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The Story of the Panda Bears

Told by a Saxophonist Who Has a Girlfriend in  Frankfurt

A man wakes up next to a woman whose name he does not remember; nor does he remember where and how they met, their journey to his apartment or what they did after they got there. The woman is happy to explain, and her recollection of the facts makes him plead with her to stay. She promises to return. He promises to wait for her.

“Nine nights. Fine. But after that, you ask for nothing more.”

Bound by a promise and a bottle of wine, they discover that sometimes all you need to
 approach perfection are nine nights and a broken alarm clock.

With an international cast and crew – Romanian, Icelandic, German, Danish and Chilean – that connected over Visniec’s writing, the performance highlights the unifying force of theatre and its power to become a common language that exceeds any borders.

“Visniec writes charming, nonsugary dialogue, utilizing that rare element in highly romanticized storytelling: silence.”     Tim Lowery: Time Out Chicago

“This play is very dear to me because I try to talk about love, the mystery of love, reincarnation through love, and initiation… about many things that we don’t think about often enough.”    Matei Visniec

Matéi Visniec was born in Romania in 1956. From an early age, he discovered literature as a space dedicated to freedom. He draws his strengths from Kafka, Dostoevsky, Poe, Lautréamont. He loves the Surrealists, the Dadaists, absurd and grotesque theatre, surrealist poetry, fantastic literature, magical realism, and even the realist Anglo-Saxon theatre.
Visniec studied philosophy at Bucharest University and became an active member of the so-called Eighties Generation who left a clear stamp on Romanian literature. He believes in cultural resistance, and in literature’s capacity to demolish totalitarianism. Above all, Matéi Visniec believes that theatre and poetry can denounce manipulation through “great ideas”, as well as brainwashing through ideology.
Before 1987 Matéi Visniec had made a name for himself in Romania with his clear, lucid, bitter poetry. Starting with 1977, he wrote drama; the plays were much circulated in the literary milieus but were barred from staging. In September 1987, Visniec left Romania for France, where he was granted political asylum. He started writing in French and began working for Radio France Internationale.
At present, Visniec has had many of his works staged in France, and some of his plays written in French are published. His plays have been staged in more than 20 countries. In Romania, after the fall of Communism, Matéi Visniec has become one of the most frequently performed authors.
Originally written in French, The Story of the Panda Bears told by a Saxophonist who has a Girlfriend in Frankfurt has been translated into many languages (German, Icelandic, Arabic, Japanese etc) and has been performed all around the world.
Photo Matéi Visniec: Andra Badulesco / all other photos: Hani Hamza

Bestseller

A danced requiem for an unintentionally funny humor philosopher in German, Polish and English. Two performers explore the contradictions of life with the help of a Bach cantata, a curtain and a special performative subtlety.
The starting point of the play is the (inevitable) death of one’s father. A common past ceases to be shared and becomes entirely our responsibility. The two performers dance their way through spiritual questions. A particular sense of trust makes them ready to work with whatever comes their way.
Why is something funny and when? Is humor a survival technique? How simple or complicated can it be, can we be? Do God, the devil and sin exist or are they just bad jokes that we are expected to laugh at?

SURPRISING (taniecpolska.pl) WELL-BALANCED AND IRONIC (teatrologia.info) VINTAGE IN THE PERFORMING ARTS (culture.pl) BETWEEN SERIOUSNESS AND UN-SERIOUSNESS (e-teatr.pl)

Soldier M.I.A.

Soldier M.I.A. is a collaborative dance performance that attempts to re-imagine a Chinese queer feminist future, through the story of the female soldier, Hua Mulan (花木兰).

According to the classic legend, Mulan is a young woman who disguises herself as a man, in order to join the army and go to battle in her father’s place. On the surface, the story seems to advocate woman empowerment and emancipation; however at its root, it actually instrumentalizes female representation and bodies for patriarchal and nationalist purposes.

Framed as a fictive search-and-rescue mission, Soldier M.I.A. plays with the idea that Mulan has somehow gone missing in action (M.I.A.). Four “experts” with diverse Chinese backgrounds – a dancer, a dramaturg, a sound artist and a costume artist – join forces to find Mulan, using a mix of literary references, video footage of Chinese opera and personal stories. Together with the help of the audience, they will try to reconstruct the story of Mulan through a queer and feminist lens. Their task is to bring forth a new Mulan-in-action (M.I.A.). What battle will Soldier M.I.A. join in today? Whose flag will she be flying… or burning?

There will be a short post-show discussion after each performance.

On Saturday, November 25 at 4pm, Ming Poon will also hold an artist talk as part of his research project S.O.A.R. Queen (Study of a Rice Queen), which is supported by Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung. The talk will last approximately 90 minutes and admission is free of charge.

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Present Body 2

In the moment of improvisation, a special, almost magical presence of the body emerges. Anything seems possible, even identity breaks free of its fixed structures and bonds and allows itself to be reinvented every moment.

