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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

Cascando

Pan Pan’s Cascando by Samuel Beckett

Accompany Samuel Beckett’s curious figures into an uncertain future. Attired in dark cloaks and given headphones, audiences are guided through a rhythmic, immersive, group choreographical experience.

First broadcast in 1963, Cascando begins with the curious character Opener (Daniel Reardon) setting the scene: the month of May, a time of “reawakening”.  The Opener commands two other presences: the winding Voice (Andrew Bennett) caught between arrest (” – stories … if you could finish it …”) and progress (“- nearly … just a few more … a few more”), and Music (designed by Jimmy Eadie), whole and forceful.

Director Gavin Quinn, dramaturg Nicholas Johnson and designer Aedín Cosgrove recognize this as a journey. The audience are sent walking in an outdoor landscape, wearing cloaks and listening to the play on headphones.  The unhurried pace of Bennett’s deep and riveting voice provides a rhythm for our steps, as we listen to Voice’s struggle to tell a story.

The absent figure named Woburn is identified by his “same old coat” and vague memories of a cave or shelter. As the same-dressed audience pass each other in the dark surroundings, it appears that images of the text have been slyly extracted. Has the audience been unknowingly cast as the play’s mystifying wanderer?

Along this journey, the tremendous pulse of Eadie’s music threatens to overwhelm. It rises in a wave of crashing strings, eventually settling to ring, pining, with Voice’s efforts. If you suspected that Woburn’s journey resembled a pilgrimage, Reardon’s sullen Opener somewhat confirms it, suggesting God and a parable: “two outings and a return, to the village, to the inn”.

Pan Pan was founded in 1993 by Co-Artistic Directors Aedín Cosgrove and Gavin Quinn. The company has created 52 new theater and performance pieces and toured worldwide, receiving multiple national and international awards. Pan Pan have toured extensively to prestigious venues and festivals around the world including BAM, Lincoln Center, St Ann’s Warehouse, NCPA China, Edinburgh International Festival Sydney and Melbourne Festivals, the Barbican and HAU Berlin. Since its inception, Pan Pan has constantly examined and challenged the nature of its work and has resisted settling into well-tried formulas. Developing new performance ideas is at the center of the company’s mission. All the works created are original, either through the writing (original plays) or through the totally unique expression of established writings. Pan Pan tries to approach theater as an open form of expression and has developed an individual aesthetic that has grown from making performances in a host of different situations
and conditions.
Photo: Matthew Andrews

 

Impro 2023

IMPRO is Europe’s largest showcase for improvised theater!

For the 2023 edition, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center will host Batovia:

When coming to Batovia, be aware that this land leaves no one untouched. The merciless struggle for power, the unquenched longing for love, the permanent flare-up of strife and hatred – you can’t escape it. William Shakespeare would have enjoyed these dramas that will captivate and draw you in. No one knows today how they will begin and how they will end – in this country that lies in yesterday, today and tomorrow, in the distance and right beside you.

 

Impro 2019

Improvised theater is surprising and always different at the same time.

IMPRO, the international impro festival hosted by Die Gorillas, is one of the biggest festivals of its kind: for the 17th edition from March 16 – 24, 2019, improvisers from all over the world get together in Berlin to inspire the audience with their spontaneous stories and diverse characters. The artists will sweep them off their feet with their concepts and ideas of improvised theater which go in the most different of directions to show the variety and possibilities of this special art form: Storytelling inspired by Aki Kaurismäki, Shakespeare or a local playwright, improvisers giving very personal insights in Role Models, Meta Impro and Community, an improvised radio play, the Improvision Song Contest and much more is going to happen in five theaters around Berlin.

IMPRO 2019 brings new shows and presents improv classics.

Stunning. Emotional. Connecting.

Community

March 16, 17 and 18 |  8pm

“Life in contemporary forms of capitalism is becoming unbearable, and one survival strategy is to develop and protect at all costs small communities that offer us different relations. With art, we cannot and do not aim at causing great social change but we can make room for collective creation, a space where it is possible to survive and even have a good time. Every moment is worth asking the very important human question of ‘How do we actually want to live together?’. And by doing so, we are finding answers along the way. Exquisite and daring performers from different cultural, economic and political environments dive into the topic of community.”

Maja Dekleva Lapajne, Artistic Director of the EU project Our Lives and the format Community

Theatersports

March 19 | 8pm

Sometimes it’s nice to go back to the roots. Many of those looking for new improv formats today started with this popular form of improvising back in the day. Several teams compete for the best scenes and songs, for the audience doesn’t just make suggestions, it also decides the champion of the night. It’s no coincidence this show format succeeded all over the world: it’s improv full of fun, imagination, suspense, speed and passion…

Not by Kaurismäki

March 20 and 21 | 8pm

The concise manner of speaking and the quiet humor of Aki Kaurismäki is the model for the improvisations. And we‘re getting back to basics.

Not by Shakespeare

March 22 and 23 | 8pm

It goes without saying that we won’t be able to improvise a play which matches the works of the British genius. But we can let ourselves be inspired by William Shakespeare and use the rhythm of his language as well as the structure of his dramas, comedies and tragedies as a template. A Shakespeare play about gentrification, digitalization or factory farming – that could be pretty cool.

 

The 2018 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion: A Showcase of Wahlberliner

SAVE THE DATES!

