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Mars One – Venus Zero

a one-and-a-half-man show by A Fish Needs A Bicycle exploring the complications of modern masculinity and the recent outbreak of “Meninists”; Men’s Rights activists who troll the Internet to harass women and undermine their rights and progress.

We step into the world of our misguided protagonist, Mike, as he prepares his audition video for the “MARS ONE” space program while pondering the state of the Earth and his fear of the pending female takeover.

MARS ONE – VENUS ZERO sets out to highlight a real and ever present danger using storytelling, live music and emotional statistics.

Gem Andrews

is an English writer, director and professional musician from Liverpool, UK and has been creating work across the UK since 2004. Gem also works within the participatory arts sector between Berlin and Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; facilitating music and writing workshops for young offenders and is particularly interested in creating theater work through the voices of society’s most disenfranchised, in particular the LGBTQ community and the British working classes.

Currently living and working in the Neukölln and Kreuzberg districts of Berlin, Gem’s ongoing projects include writing the score for Chicken Pox Fox’s upcoming play Betsey Ann and promoting her new critically acclaimed album of original songs, Vancouver.

Richard Gibb

Richard Gibb is a theater maker and storyteller from Aberdeen, Scotland and has been creating work in the UK since 2008. In Newcastle, England he was a part of several theater companies that created original and thought provoking work ranging from walkabout festival performances to immersive storytelling theater. In England, Richard also worked for 6 years in the participatory arts sector, using the context of theater to engage with a wide range of people, from children with disabilities, to adults struggling with homelessness.

Richard is most interested in creating work that is original, relevant and engages with the community in which it exists. He currently lives in Prenzlauer Berg and works all over Berlin.

The Story of a Tiger

Nanzikambe Arts (Malawi)

Inspired by the 2011 Malawi protests against the government which resulted in 20 deaths and nearly 100 injuries, leading Malawi theater company Nanzikambe Arts responded with an adaptation of Dario Fo‘s 1978 play La storia della tigre.

Geoffrey Mbene Tiger - Photo by Philipp Hamedl Web

Originally inspired by Fo‘s 1975 trip to China, this dramatic monologue tells the story of a revolutionary Chinese solider wounded during Mao‘s Long March and left to die by his comrades. Nursed back to health by a mother tiger, he returns to civilization determined to cure its ills.

In Thokozani Kapiri‘s international adaptation intended for both African and European audiences, Geoffrey Mbene provides a tour-de-force performance relying heavily on pantomime and physical theater.

This production of The Story of a Tiger, commissioned by Theater Konstanz as part of its three-year partnership with Nanzikambe Arts – Crossing Borders, von See zu See – received 10 different presentations in Germany in 2012. It was also performed at Mwezi Wawala International Arts Festival, Blantyre Arts Festival and Malawi Cultural Arts Festival, in Austria and in Ireland in 2013.

Photo by Philipp Hamedl

Celebrity Bound

Do you want to be famous? Do you want to be a star?

Success. Access. Excess. All of it can be yours.

You were born famous. It’s just that no one knows it yet.

Fashion. Fortune. Freedom. All of it is yours.

You don’t create fame. Fame creates you.

But do you have what it takes?

The trick. The secret. The rule book.

USA bred writer-director, Catherine Duquette, has the secret. In her interactive, one-woman show, Celebrity Bound, she’ll show you how it’s done. Over the course of three nights, blending movement, video, scripted and improvised text, as well as audience interaction, a star will be born. Who will it be? Perhaps YOU are the next hot celebrity.

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In a time dominated by social media, rapid data consumption and curated identities, Berlin-based performer and writer <strong>Catherine Duquette</strong> strives for closeness and connection. She specializes in audience-performer relationships, movement and improvisational scores. Her performances exact moments of heightened awareness and honesty on stage in an effort to dissolve the barriers that shape how we perceive and (dis)connect with the world around us. Her solo work has been supported by MOMENTUM Berlin, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, a Fulbright Fellowship in Spain, the International Festival of the Delphic Games in Greece and the Subterranean Art House in Berkeley, California. Catherine studied theater at Arizona State University and the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England. She earned her master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University prior to relocating to Germany. Despite frequent moves, Catherine calls the Sonoran Desert of Arizona home.

