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Blog Archive

Maryša (Is Silent)

This nonverbal production of a classic Czech drama about a woman in an arranged marriage, who turns to murder in her desperation, is an extraordinary piece that not only touches on womens’ issues, but also on the domestic tradition of the realist drama.

The story is told without words – making it all the more intense: bottomless abysses of desperation meet powerful eruptions of passionate emotions, with shocking brutality and profound humanity, all performed with a good measure of exaggeration.

In 2019, the production was nominated for the Divadelní noviny theatre magazine award and actor Andrea Berecková was a nominated for the Thalia Award.

The Trojan Women

A production in collaboration with Ukrainian women actors who sought refuge in the Czech Republic.

Critics have celebrated this production as the most meaningful comment on the war on Ukraine in the Czech Republic.

The stories of the great heroes of the Trojan War have been burnt into our memory – but we usually forget the women who survived it. What will happen once the war is over? And what will begin again? The characters of the Trojan women are played by Ukrainian actresses without men.

This modern adaptation of the classical tragedies by Euripides, The Trojan Women and Hecuba, directed by Jakub Čermák and featuring Ukrainian women who found temporary asylum in Czechia in the leading roles, places its focus not on the current military conflict but instead on the victims of war in general.

White Heat

A revealed identity leads to an impossible decision.

Journalist Alice Kennings grapples with how to act after uncovering the identity of an alt-right podcast host calling for violence against the media.

Based on real events, White Heat is a play about all the things we justify to ourselves.

“In White Heat, Isador explores the continuum between trolls who target writers on the internet – especially women and people of colour – and true-life terror, such as the mass shooting at The Capital newspaper in Maryland in 2018 that left five journalists dead.”  The Globe and Mail

FOCUS CANADA 2022

Graham Isador

Graham Isador is a writer based in Toronto. Best known for his time as a host and editor with VICE, Isador’s writing has appeared in GQ, Men’s Health, and The Globe and Mail. He is the author of several plays including Situational Anarchy and TRUCK.

 

Jill Harper

Jill is an award-winning theatre director and dramaturg, and the co-founder of Cue6 Theatre. Selected directing credits: Cue6 Theatre’s Dry Land (Globe and Mail’s Top 10 Theatre shows of 2018); pool (no water) (Dora Awards for Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Performance – Ensemble); and Byhalia, Mississippi (as a part of a 7-city World Premiere Conversation). Elsewhere – White Heat (Summerworks Festival); Consumption Patterns (Next Stage Theatre Festival); Meet Cute (Roseneath Theatre) – Dora nomination for Outstanding Direction with co-director Aaron Willis – Hazardous Materials (Equity Library Theatre Chicago); Twelfth Night and Macbeth (The Classical Theatre Project).

 

WAH WAH WAH

A young queer person grapples with the messiness of (MAYBE) being violated.

Wah Wah Wah follows one person’s muddled account of a very specific, yet familiar story. A gaze held too long, being followed down the street, a stranger’s hand on your bare thigh — the layers are peeled back, revealing a tangled inner dialogue surrounding instances of violation. What happens if I love it and hate it at the same time? Did anything even happen? Is anything ever gonna change?

Wah Wah Wah is a new and explosive performance work from Canada that dissects micro-moments of sexual harassment from a queer perspective using storytelling, tantrums, and visceral movement when words arent enough.

 

FOCUS CANADA 2022

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Celia Green  (they/them)

is a queer and trans non-binary performer, performance creator, and choreographer. Their growth and learning has been greatly shaped by trainings and opportunities at The Paprika Festival, the AMY Project, La Pocha Nostra and the P.A.R.T.S summerschool for contemporary dance. Recently, Celia was involved as a choreographer in adelheid dance’s re:research program, and was a guest choreographer at Toronto Dance Theatre’s for their Pilot Episodes project. Celia is a recipient of the Theatre Centre Emerging Artist Award, and is also a birthworker. They are currently developing SOWWY, a new ensemble performance work that explores men, gender and apology.

 

Bilal Baig (they/them)

is a queer, trans-feminine, Muslim playwright, director, performer and workshop facilitator. Bilal’s first play, Acha Bacha, had its world premiere in 2018 and has been published by Playwrights Canada Press. Other written work in development includes Kainchee Lagaa, Kitne Saare Laloo Yahan Pey Hain, and I want that free mind! As a director/dramaturg, Bilal has worked on projects such as Wah Wah Wah (SummerWorks 2019), Eraser (RISER Project 2019), and The Trans Gemmes (Rhubarb Festival 2019-2020).