The 2018 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion Festival will be take place from Sunday, April 22 through Saturday, April 28, 2018!

Complete program and ticket information will be online soon; and here is the complete schedule of programming:

 

ExpLoRE (April 22)

Gruesome Manifesto – Cher Nobyl

The Living And Our Ghosts – Noirphiles (Adrian Marie Blount)

Dancing With The Shadows – A Work In Progress – Julia Vandehof & Company

The Hearing Test – Shanti Suki Osman

Brunch Lady – Katie-Rose Spence

integrate ‘er – Iva Topolovec and Salber Williams

We Can Do It Moaning – ABA NAIA

Monday, April 23

Noraland – LeinzLieberman

Tuesday, April 24

When I Was Old/When I Get Young – Lucy Ellinson

Women Who Changed The World – Opera Chaotique

Wednesday, April 25

We Just Moved You – Alissa Rubinstein

Thursday, April 26

Landscapes Of My Inner Diaspora – Rosalie Wanka

Unfolding Universe – Heiner&Lindsig

Friday, April 27

Firewater – Tape Version

Menu – Ethan Folk and Ty Wardwell

Saturday, April 28

Skin Deep In Zaraniya – //slasheverything

Star Captain: Through The Dark You’ll Find The Light – Miss Natasha Enquist

IMPRO 2018

The nine-day festival IMPRO 2018: Our Lives (March 17 – 25) is the climax of a two-year international theater project that has brought together actors from all 28 countries of the European Union.

It combines the energy and vitality of improvised theater with the rich biographies and experiences of the actors, who use their own lives as a blueprint for what happens on stage. Together with the audience, the directness and strength of the authentic in combination with the abundance of cultural differences results in extraordinary evenings of theater.

English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center is the center of IMPRO 2018, featuring the opening performance, three specific impro formats reflecting the lives of seven actors as well as the highlight of the entire Our Lives project: the closing night of the festival with 28 artists, who will meet together on stage that evening for the first and last time.

Dates and descriptions of all performances at ETB | IPAC are below and all shows are in English and start at 8pm!

Saturday, March 17 – Opening Show

It has become a small tradition that we ask the international colleagues to bring short country-specific improv formats for the opening evening and to show them to the other actors as well as the Berlin audience. A colorful, blazing, energetic kick-off of our Our Lives festival with no less than 14 improv artists, and that’s only half of the casts – the other one is playing at the Ratibor Theater at the same time…

Sunday, March 18 and Monday, March 19 – Our Lives: Walls

Political or geographical, linguistic or ideological, visible or invisible, borders are shaping us: each freedom is limited by a borderline. From imagination to concrete reality, we build walls to label our divisions. Our Lives could be told by naming buildings and by demolishing these walls. Our homes, our churches and our schools reside inside those walls. Other walls loom between our countries, our cultures. In between those walls, what are our actual contours?

Cast: Antonia Vulpio (Italy), Heather Urquhart (UK), Julie Doyelle (France), Kaspars Breidaks (Latvia), Malcolm Galea (Malta), Roko Crnić (Croatia), Zsuzsi Várady (Hungary).
Artistic Director: Matthieu Loos (France)

Tuesday, March 20 and Wednesday, March 21 – Our Lives: Places

We spent and spend our lives in places. When we remember our grandparents’ living room, the sound of the ticking clock, the smell of the chocolate cake, and the sunlight through the gap in the curtains will come back to us. Let’s have a guess what the artists from seven European countries could bring us: a muddy mountain path in Slovakia; a quiet intersection in a Spanish village; an old farm on the border of Romania; a hot stone on a Greek beach; a wide, white field in the north of Sweden; a busy ferry on the coast of Estonia; a crammed Späti in Neukölln-Britz. Let’s tell each other about Our Lives.

With Billy Kissa (Greece), Leon Düvel (Germany), Lukáš Tandara (Slovakia), Monica Anastase (Romania), Per Gottfredsson (Sweden), Rahel Otsa (Estonia), Raquel Racionero (Spain).
Artistic Director: Christoph Jungmann (Germany)

Thursday, March 22 and Friday, March 23 – Our Lives: Community

Life in contemporary forms of capitalism is becoming unbearable, and one survival strategy is to develop and protect at all costs small communities that offer us different relations. With art, we cannot and do not aim at causing great social change but we can make room for collective creation, a space where it is possible to survive and even have a good time. Every moment is worth asking the very important human question of “How do we actually want to live together?”. And by doing so, we are finding answers along the way.

Exquisite and daring performers from different cultural, economic and political environments dive into the topic of community: Alenka Marinič (Slovenia), Alexander Mitrev (Bulgaria), Audrius Bruzas (Lithuania), Beatrix Brunschko (Austria), Gilles Delvaulx (Belgium), Hannu Risku (Finland), Mia Møller (Denmark). Artistic Director: Maja Dekleva Lapajne (Slovenia)

Saturday, March 24 – 28 AT 7 PM!!

Actually, we cannot believe it yet – an idea has become a reality. For the first and probably only one time, 28 people will stand together on the stage. All that unites them is that they come from the 28 countries of the EU. It’s so easy to write down, but it’s actually incredible and a special moment in the history of this festival. We guarantee nothing but an exceptional evening of improvisation.