etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

by Matthew Earnest

“Hi, I’m Ca$$ie, standard-bearer of the apocalypse! May I take your order?”

Inspired by Cassandra, the shrill prophet of doom from Greek mythology, Matthew Earnest’s piece features Ca$$ie – head cheerleader, homecoming queen, and soon-to-be-named valedictorian of Troy High School – doing community service hours in a fast food drive-thru. Ca$$ie is on probation for driving drunk after last week’s homecoming game, and ever since the resulting car accident that injured most of her friends and put her brother Hector in a coma, Ca$$ie has been having “the freakiest dreams,” horrifying visions about the end of the world. The most persistent one, about a tall horse at the gate, is especially annoying, and all Ca$$ie really wants is sleep.

“Somebody please just pour gasoline on my life and strike a match.”

Impervious to her nightmares, Ca$$ie files her nails, plays war games on her phone, calls her friends and takes orders at the cell-like window of the drive-thru. She has no idea that this night will be her last. After a series of economic meltdowns, brazen displays of breathtaking greed and corruption, and massive cuts in education to fund imperialistic wars, her formerly great nation is vulnerable and ill equipped for the modern world. Armageddon is encroaching just outside. The riots and looting have already begun. Great cities are in flames from coast to coast. The bankers and congressmen are already tanning on the beaches of Caribbean resort communities. And this is where it all ends: with a spoiled, oblivious teenager in a disposable building.

12 short plays by Peter Oswald

Peter Oswald´s short plays represent a re-discovery of the complexity of the human spirit in all its manifestations of comedy, tragedy, farce, surrealism, the grotesque and the very real.

Attention Seekers (UK) invite audiences on a spell-binding journey into ‘marriage’ and the ancient relationship between the masculine and the feminine.

Dogstar Theatre (Scotland)

A story of journeys, of how a boy who grew up on a farm in Galicia, Poland, came to be a tailor in Inverness. His life spanned most of the 20th century. His story is not straightforward.

He was taken prisoner by the Soviets in 1939 and forced to work east of the Urals, then freed in an amnesty after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. He then joined the thousands of Poles who travelled to Tehran, then Egypt, to be integrated into the British Army, fighting in North Africa and Italy. He was then resettled in Britain in 1948, joining his brother in Glasgow. This is the story he told.

But there is another story, and perhaps a third and fourth one, for in order to survive, he had to adopt different identities. Like all immigrants, the tailor had to adapt and he did that very successfully, integrating himself into the fabric of Highland life. And fabric was perhaps the most important medium through which he achieved this. He made a variety of clothes for thousands of people, including himself, constructing the outward trappings which play a part in defining hwo we are. Fabric. Fabrication.

Crossing the borders from Poland to Russia to Iran to Egypt to Italy to Germany to Scotland, the fable reflects on the Second World War but is personal, intimate and rooted in two cultures: Galicia and the Scottish Highlands. The play uses the central metaphor of the tailor and his fabric. Layers of ghostly clothes are projected on to with a series of still and moving images from the tailor’s past and present-day Ukraine. The performance combines storytelling, songs, poetry and physicality with a rich soundscape of live fiddle music and effects.

The Tailor of Inverness previewed at the Arches Theatre, Glasgow on July 29, 2008 and opened at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh on July 31, 2008. In the meantime the production toured the globe. Most of the production’s numerous performances to date have been sold out.

Dad´s Garage (Atlanta)

Make your own blockbuster, or come and watch Kevin and Amber make one right in front of you.

Based on Save the Cat, a famous guide to Hollywood screen writing, Kevin Gillese (of RAPID FIRE fame) and Amber Nash developed a new Improv format that works with – and goofs on – the Hollywood movie formulas that you find in every other film.

Rannel Theatre (UK)

Hip Hop meets theatre

Everything happens on the break – Hip Hop meets theatre in this brilliant and exciting show by two great Hip Hop DJ s from London. With Flhip Flhop they took the Edinburgh Festival 2009 by storm performing for three weeks to sold-out houses !

