Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing Pi, a modern dance performance at Pfefferberg Theatre. There is something about bodies moving through space in exceptional ways that is both delightful, energising and emotional — and this performance was no different.
Anna Holmström performs performs Debris
As a writer, it always takes me a few minutes to let go of questions of narrative and story and enter the flow of the piece. But choreographer Anna Holmström does an artful job in creating a structured and engaging performance that expresses different characters, theme and conflict through movement.
The first composition, Dim 4, is about time, presenting different views of the same moment. It snakes through various moods and music — from the resonant and conflictual to jazzy and playful. The five dancers convey complex feelings and relationships without the use of flashy extras — a cardboard object and a net are the only props used.
In Debris, performed solely by Holmström, a piece of plastic takes on a sublime, airy quality as she dances with it. The piece is about the beauty of the ocean, which is becoming suffocated by plastics, and indeed we genuinely become worried for the dancer as she becomes more and more entangled in it. But the emotion that lingers is the one of sadness that we see in the long, still moments on the dancers face.
Christmas is here! But despite the sprinkling of snow and Christmas markets popping up everywhere, I hadn’t been feeling the Christmas spirit until I saw A Christmas Carol at theaterforum kreuzberg.
Dickens’ novella is the quintessential Christmas tale. It has spawned countless adaptions, from Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim, to The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). This year, however, it seems to be particularly en vogue, with a film about the story’s creation – The Man Who Invented Christmas – and stage productions on in London, Stratford, Hull, Bolton, Dundee, Scarborough and the State Apartments at Windsor Castle. Even Berlin will experience two different productions of the play this December.
With its production, Berlin English Repertory Theatre (BERT) has decided to go traditional, embracing the story’s simple morality and ghostly spirit with a touch of humour and pantomime. Along with the Victorian costumes, there is a hint of contemporary Berlin in the outrageous and sparkling appearances of the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present. But the icing on the yule log is the quartet of singers that punctuates the performance with Christmas carols.
Pale, thin-faced Bruce Woolley makes a wonderful Scrooge, who is at first mean-spirited, then moved by pity, shame, and finally fear, to change his ways. He renders each emotion beautifully as he is guided along on his journey by the ghosts of Christmas, keeping the audience connected to the true heart of the story. We can see in him the lost, little boy he once was as he is forced to watch a party where the guests make jokes at his expense.
BERT’s production is not scrooge-like at all — the stage overflows with vivacity, children, songs, dancing, rattling ghosts, and a good dose of shadowy darkness.
Tess Motherway is an Irish filmmaker, visual artist & film curator, based in Berlin. She will be demonstrating her first performance piece ‘Things Men Have Said To Me This Year’ on Saturday, 16th September at 6pm at Alexanderplatz.
You’re used to being behind the camera, so you’re really putting yourself out there – in Alexanderplatz on a Saturday evening no less! How do you feel about the upcoming performance?
I’m really nervous about it. I’d definitely describe myself as an introverted extrovert, so this piece is really taking me out of my comfort zone and is definitely a personal challenge. But that’s part of why I’m doing it too. I like pushing myself and embracing things that feel scary. I think doing things that we’re afraid of is really empowering.
What made you do it?
In Ireland, I grew up under a social pressure to laugh off sexist jokes, for fear of being deemed anything from ‘no craic’, to a bitch. For a long time I followed suit, or buried my head in the sand, not having the confidence to oppose it or wanting to have to have ‘those conversations’. But, I realised that by ignoring the problem, wouldn’t make it go away & that by calling out sexist behaviour and engaging and challenging people about the topic simply felt right.
This last year I’ve been reflecting particularly on the culture whereby comments and judgements about women’s bodies pervade not just social & professional spaces, but more intimate situations for women. There still seems to be a pretty prevalent entitlement and freedom to openly judge women’s bodies. I think this behaviour, even today with all our awareness, is still very normalised for women, which is really sad. I devised this piece because I wanted to do something with that feeling – the feeling of disempowerment that comes from being judged or slighted or commented on inappropriately. By handing these comments back – just some that I have personally received this passed year – I’m taking control and hopefully opening up a conversation.
Why Alexanderplatz?
When I came up with the piece, I knew it had to be in a really central, public place. Alexanderplatz is a pretty iconic centre of Berlin and I thought it would be the best spot to reach a mixed demographic – it wouldn’t feel right performing it in a smaller Kiez or a gallery space.
What is your favourite place in Berlin?
