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ECHTER BERLINER !!!! IHR NICHT FUCK YOU

FUCK YOU TOURISTS. NO MORE ROLLKOFFER. WELCOME TO SCHWABYLON. Berlin U. Greetings from the Berlin welcoming committee in the form of meter-high graffiti adorning every available surface. One, ECHTER BERLINER !!!! IHR NICHT FUCK YOU, especially invites questions. What is a “real Berliner”? According to whom?

ECHTER BERLINER !!!! IHR NICHT FUCK YOU is a documentary theater piece exploring the diverging and converging experiences of so-called “expats”, often coming from comparably richer countries who travel to Berlin for self-realization, with those of so-called “immigrants”, often coming from comparably poorer countries for financial survival. At least, these are the generalizations.

For this piece, an international ensemble of six performers, each connected to a so-called “expat” or “immigrant” group, have conducted interviews with more than 60 members of their respective communities about their experiences in Berlin. Every word spoken on stage is taken from direct transcriptions of these interviews, revealing an oft-surprising picture of reality far beyond the banality of stereotypes.

ETB_ECHTER BERLINER__Lynn Femme4_foto by Manuela Schauerhammer

Production photo by Manuela Schauerhammer

ECHTER BERLINER !!!! IHR NICHT FUCK YOU is the first part of Aliens of Extraordinary Abilities?, a two-part project investigating the experiences of so-called “expats” and so-called “immigrants” in Berlin and the Hauptstadt’s rapidly changing cityscape. The second part, Terrain of Threshold Voices, a collaboration with DISTRICT Kunst- und Kulturförderung, will take place in November and December.

This project is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund).

New Work From New People

New Work From New People is an evening featuring work by writers, actors and directors who are new to English Theatre Berlin and our community that THE LAB presents every six months, in addition to its regular monthly programming.

The August edition includes excerpts from:

The Saint Factory by Lavinia Abbott

Banking: A Ghost Story by Kishore Chakraborty

Satie et Cocteau: A Rehearsal of a Play of a Composer of a Poet by Mike Czuba

Das Traumkabarett by James Harris

Mundo Overloadus by Michael Lederer

Ich, KürbisGeist

By Sibyl Kempson

A staged reading introducing our partnership with Performance Space 122

Ich, KürbisGeist is presented with special permission from AO International Talent Agency.

An olde-tyme agricultural vengeance play for Hallowe’en (even though it’s August)! Inspired by Sibyl Kempson’s visit to Austria during Kürbiskernernte (pumpkin seed harvesting season), this piece features a rigorous, specific and completely invented language. Every word is semi-recognizable: an amalgam of English, Swedish, German – and Sid Caesar.

“Much like the words spoken by Shakespeare’s wily fools, the messages are scrambled. Yet the world of Ich, Kürbisgeist is whole, and surprisingly powerful. Sometimes the gut understands better than the brain.”, Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times, November 6, 2012

Sibyl Kempson lives and makes theater plays in NYC and the Pocono Mountains. Her plays have been presented at Dixon Place, Soho Rep, Performance Space 122, The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, the Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX, the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, the Great Plains Theater Conference in Omaha and Theater Bonn in Germany. She earned an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College, 2007.

Tip of the Iceberg: The Story of an American Obsession

by Liz Erber

lab31_tipoftheiceberg

A multi-media play, with an absurdist and darkly humorous look at modern life in the United States. Through text, movement, video and music we look into the lives of three individuals who are seemingly trapped by their own limited views of the world. One individual, WOMAN, is attempting to dream her way out.

Central to the characters’ lives is the story of iceberg lettuce – a story of modern American food (exported to the world), monoculture, marketing, modern economic colonialism and more.

Juxtaposed with this fictional story is the current reality of the actors’ lives in Berlin.

Isaac’s Eye

By Lucas Hnath
a staged reading from our SCIENCE & THEATRE series

isaacseye_keyvis_eyeonly Young Isaac Newton desperately wants to become a member of the club of clubs for scientists, the Royal Society. In order to convince Robert Hooke, the institution’s curator of experiments, he sticks a needle into his tear duct to prove that light is made of particles. Ouch!!! And if science won’t do it there is another way: Hooke keeps a detailed diary of his sex life …

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

“Isaac’s Eye wins a whole mess of points for its originality. This odd little jeu d’esprit about the history of science considers immortal matters like male rivalry and overweening ambition from a willfully skewed perspective.” — The New York Times

Lucas Hnath’s other plays include Death Tax (Humana Fest/Steinberg Award), NightNight (short play for Humana Fest), A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney (Soho Rep) and Red Speedo (coming up at the 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.

Bridge Markland: robbers in the box

bridge_robbers in the box

One of Germany’s most popular plays by one of Germany’s most popular authors, Friedrich Schiller – Radical and provocative at the time of its premiere in 1782, Bridge Markland presents it as a fast-speed One-Woman plus Puppets-Lip-Sync-Show with sexy Ken dolls as robbers and an original East German nutcracker.
Rebellion, envy, love, stubborness, hero-worship and desperation! Markland reinforces Schiller’s strong language with more then 150 songs, including many film themes ranging from Wagner´s Ride of the Valkyries to Lady Gaga, from Ennio Morricone to the theme from Dallas, Rammstein and a lot more great music.

Schiller’s translated text is spoken by actors from Berlin’s English-language theatre community like Peter Scollin from Playtpus Theater as the Old Moor, or Jeffrey Mittleman as Spiegelberg, and many others.

