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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

Sick and Tired

Get ready for a one-of-a-kind bilingual cabaret that’s all about breaking barriers and sharing real stories around disability, chronic illness, mental health, neurodivergence and healthcare experiences.

Expect a dazzling mix of GLAMOUR, music, raw vulnerability, and genuine COMMUNITY vibes. We’re here to smash stereotypes, spotlight healthcare struggles, and build a tribe that gets it.

Featuring performances from:

Einfach Else

Julietta la Doll

Mieze McCripple

Baphometh

Special video appearance by New Zealand’s burlesque queen Jaqueline Boxx

Hosted by Berlin’s own singing diva Lilly Mortis

But here’s the best part—you can be part of the show!

Do you have a disability or chronic condition? Ever had a weird, hilarious or downright absurd experience with the healthcare system? Share it on our “Tell Your Story – Open Stage” segment! Just swing by the box office, fill out a quick form, get a short briefing 20 minutes before showtime, wait for your name to be called, and OWN that stage. Whether it’s a poem, song, dance, comedy bit, or just straight-up storytelling—your 6 minutes, your rules (within show guidelines, of course).

Not into performing? No worries! Drop an anonymous note in the “Sick Bucket” at the box office. Our host will share these gems live during the show.

Carbon Negative

Do you want to reduce your carbon footprint but don’t know how? Then come to Carbon Negative! This performance is not only climate-neutral, but climate-positive. Your visit will actively contribute to reducing our carbon footprint because we will overcompensate for our harmful emissions.

Perhaps the 1.5 degree target would still be achievable if we used smart technologies on a larger scale and made them more marketable? Or are such environmental projects ultimately just comprised of greenwashing and green colonialism?

Join in the thinking and the decision-making, for a better future!

Carbon Negative is a laboratory and multimedia concert, creating a collective space for reflection and action.

Ultimate Russian Protest Guide

“We’re not giving you any interviews. What do you want, all our secrets? Goodbye!” — that’s how our journey into this topic began: with civil resistance and resilience under dictatorship (in this case Russia during its full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine).

All the same, we don’t know all the secrets… or maybe we do, but we’re not sharing them. Or, maybe, we will — just not all of them.

Based on interviews with activists and defenders of human rights, the play offers a glimpse into grassroots resistance initiatives both within Russia and abroad, highlighting their actions, processes, relationships, conflicts — and, most importantly, how they live through it all. A light touch of magic and humor weaves through the narrative, as these two elements may be the only things keeping the protagonists alive and in their right minds.

Falla

FALLA
Variation of phalla, for what is phallic, as a feminine inclination of the phallo, the phallus.
Falla, in Spanish, like a failure, fault, the original fault or the something missing, but also like an opening, a crack, a fissure.
Falla, in Catalan, from the latin facula, ”torch”. As an incendiary matter, something to be set on fire…

Throughout history, female gender identity has often been narrowly defined by the lack of the phallus. Julia B. Laperrière addresses this problematic idea from a queer feminist perspective using the strap-on dildo as transformative tool:  how does it feel to have/wear a penis? How does it affect the way one moves? What power does it confer on the one who bears it? In collaboration with musician Pia Achternkamp, FALLA offers an invitation to playfulness, an incursion in the in-between that puts forth a vision of female sexuality that is alternative, liberated and unashamed.

Julia B. Laperrière (all pronouns) is a French-Canadian choreographer and performer based in Berlin. Working from a queer feminist perspective, she is interested in a dance that is generous, lately looking at dangerous dances and possibilities for new intimacies. Julia’s latest works (Falla, Falla VR, Swivel Open and Dangereuses) are currently touring in Germany, France, Canada and Norway. She has also taught in various places, including the CCN d’Orléans, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Radialsystem and the University of Osnabrück. Since 2023, Julia is a board member of ZTB e.V., where her volunteer work focuses on issues such as the precarity of artistic work, political representation, reform of the subsidy system, accessibility, mediation and similar topics.

Pia Achternkamp (aka “loh”) is a composer working at the crossroads of music, performing arts, language and fine arts. Curious about the interdependencies in sound, space, movement and dialogue, Pia usually performs her music live on stage when working in the context of performing arts. She has presented her work in HAU Berlin, Maxim Gorki Theatre and ACUD with Asaf Hameiri and at Volksbühne Berlin with the Future Witchcraft Project. With her solo project loh, Pia is exploring the power of endless repetition and minimal variations. Pia is part of a few bands: CHRUCH | grau& | Mildred | Pomel

Growler’s Grotto

Join Growler, the 82-year-old drum banging, shamanic vulva from the Liberties in Dublin in her Grotto, where no one gets left behind and no stone is left unturned as she takes you on a theatrical alchemical journey.

Growler is a sacred clown, walking the knife-edge of heartache and laughter. Using spoken word, song, storytelling and comedy, she confronts taboo topics, including grief and SA.

Her mission in these times is to help us love the ejjit out of ourselves. With a trolly in one hand and a staff in the other, she blazes a path. Her soul is a flame where everyone can warm the cockles of their heart.

Featuring special musical guest Lunatraktors!

“The beauty of Growler is in its roughness, its erratic meandering, its refusal to be one thing or another. It has a sacred chaos of its own, in which Mulrooney thrives.”
The List

Darragh McLoughlin

World-renowned Irish performer and circus artist Darragh McLoughlin presents a double bill! With Stickman and The Fulfillment, he turns all expectations of circus and storytelling on their head and paints a portrait of the shared moment in the theater space.

