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High Time

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony. ///

This is what will happen: You will come in and sit down. The lights in the room will go out. You will be led through a short guided meditation. The surrealist piece will then be acted out before you, with its themes of union and division, infantile sexuality, addiction, war. There may or may not be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. You will then leave the room, unfulfilled, but with something new to think about. /// How does that sound? Will that be everything? Is that enough? /// You may now kiss the bride.

Niyar – A Paper Tale

Niyar – A Paper Tale is a puppet theater show made all out of paper.

In it, crumpled pieces of paper are brought to life. The artist embarks on a journey of creation, forming a poetic alternate reality. This world within a world is created by Maayan Iungman – without using a single word. Niyar presents the gap between the wish to create and the moment in which inner spirit takes the lead. The moment control is let loose, judgment is put aside – and creation happens.

A Modern Prophecy

Three solo artists weave together an evening of performance, sharing moments of spontaneous vision and inspiration via dance, voice and text.

An object or two are also subject to appearance. Our method of performance/creation happens at the crossroads of composition and improvisation. Our primary tool is the moving-sounding body, which conjures up ephemeral images, illusions and spontaneous characters. In ancient times, prior to the creation of writing and widespread literacy, prophets, healers and magicians played important roles in society and were highly depended upon. Today in the West, there are artists. Do artists now fill these long-lost roles? You can decide.

Schlüterstrasse 27

The very first presentation of a new work-in-progress by Andrea Stolowitz, our 2015 Playwright-in-Residence, followed by a post-performance discussion.

In 1936 Dr. Max Cohnreich escapes Berlin, Germany and arrives in NYC settling there with his immediate family. In 1939 he writes about his experiences in a diary. In 2013 his great-granddaughter finds the diary at the archives at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2015 she travels to Berlin to find clues about the life he describes and the people she never knew. The parallel lives of the characters create a narrative about the search for home and family which operates at the border of reality and memory and the intersection of national history and private lives.

Andrea Stolowitz’s plays have been presented at The Cherry Lane (NYC), The Old Globe (SD), The Long Wharf (CT), New York Stage and Film (NY), and Portland Center Stage (OR). The LA Times calls her work “heartbreaking” and the Orange County Register characterizes her approach as a “brave refusal to sugarcoat…issues and tough decisions.”

A recipient of Artists Repertory Theater’s $25,000 New Play Commission, Andrea premiered her newest work Ithaka at the theater in 2013. The play had its mid-west premiere in Chicago in 2014 at Infusion Theater.

Andrea’s play Antarktikos was awarded the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Drama and was published in July in Theatre Forum magazine. The play world-premiered at The Pittsburgh Playhouse in March 2013 and was workshopped at The New Harmony Project (IN), Portland Center Stage’s JAW Festival, and at Seattle Repertory Theater.

Knowing Cairo received its world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre, which earned San Diego’s “Billie” Best New Play Award and an LA Times’ Critic’s Pick. It is published by Playscripts Inc. and continues to be produced nationally and internationally. It was presented at Profile Theater (OR) in 2013.

Tales of Doomed Love premiered in Washington, DC at The Studio Theater. As part of the 2008 Fringe Festival, DC Theater Scene called it “one of the finest entries in the Capital Fringe” and the Triangle Independent named its production at StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance (Chapel Hill, NC) “best new play.”

Andrea is a founding member of the playwrights collective Playwrights West (www.playwrightswest.org) and works as a collaborating writer with the award-winning devised theater company Hand2Mouth Theater (http://www.hand2mouththeatre.org).

A Walter E. Dakin Fellow at The Sewanee Writers Conference, Andrea has also been awarded residencies at Ledig House, Soapstone, and Hedgebrook, and Arts Grants from North Carolina, Oregon, and private foundations. She is a 2013 Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship winner.

An MFA playwriting alumna of UC-San Diego, Andrea has served on the faculties at Willamette University, The University of Portland, Duke University and UC-San Diego.

www.andreastolowitz.com

Schwarz gemacht

our world premiere production returns for six additional performances!

What is “identity”? What makes us who we are? Who has the right to define us?