English-language premiere of robbers in the box: January 24th 2013 at English Theatre Berlin

Berlin Was Yesterday: Expatriate Traffic from the Kaiser to Kotti

Ten-Minute Play Competition 2013

10MP_Image-Web “Nackt besser aussehen.” — Jiminy McFIT

You ever feel like the whole ExPat thing has gotten a bit overblown? The gig seems flabby…puffed up and bloated by tag lines, slackers, and The New York Times. Remember the days when you really had to work for your Berliner Pfannkuchen? When it wasn’t just a 2€ Döner down the hole after a cheap flight from Clyde, NY, 14433? Shakespeare im Park Berlin* is looking to pump up your ETB Expat Month with its kale-spiced week of 10-minute performances – bringing Strength and Health to the month of March!

Five new pieces have been selected to form one closed-circuit loop of teeth grinding, bone bending, flat out hoofing-it through 15 cherry nooks and crannies of tender proscenium-sirloin and leaky backstage-gut. This is no Schabernack! Just as Frederick the Great dunked strapping young Dutchmen into his mud-swamped Prussian backwater to erect a delightful Baroque period French knockoff and characterized it “Frederician Rococo,” English Theatre Berlin is bringing in big, bulging guns for its fourth annual Ten-Minute Play Competition:

10MP_Strength&Health March_WEB The winners were:

Symphony of Everyday Life by Claire Delaby & Alberto Di Gennaro / Culture by Emal Ghamsharick / Physical Exercises by Marie Hoffmann / Fluffers by Harvey Rabbit / Lass die Nutten tanzen by Antoine Hummel & Jacques Pradillon.

So put down the pot-stickers and hoist up your dumbbells for seven evenings of performance, all of which look even better in the buck.

* Shakespeare im Park Berlin is a multi-lingual, site-specific performance ensemble, founded in 2010.

This is how it goes

by Neil LaBute

The American Dream – according to Neil LaBute

Cody and Belinda seem to be living the American Dream: a rich couple living in a snug suburb, with two kids and their whole lives ahead of them. The fact that Cody is African American and Belinda is not, is a footnote in their otherwise picture-perfect lifestyle. But this is not their story; its the story of an old high school classmate who comes to live with them, who begins spinning a much different tale of resentment, racism, and the facades that we all maintain in order to stay within the lines of decency. Once those lines have been crossed, nothing can ever return to the way things used to be.

This Is How It Goes is about the stories we believe, what we let others believe, and the lives we pretend to be living. It is a reminder that the truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

NEIL LaBUTE is one of America´s most controversial playwrights; born in Detroit in 1963, he has written twenty plays (like BASH, The Shape of Things, Fat Pigs or reasons to be pretty) and directed nine movies (like In the Company of Men, Nurse Betty or Lakeview Terrace).

BRIAN BELL is a director and actor based in Chicago. ln 2004 he completed a directing internship at Carrousel Theater an der Parkaue in Berlin and went on to direct an original piece The Warrior and Naomi Wallace’s The Retreating World at the Acud Theater in 2005. Brian was invited as fellow of the Internationales Forum des Berliner Theatertreffens 2011. He is a directing fellow of the Goethe Institute’s Young Theatre Artists in Germany Program, where he assisted on a production of Dantons Tod (dir: Nuran David Callis) at the Staatstheater Stuttgart in 2011. In Chicago Brian is the artistic director of Cabaret Vagabond and has directed for Collaboraction, Caffeine Theatre, and at Adventure Stage Chicago, where he is an ensemble member. He has toured nationally as an actor with the Chamber Theatre of Boston and worked regionally for the last two summers at the Theatre at Monmouth – The Shakespeare Theatre of Maine. Brian has just completed devising and performing Projekt G – A Theatrical Investigation of Happiness in Tokyo, which will be remounted at the Hessisches Landestheater Marburg in September.

supported by US_NewLogo_Flag_WEB

Photos: Christian Jungeblodt

Bridge Markland: faust in the box

faust_in_the_box Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust as a one-woman-show featuring hand puppets and pop music. With an intense physicality, Bridge Markland performs high speed changes between Mephisto, Faust and Margarete/Gretchen using the puppets as her opponents. She acts to a sound collage made up of the text of the play and popular music from different generations.

“… With almost demonic facial twitches and contortions, she paints a Joker-like, mad… world, changing between the three characters of Faust, Mephistopheles and Gretchen …” BBC Scotland

“… it works so well I became fascinated to see and hear just what was about to happen next. … It is superbly performed and very very cleverly written and designed …”
www.one4review.co.uk

“… The parallels between the well known text and it’s translation into pop songs of the past four decades are impressive and funny at the same time. Bridge Markland walks on the rather narrow edge between modern debate and persiflage. When Margaret recognises at the end that she is on AC/DCs “Highway to hell”, this borderline finally becomes blurred in a great and new attempt to interpret the classic for many generations. This comprehensive attempt was successful. “ Mannheimer Morgen

Bridge Markland, the Berlin dance-theatre performance artist, is a virtuoso in role-play and transformation. An artist who effortlessly crosses the boundaries between sub- and high culture, between dance, theatre, performance, children’s – and puppet-theater.

faust in the box saw several successful international tours over the years

Photo: Dirk Holtkamp-Endemann

The First Time

Close your eye. Close them.
Can you remember it like it was yesterday, or is everything blurred and indistinct?

Your first day at school?
Your first bike?
Your first kiss?
Your first dance?
Your first job?
Your first fight?
Your first love?
Your first hate?

The winners were:

Golden Gates by Rosie Skan

My First Apocalypse by Maxwell Flaum

The Red Couch by Marie Franz

Spin the World Around by Kate McCane

Authorization Breakdown by Martin Esters

Erika Hughes studied at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts/Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the University of Wisconsin. She has over fifteen years of experience as a director, designer and performer.