Freie Szene | Production Series | English Theatre Berlin

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Fest of Fools

The Fest of Fools is a festival that highlights humor as a medium in choreography, cultural practice and social
dialogue. Held over three days, the festival brings together five choreographers who utilize humor as a liberating cultural technique to address and clarify its systemic relevance, particularly during times of crisis.

Through five performances and one workshop, “Humor as a choreographic, aesthetic and political tool in cultural praxis” , the festival investigates humor as both a cultural and social phenomenon. The works presented aim to examine humor’s essential aspects and its cathartic function, exploring its potential to create distance, provoke thoughts and break societal boundaries. The festival seeks to present a variety of artistic expressions, using humor as a tool for critique and a catalyst for transformation.

Wednesday, May 14

8:00 pm Gats Surprise / Scapes of Landscape by Lukáš Karásek (tYhle collective)

Gats Surprise is a short solo trip of an elusive creature named Gats, originating from the world of the performance Scapes of Landscape by tYhle. Gats surprise not only the audience but also themselves in what they turn out to be. They have a large family, but suffer from loneliness. They are interested in Tarkovsky and comic books. They look completely different on the inside than they do on the outside, but no one knows how.

8:30pm The Trinity by Raul Vargas Torres

A choreographic cleansing journey, where daily kids-toys, music and actions take a hyperreal shape under the dual horizon of love and death, violence and emancipation, childhood and adulthood, father and mother. Unveiling the paradoxical resistance and violence of accepting to perform a role, in an imposed narrative, in which one is a byproduct or consequence of it. A performance which does not pretend to answer any question. A performance that happens at the friction between: what we imagine is happening and what is actually happening.

9:30pm Post-performance discussion

Thursday, May 15

10am Workshop: “Humor as a cultural, aesthetic and political tool in times of crisis” as part of the IETM plenary meeting (off-site, Studio 0/1 Gottlieb-Dunkel-Straße 30/32, 12099 Berlin) – to attend, please register HERE

8pm DEVOURER by Alica Minar & col.

One body, a bunch of black balls, a clear task and countless greed. A dance performance inspired by the principles of the clown fi gure and black hole theory. DEVOURER exists only to have. In a determined eff ort to take everything for its own, it absorbs light, inhales space and materializes time. Its transformation manifests gradually. A body of greed caught in action. How can the „self“ be maximized? Singularity. It’s a hypothetical point. „I am a star, I shine like a supernova…or have I become a black hole?“

9pm Post-performance discussion

Friday, May 16

8pm DauerDeviation (work-in-progress) by Kysy Fischer

The main goal of this work in progress is to develop a choreographic strategy of deviation in which the norms of movement are provoked and expanded. Kysy creates a chain of associations between movements, sounds and images. Thoughts, words and sentences deviate, taking new paths and constructing new meanings.

8:30pm ~~ha ha ha~~ hi!by Felix Baumann | Von B bis Z

In ~~ha ha ha~~ hi!a mediocre comedian attempts to tell a joke with a life-changing impact. However, he lacks the words or the right microphone setting for a real breakthrough. As he grapples with his shortcomings, he embraces absurdity, employing every tool at his disposal to create moments of comic folly.
The solo performance ~~ha ha ha~~ hi! blends dance, circus, physical comedy and object manipulation, and celebrates the art of joking, cheerful silliness, raw humor and the beauty of happy futility. It invites the audience into a world where minimalism meets eccentricity and playfull foolishness becomes profound.

9:30pm Post-performance discussion

Intelligent Movement

This special three-day event brings together dance, theater, writing, hip-hop and calligraphy! Dancers are invited to sign up and show what they’ve got in allstyle battles while the audience takes in panel discussions, jam sessions, battles and showcases!

Special Guest: Mhanna Letters

Amigo, who has long been exploring the connection between movement and writing,
will lead the event. Together with his friend Tako Baba, he has gained valuable experience
at the Funkin’ Stylez Festival paving the way for hip-hop theater.

Exhibition: Following the event, Bouzuqee Studio will present a small exhibition on the topic of dance & writing.

FRIDAY – BATTLE CULTURE

Topic: Battle Culture – Creative Exchange and the Exploration of New Spaces for Dance

Battle Culture is an important part of hip-hop culture, focusing not on competition, but instead on creative exchange, repartee and the experiencing of special moments. The goal is to discover new spaces together and bring the creativity to a new level.

