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International Performing Arts Center
Blog Archive
The Panel
The Panel is a talk show in the form of a staged reading in which five unique personalities engage in a heated, polarizing and humorous discussion about political conditions of the world.
These five guests turn a common and civilized conversation into the most unsuccessful debate in history.
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 is developing 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.
The Theory of Waiting
by Berlin International Youth Theatre
Loosely based on Samuel Beckett´s Waiting for Godot and inspired by the deep frustrations experienced in the time of the pandemic, BIYT presents an investigation into the perplexing questions that will just not go away.
You know the story, two friends wait endlessly for something. They try to do things right. They really do. But it´s just taking too darn long and soon trouble arrives offering a welcome distraction. We have all been there…
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 student groups and their teachers. Please register as soon as possible by email at tickets@etberlin.de
Complete funding for this production has been generously provided by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.
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.
White Heat
A revealed identity leads to an impossible decision.
Journalist Alice Kennings grapples with how to act after uncovering the identity of an alt-right podcast host calling for violence against the media.
Based on real events, White Heat is a play about all the things we justify to ourselves.
“In White Heat, Isador explores the continuum between trolls who target writers on the internet – especially women and people of colour – and true-life terror, such as the mass shooting at The Capital newspaper in Maryland in 2018 that left five journalists dead.” The Globe and Mail
FOCUS CANADA 2022
Graham Isador
Graham Isador is a writer based in Toronto. Best known for his time as a host and editor with VICE, Isador’s writing has appeared in GQ, Men’s Health, and The Globe and Mail. He is the author of several plays including Situational Anarchy and TRUCK.
Jill Harper
Jill is an award-winning theatre director and dramaturg, and the co-founder of Cue6 Theatre. Selected directing credits: Cue6 Theatre’s Dry Land (Globe and Mail’s Top 10 Theatre shows of 2018); pool (no water) (Dora Awards for Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Performance – Ensemble); and Byhalia, Mississippi (as a part of a 7-city World Premiere Conversation). Elsewhere – White Heat (Summerworks Festival); Consumption Patterns (Next Stage Theatre Festival); Meet Cute (Roseneath Theatre) – Dora nomination for Outstanding Direction with co-director Aaron Willis – Hazardous Materials (Equity Library Theatre Chicago); Twelfth Night and Macbeth (The Classical Theatre Project).
Cool Aid
a cover version of the greatest comedy ever
Katherine and Audrey rent out a garden apartment. Only to artists, though. This has earned them a very impressive art collection. They love art, galleries, openings. Their brother, who thinks he’s Erich Honecker, will probably have to go to an institution because he won’t leave his room anymore. He will be greatly missed, because he buries the corpses in the cellar when his sisters have poisoned another one of those sad characters – There is nothing sadder than failed artists.
Katherine: “It was so sad to see a young artist die. And then we came to the conclusion that there really is nothing sadder in this world than an artist who suffers from a lack of success, who goes nowhere with all their ambitions but down the drain”
Audrey: “And we thought it would be better they didn´t have to live through all that pain and misunderstanding and pain again. So we helped them.”
Then her nephew Max shows up with Dr. Graveline. They are on the run and have the body from their last murder with them in the trunk. The burial ground in the basement comes in handy. Things get complicated ….
Cool Aid is a lurid farce about the dangerous edges of the contemporary art business, where the abyss is always lurking and only those who “make it” are immune from the crash.
Audrey: The last sad batch of Minimalism.
Katherine: Imitators only.
Audrey: A bunch of fucking wankers.
Cool Aid is a contemporary cover version of the best of all comedies, Arsenic and Old Lace from 1941.
Murder at Brightshadow Manor
To attend the performance, you must wear an FFP2 mask and present a negative antigen quick test for COVID-19 that is not older than 24 hours or proof for you complete vaccination or recovery from COVID-19. Please book a test date in advance from an official test center, e.g. www.test-to-go-berlin. Please observe our health and safety measures. Our guests must wear an FFP2 mask during their entire visit to the theater, including during the performance.
Zugang mit FFP2-Maske und aktuellem negativen Antigen-Schnelltest (nicht älter als 24 Stunden) oder Nachweis des vollständigen Impfschutzes bzw. der Genesung. Bitte buchen Sie vorab eigenständig Ihren verbindlichen Testtermin bei einem offiziellen Testzentrum, bspw. über www.test-to-go.berlin. Bitte beachten Sie unsere Hygiene- und Schutzmaßnahmen und tragen Sie während Ihres gesamten Besuchs eine FFP2-Maske, auch während der Vorstellung.
