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FRATZ International

FRATZ International 2024
Encounters – Symposium – Festival for the very young

FRATZ International was created in 2013 by Theater o.N. in Berlin and has since invited the international children’s theater community to Berlin six times. Every two years, FRATZ presents remarkable guest performances in Berlin. It also hosts a symposium to discuss and explore the latest developments in dance and theater for very young audiences. Colleagues from all over the world meet in Berlin for this international exchange.

English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center is very pleased to partner with FRATZ International for the 2024 edition of the festival, serving as the venue for performances of Fields of Tender, an immersive durational dance performance for babies and children with disabilities as well as Luft, a dance performance for all ages. On October 13, at 6pm, we will also host a lecture by Dalija Acin Thelander, the artist behind Fields of Tender, exploring her research.

Fields of Tender | Dalija Acin Thelander | Sweden

An Immersive Durational Dance Performance for Babies and Children with Disabilities

Fields of Tender is an enchanting and playful, dance performance, which immerses you in an imaginary world of tenderness, affection and love. Within this awe-inspiring, sensual world, the extravagant and peculiar events interlace with ethereal and gentle ones. The performance flow welcomes the audience’s curiosity as well as provides them with a calm and intimate space for relaxation.

Duration: durational (150 minutes)

Tickets for Fields of Tender are available on Sunday, October 13 at 11am and at 3pm and on Monday, October 14 at 2:30pm

The performances on October 13 at 11am and on October 14 at 2:30pm are intended for neurotypical babies from 6 months to 24 months as well as neurodivergent babies & children and children with disabilities up to 4 years of age.

The performance October 13 at 3pm is intended for neurodivergent children and children with disabilities from 5 to 10 years of age.

On Sunday, October 13 at 6pm, Dalija Acin Thelander will present a lecture on her research Towards Sensuous Ecologies, Rethinking Ableism in Choreographic and Movement Practices, focused on developing new transdisciplinary artistic methods that are attuned to neurodivergent perception, enabling the experience of communality, inclusiveness and empowerment through immersion, choreography and body practices.

Admission to the lecture is free of charge.

Luft | Nir de Volff & Theater o.N. | Germany

A Dance Performance for All Ages

What happens to the air we breathe into our bodies? How can we use our own breath to find freedom in the body and connect with others? The breath is the simplest and yet most complex personal tool to express our self. All of our joy, happiness, fears, emotional heaviness, and traumas reside in our chest, not just in our brain or under our skin.

Tickets for Luft are available on Wednesday, October 16 at 10am and on Thursday, October 17 at 10am

Concept and Choreography by Nir de Volff | Performed by Medhat Aldaabl, Mouafak Aldoabl and Renan Manhães | Costume Design by Moran Sanderovich | Music Composed by Daniel Benyamin

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.

Impro 2023

IMPRO is Europe’s largest showcase for improvised theater!

For the 2023 edition, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center will host Batovia:

When coming to Batovia, be aware that this land leaves no one untouched. The merciless struggle for power, the unquenched longing for love, the permanent flare-up of strife and hatred – you can’t escape it. William Shakespeare would have enjoyed these dramas that will captivate and draw you in. No one knows today how they will begin and how they will end – in this country that lies in yesterday, today and tomorrow, in the distance and right beside you.

 

go drag!

go drag! is an international drag festival celebrating women, non-binary, and trans artists. English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center is proud to serve as the producing partner and venue for all of the theatrical productions in this festival.

You can find a complete overview of the festival and all of its events and productions at its official website, right HERE.

Monday, October 3 | 7pm
four by four – 4 twenty-minute drag shows

Outstanding international drag talents show us what they’ve got in 20 minutes on stage.With: Very Confused (France/Berlin) | Buba Sababa (Israel/Berlin) | Zoé Gudovic (Belgrade/Vienna) as Zed Zeldic Zed | Duckie L’Orange (Australia/Berlin) as Richard P Dick Van Johnson

Tuesday, October 4 | 7pm
Joey Hateley – Harry Stokes: The Man-Woman of Manchester

A true story of the Victorian Trans Pioneer
Created and performed by Joey Hateley (Great Britain)

Wednesday, October 5 | 4pm
Drag + Intersectionality
Panel discussion about the different perspectives of drag

Thursday, October 6 | 7pm
Claire Dowie: H to He (I’m Turning Into a Man)

Inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis, H to He adds new twists to the maze of gender identity and sexuality…
Created and performed by Claire Dowie (London/GB)
Directed by Colin Watkeys

Friday, October 7 | 7pm
Cherdonna Shinatra: Goodnight Cowboy

Goodnight Cowboy is a performance work that uses iconography from Margaret Wise Brown’s children’s book Goodnight Moon and US-American western films.
Created and performed by Cherdonna Shinatra (Seattle/ USA)

Saturday, October 8 | 7pm
House of Living Colors – Endangered Species

Endangered Species is a Gesamtkunstwerk that intertwines the effects of climate change and declining biodiversity on the environment and human existence with the developments, philosophies, spiritualities, of the queer/trans black/person of color throughout human civilization.
Created and performed by House of Living Colors (Berlin)

Sunday, October 9 | 7pm
Mo B. Dick: Drag King History

This lecture presentation will showcase the extensive history of female-born performers who donned men’s attire for theatrical purposes from breeches roles to en travesti, variety to vaudeville, male impersonation to drag kings, and drag kings to the gender free.
Performed by Mo B. Dick (LA/USA)

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

Army of Lovefuckers

We will kill you with a fucking piece of performance art

We are arming ourselves – internally and externally. Theater is our boot camp.

Packing explosives, puppets and projections, we set off down the path of the female warrior.

We envisage performance as a continuation of politics with adapted techniques and we are recruiting all female fighters who have gotten lost along the way: the time to rise up is now! Join the Army of Lovefuckers!

Lovefuckers are on a journey toward an effective yet bloodless technique for revolution that ties games, fantasy, reality and utopia together. The stage is a guerilla boot camp with futuristic elements where a female recruit is trained to join the Army of Lovefuckers by learning the pluralistic battle of becoming a societally aware performer. She demonstrates her fitness level, chooses role models, builds resilience and, over the course of specialized training, becomes intimately acquainted with her weapon: puppet theater. She discovers her personal puppet and enters into symbiosis with her. Unified as one, the puppet and the puppeteer voice their demands and follow the paths of their role models, such as the feministic cyborg theorist Donna Haraway or the Mexican freedom fighter Subcomandante Marcos, into a playful battle against repression.

Everyone in the audience is invited to join, provided they meet at least one of the recruitment criteria on the application form, which will be distributed before the performance.

A multimedia political show in between theater, dance, performance and puppet theater with ambivalence consciously factored in. The performance elaborates on warfare, the transformation of recruits into heartless killing machines, rebellion against social oppression and the presence of violence in the media. It is a piece that opposes the brutality of the world, thus combatting the paralyzing fears caused by ongoing and unending wars, the predominance of neoliberalism and global terrorism with irony and playfulness.

Or, to sum things up, it is a solo performance tackling serious themes using humorous means.

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.