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Between

Fourword Productions (South Africa)

Lost somewhere between love and lust – a man, a boy, a couple, a teacher and his student .

When is sex exciting, slightly naughty, arousing and playful?
How does sex suddenly turn into a ritual, an act, a sacrifice… into emotional pain form which there is no coming back? An emotional dead end from which a relationship is hard pressed to return from.
Three separate, yet suggestively interlinked, stories explore how love can transcend sexual boundaries and what happens when the love disappears and the loss becomes acute.

Between has been nominated for two prizes at the 2012 Dublin Gay Theatre Festival: The Oscar Wilde Award for Best writing (Oskar Brown) and The Micheal Mac Liammoir Award for Best Male Performance (Nick Campbell)

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

William Shakespeare

The First Time

Close your eye. Close them.
Can you remember it like it was yesterday, or is everything blurred and indistinct?

Your first day at school?
Your first bike?
Your first kiss?
Your first dance?
Your first job?
Your first fight?
Your first love?
Your first hate?

The winners were:

Golden Gates by Rosie Skan

My First Apocalypse by Maxwell Flaum

The Red Couch by Marie Franz

Spin the World Around by Kate McCane

Authorization Breakdown by Martin Esters

Erika Hughes studied at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts/Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the University of Wisconsin. She has over fifteen years of experience as a director, designer and performer.

Photograph 51

by ANNA ZIEGLER

A science play about a revolutionary discovery – and how the boys took over

In the early 1950s the young Jewish scientist Rosalind Franklin had to struggle with a frustratingly male-dominated science establishment at King´s College in London. Some of her colleagues even refused to acknowledge her doctoral title, while access to the faculty club, which was reserved to men, remained denied to her.

After months of work, she succeeded in taking the X-ray photograph that became the turning point for elucidating the DNA double helical structure: photograph 51. However, the credit for this revolutionary scientific discovery was given to the men who used the picture without her knowledge; Franklin´s crucial contribution went unacknowledged for decades.

When James Watson, Francis Crick and Franklin´s colleague Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel prize in 1962, she had been dead for four years.

In a nutshell, Anna Ziegler‘s play shows the making of an outstanding scientific discovery in a bone-dry, ritualized and women-excluding male establishment, in which an emotional minefield, social coldness and hierarchies, antisemitism and ferocious fighting for recognition and scientific priority went hand-in-hand with scientific curiosity, meticulousness and juvenile enthusiasm. (in 1952, James Watson was just 24 years old, Rosalind Franklin was 32 !).

Photograph 51 was the third production in our Science & Theatre program.

Supported by Druck

Image: Magnus Hengge / Photos: Christian Jungeblodt

Dark

by S. D. Clifford

Dark_Web Here is Terry, an obsessive-compulsive depressive with a fear of light. In order to cope with the terror of everyday living he forces himself to remain in an almost constant self-induced psychosis, maintaining only impersonal superficial relationships with inanimate objects like his boots and radio.

Terry´s world comes crashing down when out of the blue he is informed that he is to be executed with immediate effect. He is also given the task of organizing it himself. This includes the execution, the funeral and the payment of his outstanding debts.

But there is nothing to fear. There never has been.

Lady Lay

a new play by LYDIA STRYK

“I´ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.”

Marianne has worked at the Berliner Arbeitsamt all her life and then she hears Bob Dylan on the radio and the Wall falls down.

Although she can hardly understand the words, she takes a journey—both joyful and terrifying—into Dylan’s world, putting her very existence in jeopardy.

“There must be some way out of here …”

“Welcome to the Office of Employment. Berlin Division, District Seven. It is run as an efficient operation. And it is. It’s a system, after all. It could run without us. Maybe it will one day. It has rules. But behind the rules is reality. And no two things could be more opposite. Rule: You must work. Reality: There is no work. Rule: We provide work. Reality: there is no work. Rule: Our economy and survival depend on work. Reality: there is no work. Not here. Not any more.”

Lady Lay takes a joy ride through life’s rules and regulations. But what is freedom? And can Bob Dylan take you there?
A joy ride through the Arbeitsamt to Freedom!

“Yippee! I’m a poet, and I know it. Hope I don’t blow it.”

