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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

It’s Gonna Rain

In 1965, amid the Civil Rights Movement, racial conflict and profound social transformation in the United States, Steve Reich recorded the voice of Black street preacher Brother Walter declaring: “It’s gonna rain.” Walter’s words warn of an approaching catastrophe and of the moment when escape is no longer possible. This warning became a loop in Reich’s work: repeated, fractured and transformed.

Sixty years later, Opera Lab Berlin reimagines Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain, Come Out and Piano Phase as a new work of music and dance theater. Through choreography and Reich’s radical musical experimentation, the piece follows the mechanics of attention itself: how repetition creates meaning, how visibility creates power and how a center of power emerges when attention repeatedly concentrates on the same people, voices and images.

1965, the present and an uncertain future collide in a society caught in permanent spectacle – a world where reality, representation and surveillance increasingly merge. Images do not simply document reality; they construct it. Repetition produces truth. Attention becomes power. Visibility becomes currency.

Who occupies the center? Who is heard? Who is seen? Who belongs? And who gets to construct the reality everyone else sees?

Opera Lab Berlin has staged over 30 independent productions since its founding in 2013, working with more than 40 contemporary composers and 18 directors. With It’s Gonna Rain, the collective continues its mission to expand the possibilities of contemporary music theater to open space for exchange of diverse lived experiences.

The West Ain´t What It Used To Be

Thanksgiving with country music, Jell-O salad and Dolly Parton

A lot of folks are worried about the state of democracy in the United States. Is it teetering on the brink? Is a civil war looming? Are the tech billionaires supporting its downfall?

Harriet: I just think it´s sad that people have such a negative perception of our country right now. I’m not a historian but I know that America has been through some crises, rough times, and divisions before, and I’d like to think that we’ve always been able to come back onto the right track.
Sally: What is that, the right track? And for who?  For the Right, for the rich, for the billionaire tech bros and their folks?
Rhonda: Not for mine, that’s for sure.

Thanksgiving in Berlin. Fred and his US-American wife Rhonda have invited guests from her motherland over for a turkey dinner. Inevitably, the conversation drifts from the American Dream – via Karl May and Western movies – to the topic of all topics: What is going on in the US? Strangely enough, Dolly Parton seems to be in the room, too. And a country & western band magically appears. The evening escalates …

Fred: The Western opened up an exciting world where you knew right from the start that the good guys will win in the end. And they win because they’re the good guys – not because they’re stronger or because they are more people or have more guns, but because they’re good, period! And that’s how the West was won.
Sally: But Fred I’m sure you’re aware that that’s all a bunch of lies!!
Fred: Of course, I know, but that doesn’t make James Stewart’s fights less exciting.

In “The West Ain´t What It Used To Be”, The Waltraud Experience tackles one of the most pressing issues of our time: The right and the left stand in completely irreconcilable opposition; a stalemate has been reached – Where are the United States headed?

Oh the West ain’t what it used to be  / Wild and Wooly and full of fleas / Now we live a life of ease, chatting to our GPTs / The West ain’t what it used to be

Country music icon Dolly Parton – who sadly passed away on August 25th – was often looked to as a unifying figure; someone both the right and the left can agree on. Yet, a closer look reveals that Dolly prefered to stay out of it … she sang, she cracked jokes, and she championed “positive thinking”… but politics? No thanks.

The Waltraud Experience performs cultural history – first in a series of six productions dealing with science issues (the Science&Theatre series) followed by four “Conversations with Cultural Icons” – Jaws/Der weiße Hai – Bowie in Berlin – Pop! Andy Warhol&The Velvet Underground – The West Ain´t What It Used To Be. –  shows about the question how Pop became Culture. They have been coproducing with ETB/IPAC since 2010.

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.

These four performances mark the tenth anniversary of this solo.

 

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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!

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 Jacqueline 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.

A Bee in the Heart of Her

If Nora Helmer, Henrik Ibsen’s famous female protagonist, could speak anything besides Henrik’s text, what would she say? How about Hedda Gabler, Mrs. Sørby from The Wild Duck or Ellida Wangel, The Lady From the Sea? Can characters express themselves beyond their playwright? In song, perhaps?

This is exactly where Sibyl Kempson’s alchemical new work A Bee in the Heart of Her comes in. Over the course of a weaving workshop for recovering Ibsen women led by Mrs. Sørby in a rundown community center, these trailblazing characters confront mistranslations, misunderstood origins, mistaken fates, mansplaining and everything else that Ibsen got wrong, in detail.

With Kempson’s lyrical text set to original music composed by Robert M. Johanson (Nature Theater of Oklahoma), these women tell their own stories and finally set the record straight, once and for all.

Sibyl Kempson and Daniel Brunet received a 2022 Ibsen Scope Grant from the Ibsen Scope Festival in Skein, Norway, which is dedicated to highlighting world issues through the works of Henrik Ibsen.

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.

Why I Want to Be White

What does a newly arrived Sikh delivery driver in Berlin have to do with the rising level of the ocean? Where do avocados and billionaires and yoga meet, and what do they eat for lunch?

Why I Want to Be White is the opposite of a TED talk. (For one, there’s the harp, guiding us with its playful and disruptive sound.) It is a factually sort-of-accurate history of how “whiteness” – the world’s most successful group project – continues to manage the algorithm of supremacy and send us down mental health spirals.

This searing, funny and personal performance with harpist and collaborator Melis Çom travels geographies and centuries, returning again and again to the disturbing “brilliance” of the masterplan of whiteness and the cost of believing in it.

Deepika Arwind is a writer and performer based between Berlin and Bangalore. Her work looks at etching a psychological and emotional map of gender and politics in the current (already moving) moment. Her theater has been performed in various countries including the UAE, USA, UK and Singapore, and of course, across India and Germany. Her most recent works include The International Conference of Insecurity (2022, 2023) Phantasmagoria (UK, Kali Theatre 2023), I Speak to Sita (Forecast Forum, 2025), This Thing is about Everything (Stuttgart, 2023, 2024, Munich 2025). Phantasmagoria will have its Swiss premiere in Bern in August 2027. She is the recipient of various fellowships and residencies including most recently Weltoffenes Berlin. In 2026, she will be one of six mentors from around the world at the ITI Academy for Theater Der Welt, Chemnitz. She is also the author of the children’s book Sarayu.
Her debut novel is called Good Arguments (Simon & Schuster India 2026) and draws from her 15 years of experience in theater.

Melis Çom is a harpist based in Munich and Zurich. Her music combines the classical traditions of the harp with an openness to sound and style, moving between classical, contemporary and experimental music.

Sophia Stepf is a theater maker, curator, dramaturg and the artistic director of Flinn Works (Berlin). She has been devising and co-creating research-based performances for the last two decades, focusing on feminist and postcolonial issues. Her shows have toured internationally and won various awards in Delhi, Zürich, and Berlin, most recently the Tabori-Award by Fonds Darstellende Künste (Germany) and the prize of the International Theater Institute (Germany). As a dramaturg /curator she has worked with Theater der Welt, Vienna Festwochen, Linz 09, Schnawwl Mannheim and Theaterfestival Schwindelfrei Mannheim, amongst others. Sophia has been designing experiential learning spaces for dramaturgy, devising theatre, theatre pedagogy, and transcultural competencies for 16 years, e.g., for Goethe-Institutes in India. She holds an MA in Dramaturgy and has trained in Betzafta (democracy training), DasArts Feedback Method, Anti-Bias, diversity training methods, new work and feminist leadership. She lives in Berlin with her family.

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