Confirmation

Theatertreffen stückemarkt revisited

If you pinned me against a wall, I’d probably admit to being a liberal. Of course, pinning me against a wall is exactly what I’d expect from someone like you. A show about the gulfs we can’t talk across, and about the way we choose to see only the evidence that proves we’re right.

With an election looming and new voices appearing in mainstream UK politics, Chris Thorpe and The TEAM Artistic Director Rachel Chavkin examine the phenomenon of confirmation bias through an honorable dialogue, real and imagined, with political extremism. To find out how we believe what we believe and how we can end up so far apart.

Edinburgh Fringe First Award Winner – 2014

“Rachel Chavkin’s fast-moving, kinetic production offers us an absolutely compelling performance from a man who is fast becoming one of the most powerful performers in the UK” – The Scotsman

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Chris Thorpe | Writer and Performer

Chris is a writer and performer from Manchester. He is a founder member of Unlimited Theatre and also an artistic associate of Third Angel. He is making a cycle of solo pieces and continues to collaborate with companies like Slung Low, Forest Fringe, RashDash and Soup Collective, with whom he wrote and recorded the piece The Bomb On Mutannabbi Street Is Still Exploding, which has been permanently installed at the Imperial War Museum North. Chris’s plays have been produced worldwide and he has toured with Unlimited and Third Angel in Europe, Africa, Asia and the USA.

Recent projects include a trilogy of plays, Overdrama, House/Garden and Dead End for Portuguese company mala voadora, which continue to tour in Europe. He is also still touring in Third Angel’s show What I Heard About The World, recently to Poland, Brazil, Germany and Lebanon. He worked with poet Hannah Jane Walker in 2010 to make her solo show, This Is Just To Say. Hannah and Chris then worked together again to create The Oh Fuck Moment, which won a Fringe First at Edinburgh Fringe 2011. Their show, I Wish I Was Lonely, is still on the road. He also plays guitar in Lucy Ellinson’s political extreme noise project TORYCORE.

As a playwright, Chris recently worked with Hannah Jane Walker on a commission for The Unicorn Theatre in London, and revived his hit show, There Has Possibly Been An Incident, at the Stückemarkt in Berlin (following an invitation from playwright Simon Stephens). He also wrote Northern Stage’s Christmas Show, Dark Woods, Deep Snow in 2013. Chris is currently writing a new show for the Royal Court Theatre and a new project for the Unicorn Theatre as well as continuing work with Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre.

Rachel Chavkin | Director

Rachel is a Brooklyn-based director/dramaturg/writer, and the Artistic Director of collaborative ensemble the TEAM. Founded in 2004, the TEAM makes new work about the experience of living in America today, and aims to keep the brain, eyes, and heart of the audience constantly stimulated. Four time winners of the Fringe First, winner of the 2011 Herald Angel, the 2011 EIF Fringe Prize, and ranked Best of 2013 on three continents, the TEAM’s work includes Mission Drift, a new musical composed by Heather Christian that travels through 400 years of history in pursuit of the soul of American capitalism, and RoosevElvis, the story of a surreal road trip from the Badlands to Graceland. The TEAM has been presented at or received commissions from organizations all over New York (including the Public Theater, PS122, and the Bushwick Starr), nationally (including the Walker Art Center and the A.R.T.), internationally (including London’s National Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Barbican Centre, the Almeida Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, international festivals in Perth and Hong Kong, and the Salzburg Festival’s Young Directors Program).

In addition to her work with the TEAM, Rachel collaborates regularly with writers and composers on new work. Recent projects include Dave Malloy’s immersively staged electro-pop opera Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Kazino – commercial transfer; World Premiere: Ars Nova – New York Times, Time Out New York and New York Post Critics’ Picks, and Top Ten); storyteller James Monaco and composer Jerome Ellis’ collaboration Aaron/Marie; Meg Miroshnik’s The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls (Yale Rep); Rick Burkhardt,

Alec Duffy and Dave Malloy’s Three Pianos (A.R.T., NYTW – Dec ’10/Jan ’11, Ontological Incubator Series – Feb/March ’10, 2010 Obie Award); and repeat collaborations with playwright/performer/activist Taylor Mac including his extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge (World Premiere, Act II) (HERE Arts Center, 2010 Obie Award) and Peace, co-written by Mac and Chavkin (Workshop, HERE Arts Center, 2007).

