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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

The Other/Promised Land

“Maybe it’s just a myth.
You have your own history.
I have my own history.
And now we are just sharing the bathroom.”

Shlomo Lieberman and Ulrich Leinz confront three very different love stories in their performance: the disturbing memories about the grandmother who survived Auschwitz, the painful love letters of the German grandfather from Warsaw in 1943 and their own attempt to survive their relationship as a gay German/Israeli couple in Berlin.

LeinzLieberman are the performance makers Shlomo Lieberman (Israel/Germany) and Ulrich Leinz (Germany). Over the last three years, their work has been included in three consecutive Expat Expo | Immigration Invasion festivals and we premiered their groundbreaking The Other/Promised Land in the fall of 2016. We are very excited to host them – collaborating with colleagues – as our fall artists in residence, presenting three different works in September, October and November.

Lovers1 will be performed on September 29 and the first public presentation of their newest work-in-progress, Olam HaBa – The Next World, will be presented in THE LAB on November 3.

Lovers1

A distillation of “love” by Shlomo Lieberman & Tomer Zirkilevich: a performance for three blindfolded performers, a tv set and surtitles

What happens when two are no longer enough? Is there still the same intimacy as before? Other lovers appear. How to continue now?

In the second version of the performance they created last year as a duo, Shlomo Lieberman and Tomer Zirkilevich invite Austin Fagan for a trio.

The setting remains the same: the performers are blindfolded on an empty stage. Their task is to lift or to be lifted. And they repeat this procedure over and over as a ritual they cannot avoid. But unlike the performance last year, the roles are not clear as they were. Who is lifting whom? What should one do when he is left out? Does one should find a new role for himself? What are the options?

The performance provides insight into the fragility of relations, shows how aggression is easily evoked and can turn into grief. And how grief can establish power.

“Love is like a toy. If you play too much with it, you’ll break it. But if you don’t play with this toy, why should you have it?” (Surtitle at 5:43 min)

LeinzLieberman are the performance makers Shlomo Lieberman (Israel/Germany) and Ulrich Leinz (Germany). Over the last three years, their work has been included in three consecutive Expat Expo | Immigration Invasion festivals and we premiered their groundbreaking The Other/Promised Land in the fall of 2016. We are very excited to host them – collaborating with colleagues – as our fall artists in residence, presenting three different works in September, October and November.

The Other/Promised Land will be performed on October 13 and the first public presentation of their newest work-in-progress, Olam HaBa – The Next World, will be presented in THE LAB on November 3.

Watch an excerpt of Lovers1

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Latent Dreams

Latent Dreams is a performance about the future.

Or more specifically the possible futures for the human race beyond the system of capitalism. The performance grew out of the quote “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, often cited to Frederic Jameson in his essay Future Cities.

Intrigued by this quote, I began to research possible alternatives to the capitalist system, and came across a “widespread lack of conviction in the possibility of transcending capitalism, and indeed, a difficulty in even imagining such a task”[1]. I wanted to encourage more discussions around alternative systems, and so I created Latent Dreams, about the futures we allow ourselves to envision, as a provocation to envision alternative ones.

Using the frame of Hollywood films, Latent Dreams unravels the inherent capitalist ideologies embodied in popular concepts of the Apocalypse. It involves a solo performer typing a “plot summary” of a disaster film, which is rewritten and rewritten, erased, repeated and deleted throughout the performance. The text is humorous, occasionally poignant, often misspelled and always human.

Latent Dreams aims not to provide a solution, but instead open a dialogue on imagined futures, and alternative systems.

[1] Hahnel, Robert & Wright, Erik Olin, Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a Democratic Economy, p5.

Latent Dreams was conceived as part of the MLitt Theatre Practice at the University of Glasgow. It was first performed at the Gilmorehill Theatre, Glasgow, in September 2016. After presenting the show in its original form in the 2017 Expat Expo | Immigrant Invasion festival, we are proud to present a run of this extended, revised Berlin-specific version.

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Katrine Turner is a performance maker based between Berlin and Glasgow. She creates performance for different social contexts, settings and audiences. In November 2016, she graduated from the University of Glasgow in MLitt Theatre Practice with Distinction, where she was the College of the Arts Bellahouston Scholar 2015/2016.

When I See You I Think of…Dentist

A search for identity

Life is weird, mine is too. My passport says I’m British. But I was born here. My parents are British. My name is as well. My first language is German. I think it’s easier than English. People in the UK call me “the German”. People in Germany call me “the English girl”. I’m confused. What am I? Where do I belong? And where am I?…..ahh, no I know where I am. Leeds. West Yorkshire. England. But what does it take to be British? To become British?

This theater performance deals with the feeling of belonging somewhere – or not.

2017 EXP(L)O(RE)

A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY
This format opens the festival and is dedicated to newcomers, shorter performances and work-in-progress. Spend an entire afternoon taking in twelve performances on stage, in dressing rooms and all around the theater. In between the performances, you can enjoy fantastic food, luxurious libations and magnificent music by international, Berlin-based musicians. Performances start at 2pm and we open our doors at 1pm.

 

AHNENAMT/MINISTRY FOR ANCESTORS by Club Real (Austria)

This long-term project about a new aesthetic practice of elective kinship is a scenic installation – a parallel reality which needs to be entered by visitors to come to life. It examines a new cultural practice: the possibility to adopt an ancestor.

