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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

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Didi’s Son (Dirty Granny Tales)

In a world where everything is reversed and objects come to life while the human beings are subservient to them, a writer becomes part of the story that he is writing.

thanos didiHe falls in love with the leading lady of his fairy tale, threatened by his own story creatures, and in the end redeems them and is himself redeemed.

Dirty Granny Tales is an acoustic ensemble that narrates atmospheric stories. Their shows include puppet theater, dance performance and video animation projection, all of which, accompanied by the music, bring the story to life.

Influenced by the atmospheric fairy tales of Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro, the melodies of Danny Elfman, the irony of Tiger Lillies, The Residents’ sterile landscape, Japanese Gothic theater and Butoh choreography, Dirty Granny Tales transports us to a magical dark world in their own extraordinary way.

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Dirty Granny Tales are:

Stavros Mitropoulos (Mouldbreath): Vocals, Guitar, Mandolin

Thanos Mitropoulos (Wormeaten Vagus): Bass, Blockflute, Backing Vocals

Dalai Theofilopoulou (Slimeskin): Cello, Backing Vocals

Uli Muehe (Heartbeat Zero): Percussion, Backing Vocals

Anna Athanasiou and Katerina Liana: Dance, Puppets

 

Two For A Girl

“When a Traveller tells a tale, they’re listened to.”

It’s 1946, rural Ireland. Josie Connors, a young Irish Traveller, sets up camp with her nomadic family on the edge of Ryan’s farm. When she crosses one of the deeply entrenched cultural lines between her Irish (ethnic minority) travelling community and the Irish (settled) community, we are catapulted through decades of unthinkable consequences. “Stuck between two worlds” in abject isolation and poverty, Josie keeps moving, presented with the most compelling reason of all to survive.

“It is hard not to be struck by the raw emotion generated by Mary Kelly and Noni Stapleton’s outstanding  work – Two for a Girl…. this is theatre stripped down to its basics and it works.” Sunday Business Post. Five Stars *****

ETBIPAC_Two for a girl_Pic_Gerald WesolowskiTwo for a Girl is an homage to the intimacy and simplicity of traditional Irish theater, a style that can be as affecting on the back of a cart or the corner of a pub as it can on a formal stage. As Mary Kelly seamlessly embodies the five main characters, you will be drawn across generations and to every corner of Ireland in this unique look at identity, freedom and loss when two distinct Irish communities collide. This is a play about the transformative power and absolute necessity of being heard and bearing witness.

“A very moving piece that leaves you walking out of the theatre in a daze with the smell of a campfire in your nostrils.”  Doireann ni Choitir UTV.ie

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, ETB | IPAC continues its exploration of new Irish theater with Mary Kelly’s and Noni Stapleton’s Two for a Girl. The play is performed by Mary Kelly, a Berlin-based actor and playwright who is part of Berlin’s burgeoning international Freie Szene.

MARY KELLY is an actor and playwright. She graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting, Dublin, in 2002. Five of her plays have been produced, two of which are published: Unravelling the Ribbon and Two for a Girl. Unravelling the Ribbon toured Ireland in 2008, and had its U.S. premiere in 2010 with the Tennessee Women’s Theater Project. It has recently been translated into French. Since moving to Berlin, Mary was commissioned and has written The Scarlet Web for Big-Telly Theatre Company, Northern Ireland.

Mary’s theater work includes Christine Linde in A Doll’s House (Alan Stanford, Second Age Th. Co. Ireland), Lydia in All My Sons (Robin Lefevre, The Gate Theatre) and The Little Mermaid world tour (Big-Telly Th. Co.). TV and film work includes Parked with Colm Meaney (Ripple World Pictures), Fran (Setanta and TV3) and The Clinic (RTE). Radio work includes The Hit List with Brendan Gleeson, written and directed by John Boorman, and Mayday written and directed by Veronica Coburn.

Mary’s previous work at English Theatre Berlin includes: two staged readings of new Irish drama during English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center’s Irish festival The Full Irish (2013) and in ETB | IPAC’s Science&Theatre production of Isaac’s Eye by Lucas Hnath (2013/2014/2015). In January 2016, Mary presented her prose work within the literary event Inkblot Berlin at ETB | IPAC.