Rachel is a two-time Obie Winner, and was nominated as Best Director for both the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards for her work on Great Comet. Upcoming work includes multiple projects with Dave Malloy, adapting folk singer Anaïs Mitchell’s album Hadestown, a theatrical concert adaption of Mac Wellman’s intergalactic Ohio-based novel Annie Salem in collaboration with composer Heather Christian, and the TEAM’s multigenerational cover band project, Primer for a Failed Superpower.

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IMPRO 2015

Over the years, IMPRO has become one of the largest and one of the most important festivals of its kind in Europe.

141209_IMPRO2015_titel.inddIn 2015 as well, Die Gorillas have invited improv artists from 13 different countries to improvise together. The 14th edition of IMPRO will be held from March 13-22, 2015 and once again, we are delighted to serve as one of the festival’s hubs and bring you three different shows, including a very special event: the festival ensemble will improvise the story of a Berlin family from the 1920s to the present over six consecutive nights: The Hoffmanns – A Berlin Family Story. A different year in the family story will be presented each night. 1925 will be followed by 1937, 1955, 1970, 1990 and end in the year 2015. The audience will accompany a Berlin family on a very special journey through time over multiple generations. Even Die Gorillas are excited to see how this improvised family saga will turn out!

Saturday, March 14 | 8pm
The National Theatre of the World: The SCript Tease Project

Naomi Snieckus of The National Theatre of the World from Toronto has been taking Berlin audiences by storm since her first shows at IMPRO 2012 – not only with her precise, powerful, imaginative acting, but also with her varied theatrical forms of expression. For the SCript Tease Project, a playwright will write the first lines of dialogue for her and one actor from the festival cast. Live in front of the audience they will open an envelope whose content is foreign to them, read the beginning of a play which was written for them and improvise the entire play for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, March 15 | 8pm
Marko Mayerl: Mon nom est Némo (In French with English and German subtitles)

IMPRO2015_Promo_MonnomestNemo_RitaMayerl-16ea1623This is the first scripted, non-improvised theater performance that we’ve ever presented during the 14 years of our festival – the focus of this solo is the very international family history of Marko Mayerl of Strasbourg, whose ancestors are from Finland, Germany, Russia and France. A father tells his son who is in hospital the story of their family. It’s an odyssey spanning several European epochs which makes the son forget that he is seriously ill. A Finnish woman marries a Russian, who defies his father’s wish for him to become an orthodox priest. A Frenchwoman, pregnant with her first child, marries a pilot of the German air force while World War II is raging. This autobiographical play, full of tenderness and humor, prompts us to take a look at how we deal with our own family history. Which part of our heritage is acceptable for us to take on, which part do we reject and why?

March 16 – 21 | 8pm
Festival Ensemble: The Hoffmanns – A Berlin Family Story

The name is a given: the Hoffmanns. The place: Berlin. The time: between 1925 and today. Improvising the story of this family, that’s the big challenge for the cast of IMPRO 2015. For the first time, our festival will present a continuous improvisation spanning six nights, supported by the intellectual assistance of the audience. Mignon Remé (Hamburg), Randy Dixon (USA) and Naomi Snieckus (Canada) will each be the director of two nights, Dan Richter (Berlin) will chronicle what’s happening on stage and make sure everyone is on the same page. Join us for this amazing experiment which further explores the possibilities of improvised theater.

Promo pics: Matthias Flührer / Nemo pic: Rita Mayerl

Celebrity Bound

I’ve always been a celebrity. It’s just that no one knows it yet.

