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When I Was Old/When I Get Young

A 100-year-long life span of who we are, here, right now

A special community performance, where a small group of local residents (from Berlin but not from
Berlin) will step out onto the stage.

From newborn baby to senior citizen, the project weaves together personal reflections and ambitions, past and future lives; to create a story of a lifetime.

When I Was Old/When I Get Young was originally conceived in response to William Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” speech and captures what we’ve come to understand about being human.

Women Who Changed The World

A surreal cabaret duet

Opera Chaotique and their utterly unique crossover cabaret show pay homage to the lives of Camille Claudel, Nina Simone, Isidora Duncan, Sarah Kane and many others which are interrelated with the Voodoo Drummer’s governess and Tenorman‘s psychiatrist in an exciting and as always revealing post-surreal humorous show!

Noraland

the freedom of darkness

A long fascination with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House sends Orlando and Shlomo on a journey to Noraland by searching after their own reflections in the play.

Are we trapped in our own perception of our lives? Could we really ever follow Nora’s footsteps and achieve independence? Are we willing to pay such a high price? Is it possible for a male performer to step into Nora’s shoes?

A colorful interpretation of the exciting yet fearful moment when one is standing in the darkness behind a closed door without knowing where to go.

The 2018 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion: A Showcase of Wahlberliner

SAVE THE DATES!

The 2018 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion Festival will be take place from Sunday, April 22 through Saturday, April 28, 2018!

Complete program and ticket information will be online soon; and here is the complete schedule of programming:

ExpLoRE (April 22)

Gruesome Manifesto – Cher Nobyl

The Living And Our Ghosts – Noirphiles (Adrian Marie Blount)

Dancing With The Shadows – A Work In Progress – Julia Vandehof & Company

The Hearing Test – Shanti Suki Osman

Brunch Lady – Katie-Rose Spence

integrate ‘er – Iva Topolovec and Salber Williams

We Can Do It Moaning – ABA NAIA

Monday, April 23

Noraland – LeinzLieberman

Tuesday, April 24

When I Was Old/When I Get Young – Lucy Ellinson

Women Who Changed The World – Opera Chaotique

Wednesday, April 25

We Just Moved You – Alissa Rubinstein

Thursday, April 26

Landscapes Of My Inner Diaspora – Rosalie Wanka

Unfolding Universe – Heiner&Lindsig

Friday, April 27

Firewater – Tape Version

Menu – Ethan Folk and Ty Wardwell

Saturday, April 28

Skin Deep In Zaraniya – //slasheverything

Star Captain: Through The Dark You’ll Find The Light – Miss Natasha Enquist

I Am Not A Joke (Take Two)

WORLD PREMIERE

Feminism has never been so hip and trendy! We could see this as a true victory for feminism and still post a “I’m a feminist” selfie real quick. Let’s be honest. This kind of “high gloss feminism” doesn’t cover up the smell of the shit we encounter every day in the form of sexism, racism and every other kind of possible phobia.

Accompanied by a guitar, a synthesizer and drum machine, The Kill Joys sing, scream and perform against daily discriminations and the patriarchy. I Am Not A Joke (Take Two) is an appeal against this shit while simultaneously questioning the consumability of feminism.

The Kill Joys (Olivia Hyunsin Kim, Magda Drozd & Co.) examine intersectional feminist issues within the form of a theatrical concert performance. The collective was founded in 2016 and has screamed about what makes them angry in a do-it-yourself style ever since. Using songs and performative actions that focus on their own experiences with everyday racism as well as within the performing arts, they create a feminism that is relevant for them and their concerns as women, artists and immigrants that is certainly not a “feel good” marketing strategy.

Featuring a post-performance discussion on Thursday, March 1 in collaboration with Theater Scoutings Berlin!

2018 Expo Info Abend and Artists Mixer

Calling all Berlin-based performing artists! We’re holding an information night and artist mixer for our annual festival! Come by on Tuesday, January 9 beginning at 7pm to meet potential collaborators, see our space and find out everything you need to know to apply to have your work included in the festival! Over the past five years, numerous Expo productions have been created as a result of artists meeting at the festival’s Info Abend and deciding to make new work together.

The Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion: A Showcase of Wahlberliner is an annual festival conceived and curated by Daniel Brunet that debuted in 2013. We put our Miete where our mouth is with this festival featuring our most important resource – the community of international artists and the English-language Freie Szene.

Over six evenings, the Expo features a curated selection of one or two professional performances per evening on our stage (in every genre imaginable) and on Sunday, April 22, we invite you to ExpLoRE, the format for newcomers, featuring 10 shorter performances and work-in-progress taking place throughout our entire facility, from our stage to our dressing rooms to our breathtaking courtyard.

