etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

What does a newly arrived Sikh delivery driver in Berlin have to do with the rising level of the ocean? Where do avocados and billionaires and yoga meet, and what do they eat for lunch?

Why I Want to Be White is the opposite of a TED talk. (For one, there’s the harp, guiding us with its playful and disruptive sound.) It is a factually sort-of-accurate history of how “whiteness” – the world’s most successful group project – continues to manage the algorithm of supremacy and send us down mental health spirals.

This searing, funny and personal performance with harpist and collaborator Melis Çom travels geographies and centuries, returning again and again to the disturbing “brilliance” of the masterplan of whiteness and the cost of believing in it.

Deepika Arwind is a writer and performer based between Berlin and Bangalore. Her work looks at etching a psychological and emotional map of gender and politics in the current (already moving) moment. Her theater has been performed in various countries including the UAE, USA, UK and Singapore, and of course, across India and Germany. Her most recent works include The International Conference of Insecurity (2022, 2023) Phantasmagoria (UK, Kali Theatre 2023), I Speak to Sita (Forecast Forum, 2025), This Thing is about Everything (Stuttgart, 2023, 2024, Munich 2025). Phantasmagoria will have its Swiss premiere in Bern in August 2027. She is the recipient of various fellowships and residencies including most recently Weltoffenes Berlin. In 2026, she will be one of six mentors from around the world at the ITI Academy for Theater Der Welt, Chemnitz. She is also the author of the children’s book Sarayu.
Her debut novel is called Good Arguments (Simon & Schuster India 2026) and draws from her 15 years of experience in theater.

Melis Çom is a harpist based in Munich and Zurich. Her music combines the classical traditions of the harp with an openness to sound and style, moving between classical, contemporary and experimental music.

Sophia Stepf is a theater maker, curator, dramaturg and the artistic director of Flinn Works (Berlin). She has been devising and co-creating research-based performances for the last two decades, focusing on feminist and postcolonial issues. Her shows have toured internationally and won various awards in Delhi, Zürich, and Berlin, most recently the Tabori-Award by Fonds Darstellende Künste (Germany) and the prize of the International Theater Institute (Germany). As a dramaturg /curator she has worked with Theater der Welt, Vienna Festwochen, Linz 09, Schnawwl Mannheim and Theaterfestival Schwindelfrei Mannheim, amongst others. Sophia has been designing experiential learning spaces for dramaturgy, devising theatre, theatre pedagogy, and transcultural competencies for 16 years, e.g., for Goethe-Institutes in India. She holds an MA in Dramaturgy and has trained in Betzafta (democracy training), DasArts Feedback Method, Anti-Bias, diversity training methods, new work and feminist leadership. She lives in Berlin with her family.

THE LAB: Artist and Audience Development

Bathe in wine, bathe in milk,
Bathe in horse broth, bathe in silk.
Ice, steam, sauna, spring—
Let your body sizzle and sting.

If you’re a bird: you use dust!
If a snail: a puddle’s a must.
Come one, come all, we must get clean.
Elly the Batheness of Berlin
Invites you to her bathing dream.

Bathing is glorious: water grants daily rebirth, soap frees us from what want to leave behind. Elly the Batheness of Berlin is enamored with it—in tubs, hammams, mountain springs or saunas; with a sponge, a brush, hands or a stone.

All bathers are welcome to this work-in-progress lecture-performance exploring:
What is a bath? What is bathing? A historical, a cultural, a social, an artistic and an American bath; and even bathing across species!

Bathing has deep waters—with topics like PURITY, FERTILITY, (RE)BIRTH, HYGIENE, OLFACTION, MODESTY and the FEMALE DOMAIN. Elly the Batheness of Berlin is going deep into bathing lore and invites you to join.

In 2026, bad ideas are great again!

Followed by a post-performance discussion

William Shakespeare and the Bechdel Test

How much agency do female characters have in works of fiction? In 1986, US-American cartoonist Alison Bechdel provided a simple set of rules for figuring this out: the Bechdel test. Are there at least two female characters in the work? Do they speak to each other? About something other than men?

In all of William Shakespeare’s thirty-six plays, there is exactly one overlooked scene in a mostly overlooked play (Richard II) where two women converse.

With this in mind, omfg hamlet do i look like i care questions the supposed universality of Shakespeare’s themes. Combining Shakespearean language with modern dialogue and original text by creator/actor Kay Marie, the production investigates what happens when women are finally allowed the stage — and the conversation — all to themselves.

Two powerhouse performers take on a multitude of roles, including queens, noblewomen, podcast hosts, karaoke singers, dancers and professional bowlers. A male actor appears in a deliberately sidelined supporting role, used purely as a narrative device. What begins as an absurdly comic interview between two clueless influencers soon spirals into a chaotic, heartfelt, and surprisingly tender journey through female experience — both real and imagined.

The very first performance of new work-in-progress by Anna Lublina, followed by a post-performance discussion.

This research seeks to access ancestral knowledge through synchronization: a process of syncing one’s body rhythms with the rhythms of other people, objects or environments. Emerging from archival research on different forms of shared Jewish-Muslim rhythm—Uzbeki Shashmaqam music, prayer, agricultural practices, etc.— we explore tap dance, extended vocal techniques and live mixing to embody specific rhythms and synchronize with the worlds they emerge from.

How do these rhythms from historical moments of Muslim-Jewish conviviality generate different physicalities, states, tensions or intelligences in our bodies? What can these convivial rhythms teach us in a time marked by separation and violence?

This research has been funded by the Ottilie Roederstein Stipendiem from the Hessian Ministry of Science, Research, Art and Culture, Frankfurt Kulturamt and Giessen Kulturamt.

Anna is a current LABA Berlin Fellow, participating in the 2024 Muslim—Jewish creative study and exchange program called “Mar’a’yeh: A Night’s Journey”. This event is part of a month-long (ending 8.12) exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, details of which can be found here. For other upcoming LABA Berlin events and more information, please visit www.laba.berlin and follow (@lababerlin) on Instagram.

The very first presentation of new work-in-progress by Noémi Ola Berkowitz, followed by a post-performance discussion.

The sky has long been a place of comfort, spirituality, looking upward, and fantasy. But the colonization that marks the rise of empires and nations on land now threatens our atmosphere. The unique combination of technology and ancient stories in the skies above prompted Noémi (who presented new work-in-progress in our 2017 Expo Festival) to gaze upward for this next theatrical project.

With Dena Abay, Djibril Sall and Pamela Moraga