Two for a Girl is published by The Stinging Fly Press, Dublin.

Photo: Gerald Wesolowski

2016 EXP(L)O(RE)

New this year is ExpLoRE, a format for newcomers, shorter performances and work-in-progress. Spend an entire afternoon taking in nine performances on stage, in dressing rooms and in our beautiful courtyard.

In between the performances, you can enjoy fantastic food, luxurious libations and magnificent music by international, Berlin-based musicians.

2pm (Studio) WORK IN PROGRESS by 6 Hours Theatre Group
Directed by Amy Nolan (Ireland) | Written by Alejandro Niklison (Argentina) | With Alejandro Niklison, Alan Ward (Australia) and Jinzhao Wang (China)

2:45pm (Main Stage) RIGHT ON! by Daniela Marcozzi
Concept, Performance and Co-Direction by Daniela Marcozzi (Italy) | Co-Direction and Artistic Collaboration by Peter Rose (USA)

3:30pm (Studio) ZYGOTE CRISIS by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff
Written and Directed by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff (Canada)

4:15pm (Main Stage) IVO by 3LK
Written by Billy MacKinnon (Scotland) | Directed by Emily Kuhnke (Germany) | Performed by Tizo All (Brazil)

5pm (Studio) BABA by Gabrielle Miller
With Gabrielle Miller (Australia), Lola Fonseque (France), Zoya Godoroja-Prieckaerts (Australia/Russia) and Youka Snell (Australia, Japan)

5:45pm (Main Stage) BRUTAL ARCHITECTURE by Tegan Ritz McDuffie
Text by Keller Easterling (USA) | Directed by Tegan Ritz McDuffie (USA) | Design by Julius Zimmermann (Germany) | With Sura Hertzberg (USA), Marcus O’Shea (Australia), Nadine Trushina (Russia)

Eight individual performances THIS IS MINE. WHAT’S YOURS? by Lauren Hart
Devised and Performed by Lauren Hart (England) | Project Management by Normen Skok (Germany)

Durational (Dressing Room) HAPPINESS IS MORE IMPORTANT TO ME THAN ART by Kate McCane
Created and Performed by Kate McCane (Australia) | Found Sound Compiled, Arranged and Edited by Kate McCane

Durational (Dressing Room) ANCHORS by Jennifer Williams
Jennifer Williams (Australia)

 

 

The Present Imperfect

This is a coming of age story. At age 47.

Once upon a time, there was an Italian adventurer who sailed the Pacific and fell in love with a Tongan princess. They moved to Australia, where they raised a family to help demystify the culture (sport) and food (vegemite) shock. It took them 20 years and 4 children to begin to understand the language (lingo). One of their daughters was very interested in drama and language and bossing people around. She grew up to be a talented and exciting young actress and was headed for glory…just when life happened. Dammit!

That girl is now an ESL (English as a second language) teacher in Berlin who has taught the present perfect tense over and over for/during/since the past 200 years and is now well and truly over it.

Fiona is a full time professional foreigner, wife and mother who is sometimes also an actor, writer and English teacher. She has always tried to be respectful and forgiving, and understanding, and patient and tolerant and knowledgeable about her own cultures and her husband’s culture and each of her kids’ cultures, and of her new culture with its many rules; as well as being mindful of her kid’s feelings, and her neighbors feelings and even the feelings of her old drama school classmate Cate Blanchett. But now…she’s over it!

In this uplifting, amusing and soul searching autobiographic solo show, Fiona takes us on a world tour of her extremely questionable, crazy and ever-challenging life. Journeying through some of her favorite countries and introducing us to a myriad of delicious characters she reveals some of her most colorful stories and demonstrates why she is just so over teaching the present perfect, learning German articles, parenting third culture kids and teenagers in Berlin, dealing with female civil servants in Italy, attending international school PTA meetings in India…and saying “Si” to Cate’s stupid Armani ad. She is definitely over that!

Now work in groups to the find examples of the present perfect tense, the meaning of the phrasal verb “I’m over it” and any hints of desperation in the above life description.

Lovers 1

Two male performers explore the connection between them in a partially realistic, partially dreamlike surrounding.

They are blindfolded. Each one of them has a different mission: one has to carry the other and the other has to be carried. They repeat this procedure as a ritual they cannot avoid until it is exhausted.