Photos by Tanja Terziani and Franny Chudnoff

Nassim


Please note that this is a 2G event. All guests must present proof of vaccination against or recovery from COVID-19. People who cannot be vaccinated due to medical reasons may also attend if they have a negative PCR test and a letter from their doctor. As all guests must be vaccinated or recovered, we will not require social distancing or masks at this performance.

“Dear performer. I want to show you something. Did you know in Farsi my name is written like this: ‘.ROUPNAMIELOS MISSAN si eman yM’ ? Did you know ‘Nassim’ means ‘breeze’ in Farsi?”

From Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour comes an audacious theatrical experiment: each night a different performer joins the playwright on stage while the script waits unseen in a sealed box.

Touchingly autobiographical yet powerfully universal, NASSIM is a striking theatrical demonstration of how language can both divide and unite us. NASSIM is toured globally and is translated and performed in the native language of each country.

NASSIM won the Fringe First Award at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was subsequnetly performed in 20 countries within a 200-day span. In 2019, NASSIM landed in New York City for its American premier and an Off Broadway Run where the show won the Off Broadway Alliance Award for Best Unique Theatrical Experience. The five-month New York City Center run with over 150 renowned actors, writers, and creators included Michael Shannon, Tracy Letts, Kate Arrington, Carrie Coon, Lisa Emery, Cory Michael Smith, Kathy Najimy, Michael Urie, Phillipa Soo and many other theater, TV and movie stars.

And now, after around 400 performances, and following a long rest due to the global pandemic, NASSIM is back on the road starting with a two-night-only limited run in its hometown, Berlin.

Boris Aljinović was born in West Berlin in 1967. Even before he graduated from high school, he was discovered as an actor by the later co-founders of the ETB. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he attended the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst `Ernst Busch´ Berlin, and from there his path led him to the Renaissance Theater, to dwarf films and crime scenes. From 2001 to 2014, he was Kriminalhauptkommissar Felix Stark in the German TV series, “Tatort”. Like a lucky penny, he keeps on turning up at ETB | IPAC every now and again…
Lucy Ellinson is an actor and collaborative theater maker from North Wales (UK). She also teaches, mentors and works within community projects and campaigns. Recent UK theater credits include TYPICAL GIRLS by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (Clean Break Theatre/Sheffield Crucible); MACBETH (Royal Exchange Manchester);  TOP GIRLS by Caryl Churchill (National Theatre), THE RESISTABLE RISE OF ARTURO UI / BertoltBrecht (Donmar Warehouse); A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (Royal Shakespeare Company/RSC).  In Berlin, Lucy enjoys a long-term collaboration with Lydia Ziemke and Suite42, working on Dea Loher’s LAND WITHOUT WORDS (English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center) and WAR ZONE; research and development for HUSSEIN (Zoukak Theater, Beirut), ABOUT FRANCOIS (El Hakawati, Palestine) and the international digital project: THE SUN SETS EIGHT TIMES A DAY. Her own work is political and participatory, with a focus on community, austerity and protest: #TORYCORE (with Steve Lawson and Chris Thorpe) KAIDAN, ONE MINUTE MANIFESTO and WHEN I WAS OLD/ WHEN I GET YOUNG (recreated for the 2018 Expo Festival at ETB | IPAC).Lucy is a mentor and associate with the UK’s National Student Drama Festival and in Education Associate with The RSC and in recent years worked as an Associate Artist with London’s Gate Theatre, experimental performance collective Forest Fringe, Third Angel and The Deaf and hearing Ensemble (a collective of Deaf and hearing actors making formally experimental performance).
We´re looking forward to welcoming both Lucy and Boris back on our stage.

 

NASSIM follows Soleimanpour’s globally acclaimed White Rabbit Red Rabbit, which has been translated into over 25 different languages and performed over 1,000 times by names including Sinead Cusack, Ken Loach and Whoopi Goldberg including five performances at English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center in October 2013.