Lydia Stryk was born in DeKalb, Illinois, birthplace of barbed wire and is now based in Berlin. She is the author of over a dozen full-length plays including Monte Carlo, The House of Lily, The Glamour House, American Tet and An Accident, which have been part of festivals around the United States and produced at, among others, Denver Center Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Victory Gardens, HB Studios, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Magic Theatre, and in Germany at Schauspiel Essen, Theaterhaus Stuttgart and Forum Theater with Schauspiel Independent and featured at Biennale Bonn. Her plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing and Per Lauke Verlag, and excerpts appear in numerous anthologies including Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays from Northwestern University Press. American Tet was produced at the English Theatre Berlin in November 2008.

Photos by Christian Jungeblodt

The man of Shadows

Earliest memory … earliest memory … let’s see … Fear … naturally.

The Man of Shadows is a darkly humorous play that tells the story of Val Arkam jr, a faded Hollywood horror star, and his encounter with young Laura Starling, a talented journalist and daughter of the film critic that originally named him “The Man of Shadows”. It was the name that launched a dramatic career as dark, gothic and outright frightening off-screen as on. – In a last bid for fame and validation Arkam conjures a lost world of old Hollywood horror, and Laura finally confronts “the old darkness” she lost her farther to long ago. And in the end, of course, a terrible secret is revealed that will change Laura’s life forever…

“Where be Death this midsummer’s day?
Why he sits in the house where the shadow men play.”

Anon – Sonnets for the Cradle (London, c.1765)

For centuries the Shadow Men and their travelling theatre have been feared as much as they have been welcomed. It was believed that Death himself was their patron, so enchanted was he with their playing. Yet those brave few who found the courage to attend the most bloodcurdling tales of terror ever performed were said to live long and charmed lives thereafter.

Darren Robert Smith
Born in England, Smith has been on stage since age five. He was trained at the Drama Centre London, where he was sponsored by Sir Anthony Hopkins, and has appeared on stages all over Europe.

Guenther Primig
born in Austria, Primig immigrated to California, and, from there, to Berlin. Writes film scripts, short stories and plays. His most recent work appeared in the Shirley Jackson Award nominated anthology Shades Of Darkness.

The Theatre Of Shadows
founded in 2010, is dedicated to producing original plays of the macabre and new stagings of classic tales of horror.What better way to celebrate the haunted season of Halloween than with this new production of their successful “The Man Of Shadows,” newly expanded and presented in preparation for its 2012 London premiere.

Terminal Connections – The Airport Plays

presented by PLAY2C (Berlin)

AirportPlays3_web Lives in transition in the contained and suspended world of an airport setting

More than a dozen characters are weaving their way into each other over the course of a series of meaningful departures, layovers or arrivals. In these slices of destiny we travel from suspicion to attraction, fear to trust, alienation to connection and stress to love.

The One Act Plays:

Where I Come From by Daniel Reitz : En route young Shay finds herself confronted with the hard facts of her destination by the radical demonstration of a fellow traveller. Image

Storks by Catherine Filloux : An unnerved grandmother finds an unexpected communion with her estranged granddaughter in the course of a layover.

Haere Mai Ki Aotearoa by Julie McKee : Expat New Yorker Fiona returns to her native New Zealand and rather faces the audience than her family waiting outside the gate.

Terminal Connection by Ari Roth (Directed by Peter Romero) : Two arrivals strive to continue an intimate inflight moment at the terminal where they part after finding new direction in a bittersweet meeting.

The Airport Play by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros : a distressed woman finds enlightenment in the form of a mercilessly nosy stranger who helps to mend two broken hearts, his and hers.

The Flight of the Last Calhoon by Quincy Long : Gosts of the past are challenged and transformed by a desperate passenger with the help of two very curious security personnel.

The chorus figure of a grounded Air Captain joins all six plays.

My Romantic History

by D C JACKSON

“I suppose there comes a point when you have to face that you’re just ‘that age’ and that if you’ve got a man who isn’t a retard, a rapist or a Rangers supporter then he’s probably about the best you’re going to get.”