Schwarz gemacht_Klaus(ErnestAllanHausmann)(c)Photo by DanielGentelev Set in 1938 Berlin and drawing heavily upon history, the play imagines a story that examines universal questions of self and citizenship primarily through the eyes of a patriotic Afrodeutscher (Afro-German) actor. Proud to serve his country, he appears in propaganda films calling for the return of Germany’s former African colonies. An encounter with an African-American musician and activist leads to hard questions about the treatment of people of color both in Germany and in the United States of America.

Schwarz gemacht is the first project to move completely through English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center’s new work development series, THE LAB, to receive a full production. It was part of the Colorblind? series of staged readings examining racial identity on stage in 2012 and a two-week workshop was held in December 2013.

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The production of Schwarz gemacht features an exhibition in our foyer exploring the historical themes of the play.

Post-performance discussions with the artistic team and cast will be offered on Friday, April 17 and Friday, April 24. The event on April 17 is offered in conjunction with Theaterscoutings Berlin.

The post-performance discussion on Friday, April 24 features playwright Alexander Thomas and will be moderated by Sharon Dodua Otoo, independent writer and editor of the Witnessed Series at Edition Assemblage, an English-languages series dedicated to the work of Black authors who have lived in Germany.

Alexander Thomas was born and grew up in Albany, New York. He studied acting in New York City at the Stella Adler Studio (among others). His autobiographical solo show Throw Pitchfork ran off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop as well as the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, New York. Throw Pitchfork won a Special Honours Award and was the closing production at the 2004 Thespis International Monodrama Festival in Kiel, Germany. He is one of the contributing writers to the American Slavery Project; Unheard Voices, a monologue play that gives voice to some of the 400 unmarked graves of slaves discovered at the African Burial Grounds unearthed in Manhattan, New York in 1991. This project has been performed in venues throughout New York including the Museum of Natural History. Alexander Thomas has an international career as a stage actor. He was a cast member of the award-winning UK production of On the Waterfront by the esteemed director Steven Berkoff which ran in London’s West End as well the Edinburgh Festival, the Nottingham Playhouse and the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Production photo: Daniel Gentelev

Oury Jalloh – Oranienplatz – Ohlauer Strasse

The Impact of European Refugee Policy in Europe

Exhibition | Scenic Presentation | Panel Discussion

We commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the death-in-custody of Oury Jalloh with a day of art and action. The event includes a specially commissioned foyer exhibition, the official launch and scenic presentation of the play The Most Unsatisfied Town by Amy Evans, directed by Daniel Brunet, and a panel discussion moderated by Noa Ha, urban researcher (board member of Migrationsrat Berlin-Brandenburg e.V.), with Mouctar Bah, human rights activist (Initiative Oury Jalloh), Canan Bayram, politician (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Eddie Bruce-Jones, legal expert (Oury Jalloh International Independent Commission) and Mai Shutta, human rights activist & refugee (Oranienplatz & Ohlauer Straße).

In cooperation with Sharon Dodua Otoo, Witnessed Series and Africavenir

Background

In the early hours of 7 January 2005, Oury Jalloh, a man seeking asylum from Sierra Leone, was apprehended by German police authorities in Dessau and shackled by his hands and feet to the floor of a cell furnished with nothing other than a fireproof mattress. Several hours later a fire broke out in the holding facility. Police authorities neglected to respond to fire alarms in a timely manner, and Oury Jalloh was left to burn to death in his cell. Three years later two of the police officers on duty at the time of the incident were prosecuted on charges of wrongful death. The defense argued that Oury Jalloh had intentionally set himself alight with a cigarette lighter concealed in his clothing. After a trial lasting over fifty days, the police officers were acquitted of any wrongdoing.

The Initiative Oury Jalloh, an organization founded by friends and family of the deceased, appealed the verdict, insisting that the trial in Dessau had been mishandled. Five years to the day of Oury Jalloh’s death, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe overturned the verdict and re-opened the case against the police. This unprecedented decision brought urgent attention to the contentious triangle of asylum policy, racism, and police brutality in Germany and in the European Union as a whole.

The Most Unsatisfied Town by Amy Evans

Since his arrival in Germany as a refugee, Laurence has tried to do everything right, taking the kind of job no national would ever want and making friends with his neighbors, even the families of those who tease his children in school. He’s found the formula for survival, or so he thinks, until one day his closest friend mysteriously disappears. When the body turns up charred beyond recognition, a search for those responsible begins, forcing Laurence to take a closer look at the town he was so ready to call home.