 “A strikingly gentle, humane and emotive consideration of the experience of an artist living and working in the diaspora.” | The Herald

“Emotionally charged theatrical experiment.” | The Stage

“An unusually vivid celebration of theatre’s liveness.” | The Guardian

“As he heightens the audience’s sense of complicity in his art, Soleimanpour makes a quietly persuasive case for theatre’s special power to foster empathy.” | London Evening Standard

Nassim Soleimanpour (playwright and performer) is an independent multidisciplinary theater maker best known for his multi award-winning play White Rabbit Red Rabbit. Nassim’s play Blank premiered in the UK at the Bush Theatre’s RADAR festival in 2015, also playing in Amsterdam and Utrecht with further performances all over the world including at the Edinburgh Fringe and in Argentina, Australia and India. Further plays include Blind Hamlet which premiered at LIFT Festival 2014 prior to a UK tour and productions in Bucharest and Copenhagen. Nassim now lives in Berlin and has been commissioned to write a new play for Teater Momentum (Denmark).
Pics: David Monteith-Hodge / Studio Doug

The Saviour

a new play by Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan, produced by Landmark Productions, performed by Marie Mullen and Brendan Gleeson, directed by Louise Lowe and presented by the Cork Midsummer Festival.

The production will be streamed and available online from June 19th. Get more info and your tickets to join the stream here: The Saviour

The Saviour is a new play that charts the extraordinary shift in social, political and religious life in Ireland over the past thirty years. It asks questions about responsibility, about how we respond to trauma and about the tricky question of forgiveness.

Please join us for a special event:

In the Green Room with The Saviour | A Post Show Talk

June 22, 2021 – 19:00 CET

The Embassy of Ireland in Germany and the Consulate General of Ireland in Frankfurt are thrilled to present, in partnership with The English Theatre in Frankfurt, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, and The English Theatre of Hamburg, IN THE GREEN ROOM WITH THE SAVIOUR– a post-show talk with the team behind the brand new Irish play The Saviour.

For the first time ever, all of the English theaters in Germany are brought together in a partnership to present a theater piece to a nationwide English-speaking German audience. Utilizing the boundary-less nature of current pandemic-accommodating online activity, audiences can access the live premiere as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, and partake in this interactive Q+A to gain deeper insights into this highly anticipated play.

Moderated by journalist Meike Krüger, the acclaimed team of writer Deirdre Kinahan, director Louise Lowe, actor Marie Mullen and producer Anne Clarke will shed light on this exciting work that reflects deeply on cultural transformations in Ireland.

Join ‘In the Green Room with The Saviour’ on June 22 live on Zoom or from any of the partners’ Facebook pages. Register here to attend.

 

Let There Be Theater!

March 13, 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the day theaters around the world went dark in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Our friends and collaborators Aurora Nova, the renowned international theater booking agency that represents the Berlin-based Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, have invited us and hundreds of theaters around the world to mark this anniversary with a very special performance of Nassim’s very special play White Rabbit, Red Rabbit  by our dear friend GAYLE TUFTS.

The profits of the evening will go to theatermakers who had no work during the Corona pandemic!

We’ll let Aurora Nova’s director, Wolfgang Hoffmann, tell you a little more about the play:

“Ten years ago, almost to the day, I performed in a show at the Fadjr Festival in Tehran. At the festival hotel I was introduced to a young unpublished playwright, who did not have a passport, because he had refused to do military service. In order to get his work in front of an audience, he had devised a play that had to be performed as a cold read, without the need of a director, set or rehearsals. All it needed was for a brave performer to agree to read a text in front of a live audience, without first knowing what the play was about. I liked this young man and loved his idea and spontaneously agreed to help produce his show at the Edinburgh Fringe later that year. When I finally saw the show performed live, I realized what this playwright had achieved. Through the power of his words alone he had written himself to freedom.
Now, ten years on, the play White Rabbit, Red Rabbit has become one of the most widely performed plays in the world. It has been translated into over 30 languages and been performed by some of the most respected actors in the business. The playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour now lives in Berlin and realizes that our world is trapped, much like he was ten years ago. So the idea was born to offer his play as a vehicle to connect and empower producers, artists and audiences around the world.”

In 2013, White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was our second production after our reimagining as an international performing arts center – and we are thrilled to be able to offer this incredible work once again as part of Aurora Nova’s Let There Be Theater!

This time, we’ve found an absolutely legendary performer to accompany Nassim’s text.

Gayle Tufts, “Germany’s best known US-American”. Working as an entertainer, author, singer and commentator, Gayle has been a household name in Germany’s theater landscape since the 1990s, when she also gave some of her very first performances at a little basement theater on Fidicinstraße called Friends of Italian Opera – which is now English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center.

On March 13, at 8pm, we will be offering a one-night only live stream of Gayle’s performance of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit. Tickets will cost 10 €.

