has to carry the other and the other has to be carried. They repeat this procedure as a ritual they cannot avoid until it is exhausted.

The connection between the performers shifts between a range of aspects: it is romantic, sexual, aggressive, brotherly and existential. They address each other with gestures which are not aesthetic but instead searching for the pure motivation which lies behind them.

The goal of this work is to distill “love” into basic physical performances in order to reveal its actual mechanism.

“No purpose intervenes between I and You, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.”  ― Martin Buber, I and Thou

The ReWilding Project

To “rewild” is to re-connect to the wild within—to see ourselves not as separate from nature but as a part of nature. It is to defy our life-long experience of domestication, what we know, and how things should be.

The ReWilding Project is an interdisciplinary solo performance, featuring text, dance, live music and some technology. It is one woman’s quest to tackle our modern neurosis, sense of loss and search for hope – with a dose of humor.

Nearly every day we are bombarded with an onslaught of horrific news feeds and dire scientific prognoses:

  •   “Arctic ice melting faster and earlier as scientists demand action”, The Guardian
  •  “50% of all species have disappeared in the past 20 years,” World Wildlife Fund

How do we, amidst the affluence of Western Europe, respond to these seemingly far-removed crises? How do the body and psyche of the individual, human mammal respond to the worldwide devastation of our natural environment? Perhaps dolphins have the answers to what we are looking for.

Tonight, There Are No Stars In The Sky

What’s the meaning of leaving?

What’s the meaning of home? What’s the meaning of being a foreigner, an immigrant, an expat, an adventurer, exiled? What’s the meaning of never looking back, until one evening you are forced to do so?

Tonight, There Are No Stars In The Sky is a short play about two sisters who haven’t seen each other for seven years: Claire left, Marion stayed. One evening Marion shows up at Claire’s door step by surprise, and their encounter demolishes old patterns of thought, feeling, speech, movement, perspective, memories and of dreams.

Claire is a writer who left her country of origin after her book wasn’t published and after her sister Anna killed herself. Marion stayed, and dealt with her losses in silence until one day, she finds Claire’s manuscript in a box at her parents’ house. After reading it, she decides it’s time to confront their silences.

During fifty volatile minutes, this brief encounter between two sisters – who have made very different life choices – brings to the foreground ambivalent realities, leading the action to an honest confrontation of ideas about immigration, exile, lines, frontiers, spaces and how we choose to cross [or to inhabit] them.

The 614th Commandment

A documentary theater examination of American-Jewish notions of Germany

The 614th Commandment is a darkly funny play in which two actors embodying multiple characters examine both the role of Holocaust history in contemporary Jewish identity and American- Jewish perspectives regarding Germany in the
21st century, all through a critical, absurdist lens.

It is based on over 100 interviews conducted with Jewish people of a variety of backgrounds in Los Angeles, California, and was inspired by the writer’s experiences as an American Jewish woman living in Berlin.

Two Girls, One Pope … And A Mattress

A satirical, provocative comedy written especially for the Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion Festival. Amusing, fast paced, challenging, with a little bit of romance. To make people laugh while making them think as well.

Daria and Lidia, two young women who love each other, just moved from Rome to Berlin. They are hunted by a mysterious and ambiguous, almost schizophrenic, version of the Pope.  Lidia is very enthusiastic about the relocation. She thinks that in Berlin they will finally find the freedom they always dreamed about, plus an open-minded society where they can freely live being openly gay and sincere with everyone about their relationship. On the other side, Daria thinks that moving in Berlin won’t change much. She sees all the downsides of the new state of things and doesn’t feel ready to be so sincere about her sexuality, especially since she is still kept back by the guilt that her family and her Catholic education have always put into her for not being the woman, heterosexual mother and wife that she was expected to be.

At the same time, she doesn’t want to lose her partner, which puts her under a lot of pressure. All these contrasts with her lover and within herself bring her to such a state that she has visions of an unusual version of the Pope, who is experiencing a gradual transformation into a drag queen. This invasive presence at times attacks her for being a sinner and at other times seems to be enthralled by the perspective of having a free sexual life himself. These visions are another source of conflict within the couple, and the fight grows to be more intense as the drag queen Pope starts to become real and both the women’s relationship and their transfer to Berlin’s “Eldorado” risk ending in disgraceful tragedy…will they?

We Meet In Paradise

A theatrical collage of escape and exile

The soundscapes of the city fade away as we are drawn to a wooden box roaming around. The journey was long, lasting days, through unknown lands. It searches for a place to arrive. Speechless, they emerge. Where are they? Exile is the name of their destination. Asylum is their hope. They tell tales from their escape and arrival, dreams and fears and how they start their lives anew.

For this project, TheatreFragile worked with refugees and supporters in Germany gathering their stories,
thoughts and inner struggles to create a piece that offers a different insight to this topic far from the current heated debate.

TheatreFragile’s productions intertwine dramatic and fine arts with documentary theater through a combination of mask performance, walk-through art installations, documentary research and fictional narrative.

The international Berlin-based company seeks a new vocabulary that can unite the magic of mask play with the direct audience contact of street theater. They are fascinated by the various levels of play between distance and proximity, everyday life and the poetic universe of theater. A playfulness with the audience and an invitation to come closer to see and listen to the installation give the performers opportunities to share and interact with individuals as well as the group at large. The audience goes from being passive onlookers to active visitors and even participants in the installation.

This Wall

The world is in crisis and people are more divided than ever.

Immigration, migration and a refugee crisis has sparked both empathy and fear across Europe, as well as media frenzy.

A weary traveler approaches a wall and hears the voice of a woman. Tentatively at first, he finds a renewed optimism in this encounter. Their relationship develops, but why does the divide between them seem to widen? There is a looming violence that endangers her, and threatens to emasculate him. Will they overcome this? They are confronted by their own view of the unknown and whether they have agency for change.

There are walls being put up and walls all around us. There are walls long established, which seem to be getting wider, taller and stronger. Even in the most intimate relationships, there’s a barrier. This Wall questions representation, preconceptions and the power we have to do something about the situations around us. How much can either of them really know each other? And crucially, will he and can he help her?