My Romantic History takes a sharp, hilarious and affectionate look at modern relationships and the rocky road to true love. Office colleagues Tom and Amy´s drunken one-night stand seems to be morphing into a full-blown relationship before their very eyes, but before they can face the future, they’ll have to deal with the ghosts of relationships past…

“The genius of this play is that it acknowledges the ambivalence of postmodern sexual lives – the lack of commitment, the coldness, the sense that reality never quite measures up to some plastic ideal – while simultaneously overcoming all that with the wit, the humanity, the ability to laugh, learn, and move on, that is the real redeeming quality of our species. Jackson’s clear-eyed but brilliant comic invention is a joy, as is his inimitable way with words.” The Scotsman

First produced by The Bush Theatre and Sheffield Theatres in association with Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 5th August 2010 at the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh.

D. C. JACKSON is a Glasgow-based writer. His plays include The Wall (2008), The Ducky (2009) and The Chooky Brae (2010), a trilogy of plays written for Borderline Theatre, Glasgow); Company Policy (2010), Out on the Wing (2008), Matinee Idle (2006) and Drawing Bored (2006), all for the A Play, A Pie and A Pint series at Oran Mor, Glasgow. He has written for BBC Radio Scotland and Radio 4. He is currently under commission to the Royal Court Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland.

Image: Anna Clark / Photo: Peter Groth

supported by

Summer and Smoke

by Tennessee Williams

They were two ill-starred lovers: a minister´s shy, sensitive daughter and a wildly passionate, carefree young doctor. One hungered for the spirit, the other hungered for the flesh…

Alma: There are some women who turn a possibly beautiful thing into something no better than the coupling of beasts – but love is what you bring to it. Some people bring just their bodies. But there are some people, there are some women, John who can bring their hearts to it, also – who can bring their souls to it!

John: Souls again, huh – those gothic cathedrals you dream of. Your name is Alma and Alma is Spanish for soul. Some time I´d like to show you a chart of the human anatomy that I have in my office. It shows what your insides are like, and maybe you can show me where the beautiful soul is located on the chart.

On 6 October 1948, Summer and Smoke premiered at the Music Box Theater, New York. In 1952, Geraldine Page played the lead role in a revival at the newly founded Circle in the Square Theatre in downtown New York. Her legendary performance is credited with the beginning of the Off-Broadway movement.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Tennessee Williams´ birthday English Theatre Berlin presents a production of his classic, Summer and Smoke, directed by Blake Robison, Artistic Director at Round House Theatre, Washington/DC.

Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams was born on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. The second of three children, his family life was full of tension. His parents, a shoe salesman and the daughter of a minister, often engaged in violent arguments that frightened his sister Rose.

In 1927, Williams got his first taste of literary fame when he took third place in a national essay contest sponsored by The Smart Set magazine. In 1929, he was admitted to the University of Missouri where he saw a production of Henrik Ibsen´s Ghosts and decided to become a playwright. But his degree was interrupted when his father forced him to withdraw from college and work at the International Shoe Company. Eventually, Tom returned to school. In 1937, he had two of his plays produced by Mummers of St. Louis, and in 1938, he graduated from the University of Iowa. After failing to find work in Chicago, he moved to New Orleans and changed his name from “Tom” to “Tennessee” which was the state of his father’s birth.

In 1939, the young playwright received a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant, and a year later, Battle of Angels was produced in Boston. After moving from St. Louis to New Orleans in 1939, he adopted “Tennessee Williams” as his professional name. In 1944, what many consider to be his best play, The Glass Menagerie, had a very successful run in Chicago and a year later burst its way onto Broadway.

Williams followed up with several other Broadway hits including such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, A Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and reached an even larger world-wide audience in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into motion pictures. Later plays which were also made into movies include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for which he earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending, and Night of the Iguana.

On February 24, 1983, Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap at his New York City residence at the Hotel Elysee. He is buried in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to twenty-five full length plays, Williams wrote dozens of short plays and screenplays, two novels, a novella, sixty short stories, over one-hundred poems and an autobiography.

pics: Christian Jungeblodt

Brave Near World

10-Minute Play Competition 2011 on the theme UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA

What will life be like for children being born today? Will they see Prenzlauer Berg become a gated community? Will Mandela’s legacy cause South Africa to be the new model for civilization?

Will genetically modified tomatoes officially become animals and start appearing in zoos? Will our technological fetishes ever actually save us more time than they cost us?

The winners were:

Indecent Exposure by Tamsin K. Walker

Poor by Nicole Paschal

Three Grams of Spacebox by Oliver Ralli

Nice Woolly Cardigans by Mark Daver

The Connection by Joshua Crone