 

 

 

 

CARLOS WHISPER by Katie Lee Dunbar (UK)

A one-on-one performance in which individual audience members are whisked off into a sonic wonderland, all centered around a table of seemingly random objects. The connections are only made clear once you put the headphones on.

 

 

 

 

EPILOGUE by Noemi Berkowitz (USA/Poland)

What might life after death look like… and what implications would that have for life before death? In this two-woman play, a girl finds pieces of herself in stories from across the world and across time. A performance about the ways we develop in our journeys forward.

 

 

 

 

HYO (효) by Haenny Park (South Korea)

This piece was inspired by a famous Korean folktale, very often told to the artist by her father as a child. It tells the story of a son who digs up a grave to steal a human leg, which he will use to save his dying mother.

 

 

 

 

I DON’T WEAR SKIRTS BECAUSE I NEVER LEARNED TO CROSS MY LEGS by Angela Millano (Spain)

This performance is a protest against the normalization, legislation and control of our bodies and the need to fulfill standards perceived as natural. It is a rebellion by a vulnerable and violent body that feels beyond the social, professional and personal limitations imposed on it.

 

 

 

 

INTIMATE ARSENAL (A QUARTET) by Claudia Grigg Edo (UK/Catalonia)

Sit down at the table. On the other side of the table is HER. Stay with her as she navigates one of four situations. If you like, you can watch it loop round again in this interactive video projection.

 

 

 

 

LATENT DREAMS by Katrine Turner (Scotland)

This performance is about the Apocalypse. About the rising sea waters, and the invisible plagues. About when Cillian wakes up from his coma, and there’s no one about so he breaks into a vending machine for a can of Coke. About the futures we allow ourselves to envision.

 

 

 

 

MOUTH CONTROL by MILK (USA)

Sometimes it’s easier to be honest when no one is around. We are more open in text messages and status updates than we are in face-to-face interactions with others. In Mouth Control, we ask the audience to test the limitations of distance and vulnerability in real time. We invite you to play a game with us.

 

 

 

 

SKEWED by Shanti Suki Osman (UK)

A solo performance using song, storytelling and sound. Using live and prerecorded voice and field recordings, Shanti
Suki Osman presents 4 songs documenting her exploration of self-fetishization as a means for empowerment.

 

 

 

 

SWEETS FOR A STORY by Bees Knees Sweets (Canada)

An exploration of connecting with strangers and their stories using food as a catalyst. Food is universal. It’s something we all want and need as human beings, and therefore is something that unites us as people. Food can tell our stories, as well as inspire them.

 

 

 

 

THE FOURTH UNITY by Renen Itzhaki (Israel)

A room. A bookshelf. A small group of people. They walk in circles. They are all one. They read a book. Sometimes out loud. Sometimes they stop. Sometimes a memory.

 

 

 

 

THE WHEEL by Connecting Fingers (UK/Italy)

From the script by philosopher Sara Fortuna, inspired by Dogville from Lars von Trier, four dancers explore a circular conceptual space organized in several steps in this work-in-progess showing: sleep/pre-birth/origin, child-like openness to the adult world in its tensions, contradictions, competitions, failures and eventual coming back to the starting point.

Shlomo’s Friends

Every immigrant has to form new relationships.

So did Shlomo Lieberman when he came to Berlin.

In this performance, he invites new friends to present ancient texts related to his name twin, King Solomon. These texts deal with love, desire, decency, morality and posing disturbing questions about the meaning of life.

Friends are asked to choose from these texts, to perform them as they see fit and to offer a new understanding of them. The mission is to create a new emotional landscape on the background of an old one in which people can become friends.

Out of the Dark

A meditation on freedom, loss and grief

The artistic duo BirdMoon – Stephen Mooney and Dorothy Bird – invite artists Aude Gouaux Langlois, Nadine Milzner, Natasha Jaffe and Michael Haeflinger to join an artistic interdisciplinary and interactive “conversation” by means of music, dance, poetry, visuals and soundscape.

The performance piece Out of the Dark explores the desire to escape from darkness, both physical and mental, and its propensity to linger and echo into the light as repetition or distortion of memory. Within these loose parameters, the artists work to create clarity out of chaos, harmony out of passion and create light within the dark.

Lauta

A physical exploration of the hysterical joys and melancholia of youth

What adolescent events, personally and politically, shape the performance of gender as 20-somethings? At a young age, dance artists Aliina Lindroos and Susie Yugler were both called lautas (or ironing board, i.e., “she’s flat as a board [lauta]”).

LAUTA aims to understand how childhood heartbreak, trauma and loss echo in the body. The work investigates the female gaze and the implications of a feminized body in multiple modes of performance.

The Face Reality Deserves

A performance about memory or the lack of it

“Sometimes I feel this planet is nothing but a giant loop machine. Going ‘round and ‘round and around we go. And here we are, going ‘round, doing the same old stupid things, over and over again. In love, relationships, in politics, with our thoughts, with our beliefs, with fashion…”

Intime Fremde

“When I was a child my mother used to tell me that I am a citizen of the world. Of course I believed her, she was my mother. But the older I got, the more I understood that this was just my mother’s dream.”

This performance by Welcome Project. The Foreigner’s Theatre is dedicated to a reflection on the idea of borders, identity, the concept of nation, and country of origin. The European Union got us used to low-cost travel and making ourselves at home in every country of the EU. Now, the old world is running scared and putting itself on lockdown: the Mediterranean Sea now seems to be made out of barbed wire. Borders exist hidden in plain sight everywhere.