Schedule of Events:

Hosted by Iman (Walashe)

6pm – Presentation by Saman Hamdi: Hip-Hop’s Organic Educators

A look at the philosophy and educational approaches that distinguish hip-hop culture.

6pm-7pm – Registration of the Dancers

Dancers can sign up to take part in the allstyle battles.

7pm – Cypher Jam with Music

Dancers are invited to show what they’ve got in an open format. The focus here is placed on creativity and spontaneity. The goal is to develop new ideas and support exchange. Seven dancers will be selected by the jury.

Judges & Panelists: Pez, Kupra, Penny K, Chica – J

Featuring DJ Peeps

7:45 pm – Locking Showcase

Featuring Cris, Penny K, Laura, Dani, Kupra, Philipp, Eylo & Amigo

8pm – Panel Discussion: Battle Culture: Souldance & Locking

With Penny K, Kupra, Penny, Chica – J & Amigo

Host: İman

This panel discussion will explore Japanese dance culture and the significance of souldance as well as the influence of Campbell locking on souldance and the global hip-hop community.

8:30 pm – Battles: 7 to Smoke Allstyle

Music by DJ Peeps

9pm – JAM with DJ Peeps

An open dance session with music by our DJ, offering a free space for creative expression.

10pm – End

SATURDAY – PERFORMANCE DAY

Many creative dancers are active in the battle scene. The performance session gives these creative minds a platform on stage. The session is open to all dancers who want to try out choreographies or concepts in front of an audience. Improvisation is just as welcome as a finished concept.

Schedule of Events:

7pm – Short Pieces by Berlin Dancers

Different dancers from Berlin present short choreographies that bring their dance style and personal stories to the stage.

Six short performances from Berlin & feedback from the audience

Hosted by Iman (Walashe)

With visuals by Geso

8:30 pm – Digital Calligraffiti Performance with Harshini, Mhanna Letters, Parole & Amigo

The Digital Calligraffiti project is initiated by Susa Pop | Public Art Lab and curated in cooperation
with Don Karl | From Here to Fame Publishing with the artist Michael Ang.

9pm – Panel Discussion: The Future of Theater with Harshini, Moe & Amigo

10pm – End

SUNDAY – Exhibition At the Bouzuqee Studio – 2pm

MOVEMENT & LETTERS

Works on paper by:

MINA / STOHEAD / MOSA87 / MHANNA / 2501 / PARİS URTEIL

PAROLE / THEOS / ZASD / ZEPHA / VINCENT GRUNWALD / AMIGO

So Many Ideas

So Many Ideas is a performance that explores a moral crisis we cannot quite name: a silent, self-destructive malaise, an obscure calamity.

Set in a crumbling portside hotel room at the edge of their civilization, three women—one terminally ill—take refuge in their shared space. One plays the violin almost absentmindedly, another sings, while the other murmurs, dreams, pleads and remembers. Together, their words overlap, complete, and challenge one another like a Baroque cadenza—a reflection of culture, a nervous tic, an urgent search for meaning: how they got there; how we all got here.

Drawing inspiration from Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, and musically from Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto, So Many Ideas confronts the present moment: in a world overflowing with brilliance, beauty, and invention—so many choices, so much creativity—why do we keep ending up in the same places, with so little to show for it?

85 minutes, sung and spoken in English, German and Italian, partially subtitled in German and English

A Guide To Self-Synthesis

With its new performance, Opera Lab Berlin takes inspiration from pioneers of electronic music such as Wendy Carlos, SOPHIE and Pauline Oliveros in their new performance. They celebrate overcoming mechanical-acoustic sound production and going beyond heteronormative boundaries.

Together with trans singer-songwriter Marlene Bellissimo, known from The Voice of Germany, Opera Lab Berlin explores the sonic potential of electronics for defining your own parameters in A Guide To Self-Synthesis. Its transformative, transgressive power and frequencies of (self-)expression become the focus of the performance, for which composer Evan Gardner creates a pluralistic combination of notated but non-restrictive sound fields. The US-American university professor and and activist Susan Stryker, one of the foremost scholars in the field of (trans)gender studies, will take the stage as a special guest with her own contribution to the production.

What possibilities does synthetic sound production offer? How do queer harmonies and trans oscillators sound? Following the principle of Mauricio Kagel’s instrumental theater, singing and dancing, music from synthesizers, motion-tracking technology, composition and choreography come together in A Guide to Self-Synthesis, a new utopian and emancipatory celebration of electronic music.