In her one-woman show Celebrity Bound, writer-director Catherine Duquette grapples with the polarities of celebrity and commonness, investigating her own relationship to fame and the personas that influence it. We admire celebrities for daring us to believe that anyone can achieve success, fame and fortune, yet we condemn them for seemingly having it all and for leading glamorous lifestyles that are well beyond our reach.

What are the forces behind celebrity? What drives the cultural phenomenon to simultaneously build and destroy the “Beautiful People”? How does celebrity negotiate the tension between access and excess? Through movement, language, video, scripted and improvised material, as well as audience interaction, Catherine moves fluidly between celebrity and fan, fantasy and reality, confronting her own desire for and repulsion towards becoming celebrity.

Original concept devised in collaboration with Michael Burditt Norton.

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In a time dominated by social media, rapid data consumption and curated identities, Berlin-based performer and writer Catherine Duquette strives for closeness and connection. She specializes in audience-performer relationships, movement and improvisational scores. Her performances exact moments of heightened awareness and honesty on stage in an effort to dissolve the barriers that shape how we perceive and (dis)connect with the world around us. Her solo work has been supported by MOMENTUM Berlin, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, a Fulbright Fellowship in Spain, the International Festival of the Delphic Games in Greece and the Subterranean Art House in Berkeley, California. Catherine studied theater at Arizona State University and the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England. She earned her master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University prior to relocating to Germany. Despite frequent moves, Catherine calls the Sonoran Desert of Arizona home.

Featuring a short introduction and post-performance discussion on October 22 as part of Theater Scoutings Berlin!

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The Emigrants

Life as immigrants in Germany – setting off into alleged freedom, intellectual, political or financial, leads a man and a woman into somebody’s basement. One, seemingly a migrant worker, and the other, who at first glance appears to be an intellectual, are left to sink or swim in this barren environment. The reference to theater of the absurd is clear. Up to this point, Threepenny Theatre follows the dramatic source material of Sławomir Mrożek.

Then the text intertwines with the lives of the performers, is deconstructed through a Babylonian confusion of languages and the boundaries between intimate reality and performance blur. After all, Babylon is the everyday life of the performers: Marija Maki Lipkovski is Serbian and Miklós Miki Barna is Hungarian – they live together in Germany and speak Hungarian and Serbian, usually English and German with each other, and sometimes Italian, too. The fact that misunderstandings are just a regular part of the daily routine becomes the means to cryptic humor on stage.

Through a dizzying combination of mask theater, political and intellectual digressions and self-made films, these emigrants search on stage for the freedom they came here for in the first place. In doing so, they explore especially elaborate relationships between theater and film.

This results in grotesque hybrids: 1/3 human being, 1/3 stage character, 1/3 film character. It increasingly seems as though they are a chasing a ghost that is not to be found on any of the three levels, leaving them prisoners of a grand idea.

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Featuring a post-performance discussion on October 2 as part of Theater Scoutings Berlin!

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IMPRO 2014

IMPRO 2014 at English Theatre Berlin

“Say Yes!” is the motto of IMPRO 2014, the biggest festival for improvisational theatre in Europe. 40 artists from 14 nations present entertaining, contemplative, dramatic, hilarious moments, celebrating the spontaneous theatre in 28 shows: whipped impromptu on stage before the audience’s face.

English Theatre Berlin will present five shows:

March 22 | 8pm: MOVIE CLAPPER

At the beginning of the festival, we present the prelude race through the world of film. You ask for a horror film, a spaghetti western, soap operas or documentaries, Ancient Rome epics or “Berlin School” – the international cast tries to fulfill every wish. Great cinema on the theatre stage — a trip on the roller coaster of cinematic pleasure.

March 24 | 8 pm: LIGHT BOX (in French !!!)

It is always a special show when spoken neither in German nor in English, but in French. For the first time the ensemble Impro Infini is our guest, who in turn host their own festival (Subito) in the city of Brest, with whom we are cooperating. Both French colleagues meet Kevin (Dad’s Garage/Atlanta) and Lucien Bourjeily (Impro Beirut). The four of them will not only be inspired by the charming suggestions of the audience, but also by the special lighting mood and sound effects – o la la.