Please note that we are only able to offer 35 tickets for this performance.
Featuring a cast of nine eccentric characters (including an actual ghost) and inspired by the classic Edwardian farce, this brand new play has touches of Agatha Christie, the Addams Family and a hint of Tim Burton, too.
The Saviour
a new play by Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan, produced by Landmark Productions, performed by Marie Mullen and Brendan Gleeson, directed by Louise Lowe and presented by the Cork Midsummer Festival.
The production will be streamed and available online from June 19th. Get more info and your tickets to join the stream here: The Saviour
The Saviour is a new play that charts the extraordinary shift in social, political and religious life in Ireland over the past thirty years. It asks questions about responsibility, about how we respond to trauma and about the tricky question of forgiveness.
Please join us for a special event:
In the Green Room with The Saviour | A Post Show Talk
June 22, 2021 – 19:00 CET
The Embassy of Ireland in Germany and the Consulate General of Ireland in Frankfurt are thrilled to present, in partnership with The English Theatre in Frankfurt, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, and The English Theatre of Hamburg, IN THE GREEN ROOM WITH THE SAVIOUR– a post-show talk with the team behind the brand new Irish play The Saviour.
For the first time ever, all of the English theaters in Germany are brought together in a partnership to present a theater piece to a nationwide English-speaking German audience. Utilizing the boundary-less nature of current pandemic-accommodating online activity, audiences can access the live premiere as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, and partake in this interactive Q+A to gain deeper insights into this highly anticipated play.
Moderated by journalist Meike Krüger, the acclaimed team of writer Deirdre Kinahan, director Louise Lowe, actor Marie Mullen and producer Anne Clarke will shed light on this exciting work that reflects deeply on cultural transformations in Ireland.
Join ‘In the Green Room with The Saviour’ on June 22 live on Zoom or from any of the partners’ Facebook pages. Register here to attend.
Let There Be Theater!
March 13, 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the day theaters around the world went dark in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Our friends and collaborators Aurora Nova, the renowned international theater booking agency that represents the Berlin-based Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, have invited us and hundreds of theaters around the world to mark this anniversary with a very special performance of Nassim’s very special play White Rabbit, Red Rabbit by our dear friend GAYLE TUFTS.
The profits of the evening will go to theatermakers who had no work during the Corona pandemic!
We’ll let Aurora Nova’s director, Wolfgang Hoffmann, tell you a little more about the play:
“Ten years ago, almost to the day, I performed in a show at the Fadjr Festival in Tehran. At the festival hotel I was introduced to a young unpublished playwright, who did not have a passport, because he had refused to do military service. In order to get his work in front of an audience, he had devised a play that had to be performed as a cold read, without the need of a director, set or rehearsals. All it needed was for a brave performer to agree to read a text in front of a live audience, without first knowing what the play was about. I liked this young man and loved his idea and spontaneously agreed to help produce his show at the Edinburgh Fringe later that year. When I finally saw the show performed live, I realized what this playwright had achieved. Through the power of his words alone he had written himself to freedom.
Now, ten years on, the play White Rabbit, Red Rabbit has become one of the most widely performed plays in the world. It has been translated into over 30 languages and been performed by some of the most respected actors in the business. The playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour now lives in Berlin and realizes that our world is trapped, much like he was ten years ago. So the idea was born to offer his play as a vehicle to connect and empower producers, artists and audiences around the world.”
In 2013, White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was our second production after our reimagining as an international performing arts center – and we are thrilled to be able to offer this incredible work once again as part of Aurora Nova’s Let There Be Theater!
This time, we’ve found an absolutely legendary performer to accompany Nassim’s text.
Gayle Tufts, “Germany’s best known US-American”. Working as an entertainer, author, singer and commentator, Gayle has been a household name in Germany’s theater landscape since the 1990s, when she also gave some of her very first performances at a little basement theater on Fidicinstraße called Friends of Italian Opera – which is now English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center.
On March 13, at 8pm, we will be offering a one-night only live stream of Gayle’s performance of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit. Tickets will cost 10 €.
We look forward to Zooming White Rabbit, Red Rabbit with Gayle, Aurora Nova and all of you!