“[Opera Lab Berlin is] one of the most experimental and refreshing musical theater groups in the Berlin’s independent performing arts community” (Siegessäule),

MARLENE BELLISSIMO is a trans woman and musician. As a trans singer-songwriter often focusing on trans voices in her work, she is interested in how gender fluidity can be expressed through the voice. On TikTok, she celebrates the diversity of trans voices, performing one-woman-duets that showcase her vocal range. In 2023, she released an EP titled christmas with my dead self, and she is known on YouTube for her documentary Finding a Trans Voice, where she discusses the philosophical and practical journey of finding a new voice through her transition. In September 2024, Marlene Bellissimo appeared on The Voice of Germany, astonishing the judges with her vocal artistry.

The Opera Lab Berlin music theater ensemble is a hybrid collective that links all creative elements together. People from all artistic fields come together in Opera Lab: whether music, acting, composition, directing, instruments, choreography, stage and costume design, lighting, stagecraft or dramaturgy – equality is a core principle at Opera Lab Berlin. Since its founding in 2013, the collective has brought over 30 original productions to the stage, featuring compositions by more than 40 contemporary composers and directed by over 18 different directors. The core ensemble has grown to more than 30 members and they collaborate with over 100 artists and production staff.

Salvation (Glitter Doesn’t Care I’m A Boy)

A science fiction drag ritual and an experimental invocation for a constant distribution of desires based on visions and fantasies Shlomi Moto Wagner has experienced since he was three years old.

It explores transformations, mutations and remanifestations of the idea of being, the sensuality of being a body, the politics of having
a body and the poetics of sharing a bodily experience.

This solo music theater piece is a mythological and poetic reading of current pop culture and its academic discourse. The music of ancient
Jewish texts and invocations together with visionary tunes of composer Hildegard von Bingen from the 12th century is newly arranged with pop hits, techno compositions and contemporary feminist texts. All of this makes the opera performance a ritual of transformation.

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Shlomi Moto Wagner is Mazy Mazeltov, is Wendy Williams, is Wisława Szymborska, is Fran Drescher, is Hélène Cixous and her Medusa is David Copperfield and Claudia Schiffer IN ONE BODY! And much, much more.

So, what is reality here and what is fiction? In times where a part of society wants to return to the gender roles of the 1950s, or even the 1940s, it is that much more critical to celebrate a festival of the imagination. Let’s make magic. And what comes out at the end? A concert, a drag queen musical, a monologue slam, a magic show, a bar mitzvah or simply a party with the people? Are the props ready? Powder, lipstick and glitter? All right!

Vortex

Immerse yourself in the mesmerizing world of sound and light at Vortex – the newest rendition of the renowned Piano & Light concert series. Join creators Mirella Brandi and Muep Etmo as they return to Berlin for this exclusive performance on September 13 and 14 at 8 PM!

The MXM Duo transcends traditional stage boundaries with an immersive concert experience. Comprised of Mirella Brandi and Muep Etmo, MXM is already recognized in Berlin’s contemporary art scene for their captivating performances. Their interpretation of contemporary compositions for piano and light creates a sensory masterpiece.

Mirella Brandi is a light art designer and Muep Etmo is a musician, composer and sound engineer. They explore the complex relationship between light and music through immersive, multidisciplinary performances that synthesize concepts from cinema, contemporary music, and visual arts.

Get ready to elevate your senses and be transported by new dimensions through light and music!

Second Class Queer

Actor and writer Kumar Muniandy questions his identity, queerness, internalized homophobia and experiences of racism with his play. In the midst of these terms and their politics, Kumar seeks his own truth.

Is it possible to live as a brown gay man in Germany and find healing while carrying the weight of oppression from his motherland? Set in a speed-dating event, will Kumar’s leading man, Krishna, win the role he wants in this audition for love?

Through the lens of his experience as a Tamil-Malaysian queer person living in Berlin, Kumar Muniandy has developed a theater piece that investigates the connections between internalized homophobia that stems from anti-homosexuality laws of the colonial era and the structural racism he experiences.

What are the consequences of such merciless neocolonialism for the mental health of queer minorities living in Germany today? After all, Krishna, like Kumar, is on a pursuit of forgiveness and self acceptance.

Second Class Queer is dedicated to Nhaveen.

Following a work-in-progress presentation as part of the 2022 Expo Festival, we are thrilled to offer additional performance of the finished version of this production.