Using music and dance, all of the artists weave their own experiences and memories into a common whole that remains in constant motion. Thoughts and ideas flash up, are taken up by the group and develop into something else. In this way, new connections and possibilities are always created, the power of change is revealed.

Present Body 2 is a live improvisation with dance and music dedicated to the decolonization of bodies. It builds up the performance of Present Body, which was recorded in November 2020 as part of the MIMIMI Space project and presented digitally at HAU4. The new version now links the Black and white perspectives: dancers from Grupo Oito and MIMIMI Space enter into dialogue with each other. They bring in their experiences and the physical repertoire of the last productions, in which they worked on a new form of physicality and being from different perspectives, thus looking for what they have in common and what connects them. Understand the past, dance the present and dream the future in your own way!

A post-performance discussion moderated by Nora Amin will be held on Wednesday, November 15

Ay Kash

Eleven girls use their pens, paints and voices to share their memories and experiences since the Taliban took power in 2021 and offer their hopes and dreams for a better future.

Eleven girls
With our hearts full of hope and desire.
With tears in our eyes and trembling legs, with no way to escape.
We are sitting in our bedrooms in Afghanistan and slowly dying.
Every time we rise to show ourselves, our legs are showered with bullets.
Eleven girls who only ask to be allowed to study, to travel, to let our hair fly in the wind and, from all the riches in this world, own a bicycle. Is it too much to ask? Is it too much if I want to become a psychologist? Or a painter?
Too much if I want to fall in love and have my heart broken? Too much if I prefer freedom over longing?
What it my hair turns grey, and my lips are never kissed?
We never wanted our share of the sky to simply be able to gaze at the moon from our bedroom windows.
I want to swim in the sky. Do I want too much?
Eleven brave warriors, standing against the Taliban’s oppression with our pens, art, poetry, and music.
Ay Kash is the voice of a nation sleeping in blood, the voice of a wounded geography.
Don’t let our desire to swim in the sky, rot in our hearts.
Don’t let the desire to take hold of our pen and fight, disappear.
#StandwithAfghanwomen #ThePeninsteadoftheGun
Text: S
Photo: Rhea Schmitt / Design: F

Since the withdrawal of the US in August 2021, the situation for women in Afghanistan has spiralled into despair. Women do not even have rights to be violated. They have lost the ability to learn, graduate, fall in love, travel alone, go for a walk in the park, or ride a bicycle. Ay Kash / ای کاش / If Only is a hybrid performance featuring live on-stage action and filmed “interaction” with eleven young women in Kabul & Herat, Afghanistan. Their true identities will remain hidden because it is simply too dangerous to do otherwise, but what they want to tell you will be given life and poetic space. And they want to tell you many things: they want to tell you the history of their country from their perspective, their personal stories since the Taliban have taken power, the stories of their mothers, their grandmothers and their hopes and dreams for the future. All this and more will burst into life with the help of song, object theater, storytelling and AI. The performance also features animations designed to protect the identities of the eleven young women by Berlin artist Anna Benner. In addition to the live performance, there is a touring exhibition featuring artwork, texts and soundscapes by the young women.

Under the Starry Afghan Sky are eleven young women aged between 15 – 23 living in Kabul & Heart, Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The collective evolved out of the work of Herat Online School founded by the educational activist Angela Ghayour who herself fled Afghanistan in 1992 and is facilitated by Rachel Karafistan of Cosmino Productions.

The Ay Kash / ای کاش / If Only exhibition featuring artwork, soundscapes and audio recorded by the young women from the Under the Starry Sky collective will take place at Graumaleri, Reuterstraße 82, 12053 Berlin from September 7 – 20. (Vernissage: September 7 at 7pm).

The project is entirely funded by public donations. You can donate to our project HERE.


 

Bowie in Berlin

“Conversations with a Cultural Icon” (II)

In the summer of 1976, pop star David Bowie moves from Los Angeles to Berlin. Why Berlin? Was he attracted by the mixture of Weimar nostalgia, isolated Wall city and niche location for the new music that would later be called Krautrock? In fact, he created radically new music in Berlin in the following two years, recorded both an anthem and a legendary album with `Heroes´, made a curious Weimar-era film with Just a Gigolo, and then disappeared into the pop-synthetic eighties.

“The musical concept of Grosser’s evening works brilliantly …. Just as Bowie’s musical, cinematic and fashionable work has lived from permanent transition and diversity of influence – ready to jump between Krautrock and Expressionism – so is this performance associative and fluid.”     Patrick Wildermann / Tagesspiegel

Great review in Tagesspiegel, read it HERE

In 1987, Bowie returned to Berlin to give a concert in front of the Reichstag, a stone´s throw away from the Wall. East Berliners who came to the Brandenburger Tor to listen started shouting “Bring down the Wall” – the first domino in a series of many that led to the fall of the Wall?