“This is a genuinely laugh-out-loud funny show, skilfully executed with razor sharp timing and intrinsic hip hop skills”  THE LIST !

A crazy pair of painters escapes the monotony of their dull jobs by taking refuge in hip-hop, Mc-ing and beatbox, mixing it up but usually ending up just mixed-up!

The elements of Hip Hop are hidden and twisted into a dynamic physical performance using found objects and intricate choreography to create an energetic and spontaneous comedy

Rannel Theatre  was founded by JoeyD and Matt Bailey. Matt Bailey has performed in plays off-Broadway and has had a professional career in dance and performance. He is also a DJ and has performed across the UK, Europe and America, releasing CDs to critical acclaim with DJ Para. Joey D is a true hip hop artist who has been representing the b-boy culture for almost a decade. At the age of 24 Joey D has already made a name for himself in the UK due to the originality of his dancing and his aggressiveness in battles, which represent the real rawness of the culture. Besides constant teaching and workshops Joey D tours theatres and schools and competes in competitions across the UK, Europe and America.

HIP HOP MEETS THEATRE – A perfect story in Hip Hop – Breakdance, Scratch and Battle. Everything happens on the Break.

Pic: Mark Sherratt

by Robert Schneider

An Iraqi immigrant tells his story. His name is Sad. He lives here illegally. At night he walks our streets and sells roses. He loves to speak our language but nobody listens. Will you?

Critically acclaimed in New York, Vienna and Edinburgh, this one-man show explores what it means to be ‘invisible’ in our society.

“Riveting!” Time Out **** (Critic’s Pick, 4 stars)

“See this show…captivating and utterly heart breaking!” NYTheatre.com

“Powerful, mesmerizing and thoroughly enthralling” Talk Entertainment

by The Long Song (Berlin)

an American opera of modern lovers

A modern parable of love in the 21st century told through two short American chamber operas: The Telephone by Gian Carlo Menotti and The Letter by Brian Hulse

One man, two women and too many phones – Chivalry may not have been killed by Man. In a world of iphones, bluetooth, Skype, & IMs, a sit down, face-to-face conversation seems to be a thing of the distant past. At least that’s what Lucy apparently thinks in the comedic opera The Telephone. Written in 1947 as a social commentary on the encroachment of technology on modern life, Gian Carlo Menotti is again made pertinent in this contemporizedImageinterpretation. A modern parable about the pitfalls of telecommunication, the battle between man and technology is on. Will the couple ever have their Happily Ever After when the telephone is constantly engaged?

Whether irked or inspired by the short sms, the urgent email, the quick IM, are we cured of loneliness forever? Connected, collective, communal; one love, many loves or no love at all?

The second piece of the evening tells the story in the European premiere of Brian Hulse’s contemporary opera The Letter (written in 2003, based on Edith Wharton’s story The Dilettante). Behind the paints and veils of Victorian society, a common theme is the image of women as vulnerable, wilting flowers forever outwitted and overpowered by men. But lurking under the ruffled façades of yesteryear, the mind games between women and men seethed away, masked only in witty allusion. Thursdale´s disreputable affair with Mrs. Vervain may have seemed innocent amidst the backdrop of parlor society in Edith Wharton’s time and when Thursdale proposes to another woman, Miss Gaynor, one may think that man would again trump the ladies in deceit. It is the women however, in this ménage, who rise victorious as they parry in this Suffrage-era tale of an early Women´s Liberation. In the end they extract justice of their own from a culture often too permissive of its men.Image

The artists of THE LONG SONG came together early in 2008 in dedication to American vocal repertoire, much of which remains largely unperformed in Europe. For missTcommunication they´ve chosen one standard and one unknown work of American short opera, both centered on the themes of desire and the need for real connection and intimacy which gets so often lost in our modern society.