SLUT: A Love Story

SLUT: A Love Story is a vibrant manifesto of joy, feminism and sexual exploration. Through the lens of her own life, performer and self-identified slut, Anne Marina Fidler courageously navigates the impacts of heartbreak, sex work and technology on this identity. Employing storytelling, dance and audience participation, Fidler crafts a compelling narrative that is both humorous and sincere.

Drawing from her own rich and charmed sexual history, Fidler invites audiences to participate in a narrative that celebrates the complexities of sex as part of our fully realized selves, while still acknowledging the collective trauma and shame that patriarchy places on sexuality.

In SLUT, Fidler challenges the conventional narrative surrounding casual sex and demands that the patriarchal scripts of hook-up culture be re-written.

Utilizing her background as a cabaret performer, Fidler employs both comedic flair and emotional depth to critically engage with delicate topics. She celebrates the power of sex while refusing to elevate it to sacrosanct divinity, aiming to liberate audiences from the constraints of patriarchal ideology and internalized misogyny.

¡SILENCIO, POR FAVOR!

The idea of absolute silence is both gratifying and threatening.

Silence can be wellness or torture, a coveted resource or an absolute nightmare. But above all, it is an impossibility: “Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot”, John Cage observed after visiting an anechoic chamber and encountering not silence but the buzzing of his nervous system and the throbbing of his blood.

¡SILENCIO, POR FAVOR! initiates a search for perfect silence, knowing full well that it does not exist. Therefore, when the ensemble searches for silence, it is actually searching for sounds: sounds of everyday life, sounds of coincidence, unintended sounds and inaudible sounds that buzz through the space in the form of imperceptible frequencies. Using selected works by John Cage and Cathy van Eck and with the help of the antennae of sound artist Marta Zapparoli, Björnsson | Marx and Opera Lab create a dense mesh of music, sounds and texts, opening up a space for reflection and experience in which the ambivalence of silence is treated just as much as the contingency of our acoustic perceptions.

Supported by

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The Story of the Panda Bears

Told by a Saxophonist Who Has a Girlfriend in Frankfurt

A man wakes up next to a woman whose name he does not remember; nor does he remember where and how they met, their journey to his apartment or what they did after they got there. The woman is happy to explain, and her recollection of the facts makes him plead with her to stay. She promises to return. He promises to wait for her.

“Nine nights. Fine. But after that, you ask for nothing more.”

Bound by a promise and a bottle of wine, they discover that sometimes all you need to  approach perfection are nine nights and a broken alarm clock.

With an international cast and crew – Romanian, Icelandic, German, Danish and Chilean – that connected over Visniec’s writing, the performance highlights the unifying force of theatre and its power to become a common language that exceeds any borders.

“Visniec writes charming, nonsugary dialogue, utilizing that rare element in highly romanticized storytelling: silence.” Tim Lowery: Time Out Chicago

“This play is very dear to me because I try to talk about love, the mystery of love, reincarnation through love, and initiation… about many things that we don’t think about often enough.” Matei Visniec

Matéi Visniec was born in Romania in 1956. From an early age, he discovered literature as a space dedicated to freedom. He draws his strengths from Kafka, Dostoevsky, Poe, Lautréamont. He loves the Surrealists, the Dadaists, absurd and grotesque theatre, surrealist poetry, fantastic literature, magical realism, and even the realist Anglo-Saxon theatre.
Visniec studied philosophy at Bucharest University and became an active member of the so-called Eighties Generation who left a clear stamp on Romanian literature. He believes in cultural resistance, and in literature’s capacity to demolish totalitarianism. Above all, Matéi Visniec believes that theatre and poetry can denounce manipulation through “great ideas”, as well as brainwashing through ideology.
Before 1987 Matéi Visniec had made a name for himself in Romania with his clear, lucid, bitter poetry. Starting with 1977, he wrote drama; the plays were much circulated in the literary milieus but were barred from staging. In September 1987, Visniec left Romania for France, where he was granted political asylum. He started writing in French and began working for Radio France Internationale.

At present, Visniec has had many of his works staged in France, and some of his plays written in French are published. His plays have been staged in more than 20 countries. In Romania, after the fall of Communism, Matéi Visniec has become one of the most frequently performed authors.
Originally written in French, The Story of the Panda Bears told by a Saxophonist who has a Girlfriend in Frankfurt has been translated into many languages (German, Icelandic, Arabic, Japanese etc) and has been performed all around the world.

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Berlin International Performing Arts Center