We look forward to Zooming White Rabbit, Red Rabbit with Gayle, Aurora Nova and all of you!

The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries

Did you hear? Our friends at SummerWorks in Toronto, Canada just announced their first summer presentation The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries: Summer Passport – a remote immersive experience from Outside the March!

We are thrilled to be partnering with SummerWorks and a community of organizations from around the world to spread the word that this special presentation is available internationally for the first time and entirely free to the public.

“Made-to-measure… executed so generously… [The Ministry] asked about my world, listened and then let me slip free of it, at 10-minute intervals.” -The New York Times

Finding yourself with a little time on your hands? Missing the uplift of live arts and culture? Is there a friend, a relative or a kid in your life who could use a daily dose of adventure? The meticulous mavericks at The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries have got you covered. This customized improvised narrative experience unfolds over a week’s worth of short daily phone calls, as our intrepid private investigators delve into your very own micro mystery using the investigative power of good conversation.

In Germany, Ministry agents will be available between 5pm-7pm / 9pm-11pm / 1am-3am. Tickets are going extremely quickly and can be booked, free of charge, at https://www.mundanemysteries.com/book-now-international

The Ministry’s Departments include:

·         The Misplaced Keepsakes Division

·         The Striking Coincidences ThinkTank

·         The Missed Connections Unit

·         The Paranormal Activity Task Force

At this moment of uncertainty, leave some of the pondering to the professionals as we work with you to untangle meaning from meaninglessness in the mundane.

There are only a limited number of appointments available for international investigations so be sure to book as soon as possible to get your daily dose of adventure during these unprecedented times!

Status (Chris Thorpe, UK)

We all have a nationality.

Or almost all of us.

Status is a show about someone who doesn’t want his any more. About running away from the national story you’re given. About who is responsible
for that story and what might happen to it if you give it up.

A globe-spanning journey of attempted escape, with songs along the way.

Directed by Rachel Chavkin who won a Tony award 2019 for Best Director of the Broadway musical Hadestown.

“… the words are eloquent, the music essential and powerful, and the performance full of a brilliant, prowling precision…”

Scotsman Fringe First Award Winner 2018

★★★★ Guardian ★★★★Time Out ★★★★The Scotsman★★★★The Stage

“With its magical-realist twists, the show has the strange pull of a Haruki Murakami novel, a dense and provocative barrage of reflections on a world in flux and our place within it.” Guardian
“As ever with Chris Thorpe, the words are eloquent, the music essential and powerful, and the performance full of a brilliant, prowling precision…” Scotsman
“…a searching, meticulously crafted, beautifully written piece, full of fragile conclusions about nationhood and privilege.” The Stage
“Status is a sophisticated, hugely confident show, meticulously crafted in Thorpe’s bracing monologue and directed with assurance and remarkable insight by Rachel Chavkin…” ArtsDesk
“…a scintillating, rigorous critique of something we often take for granted” Fest Mag
“Thorpe’s metaphysical road trip is grittily real, discomfortingly surreal, densely poetic” Edinburgh Reporter

Supported by the British Council, Goethe-Institut London, the Collaborative Touring Network and using public funding by the national lottery through Arts Council England.

Electra

ETB | IPAC & Berlin International Youth Theatre present

HARVARD COLLEGE STUDENTS with their production of the Sophocles classic, Electra, featuring Turkish TV star Ece Hakim.

A moving exploration of family and justice: Thousands of years ago, King Agamemnon ruled over Mycenae alongside his wife Clytemnestra and his four children Iphigenia, Electra, Orestes and Chrysothemis. All was well until Agamemnon’s sister in law, Helen, was taken to Troy. Now it was up to him to command the Greek armed forces into the infamous Trojan War which would claim many victims, including Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, whom he sacrificed to the Gods in exchange for a strategic advantage. Upon his return, Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover. Electra, along with her dead father’s adviser, organized the kidnapping of her youngest brother Orestes, with the intent of training the young boy to one day avenge his father and murder his mother. Fifteen years later, Orestes returns to fulfill his murderous destiny…

This is the latest production by director Isaiah Michalski, actor of Lars Kraume’s award-winning film The Silent Revolution (Das schweigende Klassenzimmer). Michalski studies theater at Harvard College and is currently participating in the Schaubühne’s prestigious apprenticeship program.

The show will include an original score and live music by composer Marie Carroll.