Development of The Most Unsatisfied Town began in September 2009 at the ICI Berlin Institute of Cultural Inquiry and involved direct contact with activists working on the case, including Carl von Ossietzky award recipient Mouctar Bah and Yonas Endrias, Vice President of the Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte. A rough draft of the script was presented to the public in December 2009 at an open workshop hosted by the ICI Berlin, where audience members were encouraged to share their feedback on the work-in-progress. A revised draft of the play incorporating that feedback was presented to the public as a staged reading in April 2010. The script will be published in 2015 by Edition Assemblage as part of Witnessed, a series of new books chronicling the Black experience in Germany.

Amy Evans (playwright) is a New York-based playwright whose work explores the impact of borders, loss and movement on the human spirit. Amy began writing for the stage full-time following the premiere of her award-winning first play, Achidi J’s Final Hours, at the Finborough Theatre in London in 2004. Other plays include Many Men’s Wife (Tricycle Theatre), The Next Question (HB Playwrights Foundation), Unstoned (Soho Theatre), The Big Nickel (Soho Theatre) and The Champion, a new play inspired by the life of Nina Simone. She is an alumnus of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry Kulturlabor in Berlin, Hedgebrook Women Writers’ Residency, BRICStudio Performing Arts Residency and the Tricycle Theatre Writers’ Group. Amy’s plays and poetry have appeared in several publications, including Velocity: The Best of Apples and Snakes performance poetry anthology (Black Spring Press, 2003); Mythen, Masken, Subjekte: Kritische Weißseinforschung in Deutschland (Unrast, 2005), a multi-disciplinary publication on critical whiteness studies in Germany; and How Long Is Never? (Josef Weinberger, 2007), a collection of short plays written in response to the crisis in Darfur. She holds an MA in Theatre Arts from Goldsmiths College.

Sharon Dodua Otoo (Project Coordinator, Limited to You) is a Black British mother, activist, author and editor of the book series Witnessed. She co-edited the first publication of the series The Little Book of Big Visions. How to be an Artist and Revolutionise the World with Berlin-based curator Sandrine Micossé-Aikins (edition assemblage, 2012). Sharon’s first novella the things i am thinking while smiling politely was published in February 2012 (edition assemblage). The German language translation die dinge, die ich denke, während ich höflich lächle, appeared in October 2013. Her latest novella Synchronicity (in German) appeared in August 2014 and will be published in English at the end of 2015. She lives, laughs and works in Berlin.

ISAAC’S EYE

by Lucas Hnath

Sex, drugs & science in the 17th century

Five additional performances of our successful production of the best science comedy out there!

Watch the video trailer HERE !!

Isaac´s eye_1 Isaac Newton wants to become a member of the Royal Society. Catherine wants to start a family.
Robert Hooke wants to know what Newton knows. The guy with the plague wants to stay alive. They conduct a risky experiment.

Afterwards, Newton doesn’t know any more than before but Hooke gets his sex diary back, Catherine’s skepticism is stronger than ever and the guy with the plague is dead.

Science moves in mysterious ways.

Isaac’s Eye mixes the facts of Isaac Newton’s life with an equal dose of fiction to explore what great people are willing to sacrifice to become great people.

It puts the history of science onstage, juxtaposing historical characters and facts with our 21st century based projection of them.

Featuring a post-performance discussion with Dr. Regine Hengge, director Günther Grosser and the cast on Friday, March 27 in conjunction with Theater Scoutings Berlin!

“I tend to write plays about people who are trying to do something that is impossible or nearly impossible. I’m interested in people who are trying to accomplish things that very few people will ever accomplish. … Huge ambition brings with it aspects of wonder, high stakes, and danger. But even more interesting than that, when you combine enormous ambitions with the small conflicts we experience everyday, the ordinary becomes illuminated. There’s a Virginia Woolf quote that I like very much: The paraphernalia of reality have at certain moments to become the veil through which we see infinity. We are neither roused nor puzzled; we do not have to ask ourselves, What does this mean? We feel simply that the thing we are looking at is lit up, and its depths revealed. Conflating the mythic with the miniscule has become my strategy for piercing Woolf’s veil.” Lucas Hnath

Lucas Hnath is one of the most promising voices in contemporary US theater. His other plays include Death Tax (Humana Fest/Steinberg Award), NightNight, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney (Soho Rep) and Red Speedo (Studio Theatre, Washington DC). A resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011, Lucas Hnath has enjoyed playwriting residencies with The Royal Court Theatre, London and 24Seven Lab, New York. He is a two-time winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for his feature-length screenplays, The Painting, the Machine and the Apple and Still Life. He received both his BFA and MFA from NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing and is a lecturer in NYU’s Expository Writing Program.