With a performative mixture of music, dance and text, Bowie in Berlin – as the second part of the series “Conversations with a Cultural Icon” after Jaws / Der weiße Hai –  explores the area where pop touches our lives: as music, as film, as art, as an attitude to life.

Today, the three albums of the so-called `Berlin Trilogy´ are considered the artistic highlight of David Bowie´s career.With his creative curiosity, he went through very different artistic phases in the course of his long career, thus appealing to a new audience each time, and ultimately even to a new generation.

Nowadays, David Bowie is no longer just a pop star, but an important artist, to whom renowned museums dedicated a major exhibition ten years ago. Berlin officials even had a plaque placed on his home in Schöneberg.

Somehow, Bowie touches everyone. How? What does he have to say? What makes him a pop star, what makes him an artist? And why Berlin?

Sales of a Deadman

Only a suitcase remains of our salesman.

This postmodern composition celebrating the sound of everyday objects is inspired by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and picks up where the play left off: after the suicidal car crash and subsequent funeral, everyone is still out to make money.

This version of purgatory is all about selling, as death has now also become part of the vicious economic cycle. It is now a marketplace where the human being has been transformed into a commodity with their stories, relationships and memories all just waiting to be bought and sold.

Following two sold-out performances in February, we are very pleased to offer two additional performances of this new production and interpretation of the composition Sales of a Deadman by Evan Gardner.

Originally performed in 2014, this new staging features a whole new cast and artistic team, reexamining the role of work-life balance in a post-pandemic, post-patriarchial leaning society, in which capitalism and its place in the marketplace of life is turned on its head and questioned vigorously.

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Transatlantica

Through an autobiographical reappraisal of choreographer Caroline Alves’ family history, the solo performance Transatlantica delves into the voids between Brazil and Europe, between past and present.

It is one among many family histories that are marked by settler colonialism in Brazil: histories based on the erasure of indigenous ancestors, carrying colonial continuities into the present. Following the traces of Senhorinha, the indigenous great-great-grandmother of whom only the colonial name remains, Caroline Alves explores the violent nexus of patriarchy and colonialism.

Transatlantica interweaves dance and storytelling, atmospherically oscillating between the elements of the stage set: the crystalline cold of a block of ice and the spreading, reflecting water that connects the continents. With tenderness and rage, Caroline Alves confronts her ancestral history and present, searching in the voids of the “official narrative” for the place from which to speak with her own words and movements that may break with the vast silence.

Second Class Queer

Actor and writer Kumar Muniandy questions his identity, queerness, internalized homophobia and experiences of racism with his play. In the midst of these terms and their politics, Kumar seeks his own truth.

Is it possible to live as a brown gay man in Germany and find healing while carrying the weight of oppression from his motherland? Set in a speed-dating event, will Kumar’s leading man, Krishna, win the role he wants in this audition for love?

Through the lens of his experience as a Tamil-Malaysian queer person living in Berlin, Kumar Muniandy has developed a theater piece that investigates the connections between internalized homophobia that stems from anti-homosexuality laws of the colonial era and the structural racism he experiences.

What are the consequences of such merciless neocolonialism for the mental health of queer minorities living in Germany today? After all, Krishna, like Kumar, is on a pursuit of forgiveness and self acceptance.

Second Class Queer is dedicated to Nhaveen.

Following a work-in-progress presentation as part of the 2022 Expo Festival, we are thrilled to offer additional performance of the finished version of this production.

The Berlin Diaries

The great-grandfather of Oregon Book Award-winning playwright Andrea Stolowitz kept a journal for his descendants after escaping to New York City in 1939 as a German Jew.

Following the complicated lure of genealogy, Stolowitz goes back to Berlin to bring the story of her unknown ancestors out of the archives into the light. The record keeps as many secrets as it shares; how do people become verschollen, lost, like library books?

A limited number of free tickets have been reserved for secondary school student groups and their teachers. Please register as soon as possible by email at tickets@etberlin.de

This production is part of the 2023 Berlin Performing Arts Festival, May 31 to June 3, 2023 | paf.berlin

 

 

 

 

 

Complete funding for this production and the 2022 performances was generously provided by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.

 

 

 

These additional performances in 2023 have been made possible thank to the Wiederaufnahmeförderung program of Fonds Darstellende Künste

 

 

 

Andrea Stolowitz is a German/American playwright currently living and working in Cork, Ireland. Her work embraces bold theatricality ranging from intimate portrayals of the human condition to the intersection of national history on private lives. Andrea is a member of New Dramatists class of 2026, an alumna of The Playwrights’ Center, and a collaborating writer with the internationally lauded devised theater company Hand2Mouth Theatre. Andrea is the Lacroute Playwright-in-Residence at Artists Repertory Theater. Andrea has taught at Duke University, NYU, UC-San Diego, Willamette University and NUI-Galway.