Stickman

Stickman is a performance which features a man, a stick and a TV.

The man balances the stick on various parts of his body, thereby setting himself and the stick in motion.

If the man has an agenda, he keeps it to himself.

The stick gets moved around and balanced by the man seeming to not have much to say.

The TV lurks in the background and throughout the performance puts titles on whatever the man and the stick are doing; thus attempting to dictate what the audience see.

All the while the audience watches and tries to keep up with the ever changing rules of play.

Then the TV titles them. ‘WATCHERS’.

Stickman is an exploration of our relationships with meaning, empathy and agency.

“The phantasmagoric movements created by each meticulously calculated move and the deep exploration of each stick elicited occasional voices of pure “wow” and “wow” from the audience. It was leaking.” Mayu Yoshihira (Daily Journal Editorial Department)
“I watched the whole thing unfold with excitement. That’s the only rule of the space magic called theater.” Sae Shimaizawa (Daily Journal Editorial Department)

 

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The Fulfillment

To fulfill: (verb)

1.    achieve or realize (something desired, promised, or predicted).

2.    carry out (a duty or role) as required, promised, or expected.

The Fulfillment is a modular, audience-driven performance built around a simple mechanic: an empty frame and a title. What happens next is determined by those present, and gradually as the fulfilled frames accumulate, an unpredictable live exhibition emerges, shaped entirely by those present.

Each performance becomes a portrait of our collective moment.

Darragh McLoughlin was born in 1987 in Ireland as youngest of three siblings and son of two professional chefs. In 2006 he moved to Berlin to attend the Jonglier Katakomben School of Juggling. In 2008, he attended the Academy for Circus and Performance Art and completed his education with a bachelor degree in Circus Arts. In 2014, he was selected as a Circus Next laureate with Fragments of a Mind and has since created several acclaimed works: The Whistle, Stickman and For as Long as We’re Here. Besides his performance work he has created conceptual artwork series: The Fulfillment, Stories of Falling Objects, Variations of Stickman and WATCHERS.

Darragh teaches at different professional institutions around Europe: FLIC Scuola di Circo, ACAPA, Die Etage, CODARTS and Les Beaux Arts, HMDK Stuttgart.

No One Comes Back

When one twin goes to war, can the other escape it?

When her twin brother is deployed as a fighter pilot, a sister finds herself in a war she never signed up for. Bombings, cornfields, deer eyeballs and shamans, No One Comes Back is a story about war, twinhood and what it means to save each other when no one really comes back.

The play moves between rural US-American childhood and the wildly different paths the twins take as adults. One heads into military service, the other into art school, Berlin and a string of questionable survival strategies. With humor and candor, it asks how families carry violence by proxy, how love persists under pressure, and if late-night phone calls can bridge the distance between two twins at risk of losing themselves.

This raw and unforgettable new play explores the ways we wage war and the complicated love that shapes us, whether we want it to or not.

Cynthia

A drag-puppet-theater spectacle about the world’s first non-human influencer from 1937

Cynthia was a model, an influencer, a socialite, a celebrity and a household name in the USA in 1937. But unlike other celebrities of her day, she was dismantled into pieces at the end of her day and stowed away in a body bag. Cynthia was a mannequin. Her creator, Lester Gaba, a window display designer in New York City, became her manager, puppeteer and chaperone. He escorted her to dinner clubs, theater premieres and fashion shows,  as well as performing for her and responding to  her adoring fans on her behalf.

Let this delightful fever dream of a show take you down the slippery slope from entertaining spectacle into the uncanny valley.

Featuring Berlin Drag King Alexander Cameltoe as Lester Gaba, with his world animated by an ensemble of puppeteers.

Letters From Chiran

Letters from Chiran is a piece of mask theater performed by Tomoya Kawamura, inspired freely by the historical facts of the last world war and the stories left behind by young Japanese soldiers at the local shokudo (canteen) just outside the military airbase of Chiran in southern Japan.

The play delicately reveals the difference of perspectives between the lives of ordinary people in the midst of a largely devastating war and those who lightly make the decision of joining a conflict, compromising the lives of millions in the name of false ideals and personal satisfaction.

In 1945, the pilots of the Japanese Special Attack Units, commonly known as kamikaze, would share some of their stories, hopes and dreams with the owner of the shokudo while having a meal or a green tea before beginning what was, for many of them, their final mission.

Thanks to the owner of the shokudo, some of their last letters were hidden from the military censorship. She secretly delivered them to pilots’ families once the war was over.

Letters from Chiran forces us to ask: is there any scenario where sacrifice like this is acceptable?

Parataxe – International Literature

A PARATAXE presentation featuring the BERLIN ASIA ARTS CLUB:

The art of building bridges with words – a reading with Dasom Young, Mui Pooposaksul & Christina Ng. A special literary evening in English spoken language with sections in Korean, Thai and Chinese, hosted by Martin Jankowski.

Eine Veranstaltung der PARATAXE in Zusammenarbeit mit dem BERLIN ASIA ARTS CLUB und dem ENGLISH THEATRE BERLIN | INTERNATION PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, gefördert von der Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.

An event by PARATAXE in collaboration with the BERLIN ASIA ARTS CLUB and ENGLISH THEATRE BERLIN |  INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, funded by Berlin’s Senate Department for Culture and Community.