ETB_SuT_Logo_onWhite_small_RGB Isaac’s Eye is part five of Science&Theatre, a collaboration of English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center with Prof. Dr. Regine Hengge (Institute for Biology/Microbiology at the Humboldt University Berlin) and her team of young scientists.

Photo Lucas Hnath: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times | Production photo: Daniel Gentelev

Info Abend for the 2015 Expat Expo: A Showcase of Wahlberliner

English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center puts its Miete where its mouth is with our annual 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 performances by multiple artists (in every genre imaginable) taking place throughout our entire facility, from our stage to our dressing rooms to our breathtaking courtyard. It also includes the Expat Markt, a Sunday marketplace cum performance installation featuring the goods and services of international visual artists, business owners and performers as well as a Marktbühne for musicians, dancers, jugglers, magicians and performers of all kinds!

Do you want to be part of the 2015 Expat Expo? Come to the Info Abend on January 26 at 7pm to find out how to apply!

Learn more about the festival and find the application right here!

Expat Expo: June 1-6, 2015

Expat Markt: June 7, 2015

Applications for the 2015 Expat Expo will be due by midnight on Sunday, March 1, 2015 and the complete lineup will be announced on or about March 15, 2015.

Interdependency

Interdependency is the first presentation of an exploration into Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Last Question”, looking at our desire for completion and dependence in the relationship between human and technology.

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

PEACE

by Lydia Stryk

How can peace ever be out of fashion?

The pacifists have been silenced by ISIS on the march, images of beheadings. But there have always been those fighting for peace, in their tiny cells, scattered across democracies around the world. Even when military aggression seems to be the popular answer to the ills of the world, they carry on believing in an alternative reality.

Peace, a very dark comedy by Lydia Stryk, is set in the meeting room of a peace group at the dawn of the Drone Wars. The play asks what exactly is peace? Can it be willed into existence? In ourselves? With those closest to us, let alone, in the world?

“As the Iraq war escalated, I began receiving almost daily emails from a peace group in a sizeable college town. I was struck by the group’s impassioned steadfastness and the enormous commitment of time and energy their constant activities implied. They never let up (and still haven’t). I began to wonder how they carried on, not giving in to despair or cynicism. I had the feeling I might write about a group like them one day, to cheer myself up, to inspire, let’s say, hope. That day came one summer, over a decade into the demoralizing war on terror. But the way the play evolved surprised me. These were not necessarily the characters I had in mind! This was not the way the story should unfold! The peace group battling inside me had taken on its own life. But the play is dedicated, with thanks, to those who go on, regardless of the odds, for the sake of peace.” – Lydia Stryk

With the scenic presentation of Peace we continue our collaboration with Berlin-based U.S. playwright Lydia Stryk.

Lydia Stryk was born in DeKalb, Illinois, birthplace of barbed wire and is now based in Berlin. She is the author of over a dozen full-length plays including Monte Carlo, The House of Lily, The Glamour House, American Tet and An Accident, which have been part of festivals around the United States and produced at, among others, Denver Center Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre (Chicago), Victory Gardens (Chicago), 7 Stages Theater (Atlanta), The Contemporary American Theatre Festival (Sheperdstown, West Virginia), Magic Theatre (San Francisco), and in Germany at Schauspiel Essen, Theaterhaus Stuttgart and English Theatre Berlin and featured at Biennale Bonn. Lydia Stryk´s plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing and Dramatists Play Service and translated into German by Per Lauke Verlag, Hamburg. She has been commissioned by Pittsburgh Public Theatre and Geva Theatre, Rochester and is the recipient of a Berrilla Kerr Playwright Award and the 2010 Rella Lossy Playwriting Award.

English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center produced Lydia Stryk´s American Tet in November 2008 and the world premiere of her play Lady Lay in 2011/12.

Headshot photo: Nancy Barnicle