The 2018 edition of the festival will be held from April 22 – 28, 2018.

This year, we’re looking to showcase one or two professional productions by Berlin-based artists each evening from Monday, April 23 through Saturday, April 28. Works should be between approximately 45 and 105 minutes in length.

We can also consider shorter works for performance throughout our facility or courtyard during the day on April 22, 2018.

Learn more about the festival and see the lineup from last year right here!

Applications for the 2018 Expat Expo are due by midnight on Monday, January 30, 2018 and the complete lineup will be announced on or about February 15, 2018.

HeLa

The Poetic-Scientific Dream-Fate of Henrietta Lacks

a new play by Lauren Gunderson and Geetha Reddy

When Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American mother of five was dying of cancer in a Baltimore hospital in 1951, doctors took samples of her tumor cells and gave the cell line the name HeLa. The HeLa cells were the first ones to stay alive outside the human body and multiply. They became an extremely valuable asset in medical research, generating treatments for polio and numerous other drugs. Millions of dollars were made with Henrietta´s cells. HeLa cells are still used for research in countless labs around the world. Henrietta, however, never gave her consent to have the samples taken and was not even asked. It was not until 1975 that her family learned about the connection between Henrietta and the HeLa cells.

In a kaleidoscope of emotional flashbacks, sweet memories and bitter dreams, HeLa explores the story of Henrietta Lacks’ life and death and her posthumous life. It is a tale of love, togetherness and fate, but also of exploitation, neglect and racism.

“Once again, we see how Black families in the U.S. have served us all, at great cost to themselves.” Theatrius.com

Olam HaBa: The Next World

Who was this Polish Jew that pulled his pants down in front of everyone and sat on the holy book with his bare bottom?

Who was this Jakob Frank, revered by his fans as a messiah and who converted from Judaism to Islam and from Islam to Catholicism? Who was persecuted by the powerful in Poland in the 18th century, spent many years in prison in Tschenstochau and whose story came to a strange but happy end in Offenbach am Main?

The performers LeinzLieberman have searched for the motives behinds this mystical messianic movement over the course of multiple trips tracing the footsteps of Jakob Frank. And they let themselves, together with the designer and DJ Markus Wente, be inspired by it in their new performance. They bring motifs and texts of Jakob Frank to the stage and then transform it into images and movements that also reflect the feelings and desires of people in the Berlin art and party scenes. Using both subtle and expansive images, they tell the story of a search for a new world in which all parts are once again integrated into a complete whole.

Followed by a post-performance discussion

LeinzLieberman are the performance makers Shlomo Lieberman (Israel/Germany) and Ulrich Leinz (Germany). Over the last three years, their work has been included in three consecutive Expat Expo | Immigration Invasion festivals and we premiered their groundbreaking The Other/Promised Land in the fall of 2016. We are very excited to host them – collaborating with colleagues – as our fall artists in residence, presenting three different works in September, October and November.

Lovers1 will be performed on September 29 and The Other/Promised Land will be performed on October 13.

The Other/Promised Land

“Maybe it’s just a myth.
You have your own history.
I have my own history.
And now we are just sharing the bathroom.”

Shlomo Lieberman and Ulrich Leinz confront three very different love stories in their performance: the disturbing memories about the grandmother who survived Auschwitz, the painful love letters of the German grandfather from Warsaw in 1943 and their own attempt to survive their relationship as a gay German/Israeli couple in Berlin.

Lovers1 will be performed on September 29 and the first public presentation of their newest work-in-progress, Olam HaBa – The Next World, will be presented in THE LAB on November 3.

Lovers1

A distillation of “love” by Shlomo Lieberman & Tomer Zirkilevich: a performance for three blindfolded performers, a tv set and surtitles

What happens when two are no longer enough? Is there still the same intimacy as before? Other lovers appear. How to continue now?

In the second version of the performance they created last year as a duo, Shlomo Lieberman and Tomer Zirkilevich invite Austin Fagan for a trio.

The setting remains the same: the performers are blindfolded on an empty stage. Their task is to lift or to be lifted. And they repeat this procedure over and over as a ritual they cannot avoid. But unlike the performance last year, the roles are not clear as they were. Who is lifting whom? What should one do when he is left out? Does one should find a new role for himself? What are the options?

The performance provides insight into the fragility of relations, shows how aggression is easily evoked and can turn into grief. And how grief can establish power.

“Love is like a toy. If you play too much with it, you’ll break it. But if you don’t play with this toy, why should you have it?” (Surtitle at 5:43 min)

The Other/Promised Land will be performed on October 13 and the first public presentation of their newest work-in-progress, Olam HaBa – The Next World, will be presented in THE LAB on November 3.

Watch an excerpt of Lovers1

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