March 25 | 8pm: CITY BEATS

The sound of a city has a very special tone. This night is all about funny and tragic moments in daily life of a big city. Special about the show is that the inspirations intensified(?) come from those, whose part for the success of an improv-night is mostly underestimated: the musicians – in this case Hannu Risku (Stella Polaris/Finnland), Gilly Alfeo (Die Springmäuse/Bonn) and Rudy Redl (Die Gorillas) – will inspire the actors with their instruments and soundfiles and will push them to the peak.

March 27 | 8 pm: IN THE AIR

Two years ago we tried this for the first time, and beautifully enough a lot went wrong: cell phone cameras were streaming improvised events into the theatre (which most of the times worked out, but got stuck sometimes) where the thread was continued until the next switch to the outside crew, and so on. Those in the mood for an improvised adventure and touching moments (one of the most impressive moments developed when things went wrong, and the actors did not know they were filmed) are in the right show. We work in cooperation with the great nerds of ape unit and attempt the improvement of this format.

March 28 + March 29 | 8pm: MOVIE STYLES: FANTASY and TARANTINO

The main focus of the festival. After we gave ourselves over to various playwrights in 2011, this year’s focus lies on the improvisational transformation/conversion of two directors (R.W. Fassbinder und Quentin Tarantino) and two genres (“Romantic Comedy” and “Fantasy”). The festival ensemble rehearses these special improv formats in two-day workshops each and improvises them on two nights. In English Theatre, we will present to you two movies in the style of the genre Fantasy and the director Tarantino – but not without having asked the audience for their associations and suggestions of course!

The Dollar General

A new film by Daniel Fish (NYC)

Daniel Fish has long been interested in film – as a textual resource/referent (the screenplay), an element of his stagecraft (the screen) and a structural challenge to his dramaturgy (the “language” of cinema vs. the “language” of the theater). Recently, he made his first serious turn to filmmaking, with the hour-long The Dollar General, a funny, quiet, cinematographically deadpan meditation on economics, crisis, loss and change, shot in an abandoned Ford dealership.

That is, it’s a movie about America right now. It’s a beautiful movie, profoundly affecting in its visual rusticity, and its haunting final scene – the final shot, especially – numbers among the most memorable committed to film in this country in recent years.

Trailer:

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For roughly the last twenty years, Daniel Fish has been making innovative work for theater, opera and more recently, film. His heterodox theatrical vision traffics in the unlikeliest of aesthetic combinations – revolutionizing revered dramatic classics (Shakespeare, Moliere, Odets, Benjamin Britten, Rodgers and Hammerstein), or else finding theater where none was intended, as in the labyrinthine writings of the late David Foster Wallace with A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (The Chocolate Factory and ArtsEmerson’s TNT Festival) and Jonathan Franzen with House For Sale. Fish’s work is at once conceptually rigorous and theatrical lavish, and it is this rare conjunction that gives his work its singular flavor.

The Story of a Tiger

Nanzikambe Arts (Malawi)

Inspired by the 2011 Malawi protests against the government which resulted in 20 deaths and nearly 100 injuries, leading Malawi theater company Nanzikambe Arts responded with an adaptation of Dario Fo‘s 1978 play La storia della tigre.

Geoffrey Mbene Tiger - Photo by Philipp Hamedl Web

Originally inspired by Fo‘s 1975 trip to China, this dramatic monologue tells the story of a revolutionary Chinese solider wounded during Mao‘s Long March and left to die by his comrades. Nursed back to health by a mother tiger, he returns to civilization determined to cure its ills.

In Thokozani Kapiri‘s international adaptation intended for both African and European audiences, Geoffrey Mbene provides a tour-de-force performance relying heavily on pantomime and physical theater.

This production of The Story of a Tiger, commissioned by Theater Konstanz as part of its three-year partnership with Nanzikambe Arts – Crossing Borders, von See zu See – received 10 different presentations in Germany in 2012. It was also performed at Mwezi Wawala International Arts Festival, Blantyre Arts Festival and Malawi Cultural Arts Festival, in Austria and in Ireland in 2013.

Photo by Philipp Hamedl