The connection between the performers shifts between a range of aspects: it is romantic, sexual, aggressive, brotherly and existential. They address each other with gestures which are not aesthetic but instead searching for the pure motivation which lies behind them.

The goal of this work is to distill “love” into basic physical performances in order to reveal its actual mechanism.

“No purpose intervenes between I and You, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.”  ― Martin Buber, I and Thou

The ReWilding Project

To “rewild” is to re-connect to the wild within—to see ourselves not as separate from nature but as a part of nature. It is to defy our life-long experience of domestication, what we know, and how things should be.

The ReWilding Project is an interdisciplinary solo performance, featuring text, dance, live music and some technology. It is one woman’s quest to tackle our modern neurosis, sense of loss and search for hope – with a dose of humor.

Nearly every day we are bombarded with an onslaught of horrific news feeds and dire scientific prognoses:

  •   “Arctic ice melting faster and earlier as scientists demand action”, The Guardian
  •  “50% of all species have disappeared in the past 20 years,” World Wildlife Fund

How do we, amidst the affluence of Western Europe, respond to these seemingly far-removed crises? How do the body and psyche of the individual, human mammal respond to the worldwide devastation of our natural environment? Perhaps dolphins have the answers to what we are looking for.

Tonight, There Are No Stars In The Sky

What’s the meaning of leaving?

What’s the meaning of home? What’s the meaning of being a foreigner, an immigrant, an expat, an adventurer, exiled? What’s the meaning of never looking back, until one evening you are forced to do so?

Tonight, There Are No Stars In The Sky is a short play about two sisters who haven’t seen each other for seven years: Claire left, Marion stayed. One evening Marion shows up at Claire’s door step by surprise, and their encounter demolishes old patterns of thought, feeling, speech, movement, perspective, memories and of dreams.

Claire is a writer who left her country of origin after her book wasn’t published and after her sister Anna killed herself. Marion stayed, and dealt with her losses in silence until one day, she finds Claire’s manuscript in a box at her parents’ house. After reading it, she decides it’s time to confront their silences.

During fifty volatile minutes, this brief encounter between two sisters – who have made very different life choices – brings to the foreground ambivalent realities, leading the action to an honest confrontation of ideas about immigration, exile, lines, frontiers, spaces and how we choose to cross [or to inhabit] them.

The 614th Commandment

A documentary theater examination of American-Jewish notions of Germany

The 614th Commandment is a darkly funny play in which two actors embodying multiple characters examine both the role of Holocaust history in contemporary Jewish identity and American- Jewish perspectives regarding Germany in the
21st century, all through a critical, absurdist lens.

It is based on over 100 interviews conducted with Jewish people of a variety of backgrounds in Los Angeles, California, and was inspired by the writer’s experiences as an American Jewish woman living in Berlin.

Two Girls, One Pope … And A Mattress

A satirical, provocative comedy written especially for the Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion Festival. Amusing, fast paced, challenging, with a little bit of romance. To make people laugh while making them think as well.

Daria and Lidia, two young women who love each other, just moved from Rome to Berlin. They are hunted by a mysterious and ambiguous, almost schizophrenic, version of the Pope.  Lidia is very enthusiastic about the relocation. She thinks that in Berlin they will finally find the freedom they always dreamed about, plus an open-minded society where they can freely live being openly gay and sincere with everyone about their relationship. On the other side, Daria thinks that moving in Berlin won’t change much. She sees all the downsides of the new state of things and doesn’t feel ready to be so sincere about her sexuality, especially since she is still kept back by the guilt that her family and her Catholic education have always put into her for not being the woman, heterosexual mother and wife that she was expected to be.

At the same time, she doesn’t want to lose her partner, which puts her under a lot of pressure. All these contrasts with her lover and within herself bring her to such a state that she has visions of an unusual version of the Pope, who is experiencing a gradual transformation into a drag queen. This invasive presence at times attacks her for being a sinner and at other times seems to be enthralled by the perspective of having a free sexual life himself. These visions are another source of conflict within the couple, and the fight grows to be more intense as the drag queen Pope starts to become real and both the women’s relationship and their transfer to Berlin’s “Eldorado” risk ending in disgraceful tragedy…will they?