I love all the kinos of Berlin. I’m primarily a filmmaker so I’m in kino heaven here: Sputnik Kino, Babylon Kino, b-ware Ladenkino, Colloseum Kino – the list really is endless and I keep discovering new ones. I live in Neukolln which I love too because you’ve got the canal and so many great parks like Hasenheide park and Templehofer Feld – I love how much sky you can take in in Templehof. I feel like I can breathe there. Maybe that’s my favourite place.
You’ve been here since 2016. Is this your first Berlin piece? How have you found being an artist in Berlin?
This is my first Berlin piece. I moved last summer and had a piece in an exhibition last June, but it was realised back home, so this piece is particularly special to me because it’s kind of my Berlin premiere. Being an artist in Berlin is great – you can’t throw a stone without hitting another creative and there’s such a culture of collaboration and experimentation here it kind of feels like anything is possible. I love the DIY, can-do vibe – there’s so many amazing spaces it can feel like the city is just handing you the keys and saying ‘off you go’.
I moved here to be around a larger group of international creative people – I’m from Dublin which is also crawling with loads of amazing creative types, but it’s a small place and after years of living there I wanted to change things up. I have also been looking for a place to learn analogue film development and when I was researching places to go, I found a collective called Labor Berlin based in Wedding which I’m now a part of. Other more practical reasons such as being a much cheaper city to live in with a high standard of living.
What else are you working on?
This year has been pretty productive for me – I completed my first ever artist residency in Switzerland where I realised an experimental short film called ‘8’ in response to the Repeal the Eighth campaign which is fighting for a referendum to legalise abortion in Ireland. I also just finished a new short documentary called ‘Company B’ about Ireland’s only all boy contemporary dance group and I’m currently programming for the next Dublin Doc Fest short documentary film festival which I founded in 2013 back in Dublin. The next few months will see me learning analogue film development and gathering archive and photos for a series of personal, experimental short films.
Does this relate to the rest of your work in any way, or is it completely different?
I haven’t had a clear trajectory with my practice. In fact, when I finished art college, I took a creative hiatus and it’s taken me time to explore, experiment and find my way back to a focused practice again. I never used to put myself in my work before – both literally and in terms of drawing from my own experiences in a deep way. I was always looking outward – which is great – but I guess really putting yourself in your work comes with confidence. For the last two years I’ve really thrown myself – literally – into my work. So in terms of the use of my body, and the performative element, this piece really is a new thing for me. Regarding the content, though, my work has always been anchored in feminism and equality.
Tess Motherway will be beside the fountain, outside Primark, at Alexanderplatz at 6pm on Saturday, 16th September. The performance will be one hour long — check it out!
Friday evening saw the English Theatre Berlin’s staged reading of Informed Consent by Deborah Zoe Laufer. The play centres around genetic anthropologist Jillian (Jill Holwerda), who has inherited the gene variant for early onset Alzheimer’s disease from her mother.
Jillian is desperate to find a cure before she succumbs to the disease. She witnessed the demise of her own mother, and although she is fearful of losing herself, she is most concerned about protecting her daughter from the same thing. In her belief that science has the answers, Jillian appears overzealous and unstable. At work, she claims that science will one day make humans immortal, while at her daughter’s princess parties, she convinces fellow parents to submit their DNA to research.
So it is no surprise that when Jillian takes over a project from a social anthropologist, which gives her access to the DNA of a Grand Canyon tribe of Native Americans in order test their susceptibility to diabetes, she oversteps her boundaries. Jillian tests for all sorts of other things too and although she finds no genetic connection to diabetes, she does discover that the tribe originally migrated from Siberia. This contradicts the tribe’s own origin myth of springing from the Grand Canyon and creates a social and political quandary that the white scientist cannot possibly fathom.
For Jillian, there is only one story; the story of science – the greatest story of all. In her attempt to hold on to her identity, Jillian must confront the question of what makes us, us. Is it our DNA or is it the stories we tell ourselves?
In the end, this story is about a battle of stories. But the play suffers from a battle of stories itself. The question of informed consent – the play’s title and a fascinating concept that sprung from the Nuremberg code, after the Nazis conducted scientific experiments on unwilling subjects, becomes muddled with the story of Jillian’s home life, and the politics of Native American tribes in the US. Ultimately, the issue at the centre of the play – and the play itself – becomes confused.
In addition, although Jillian – the white scientist – is presented as a complex character, the representation of the members of the tribe are simplistic and inauthentic to the point of frustration. It is an example of what the play itself is trying to demonstrate – the dangers of one story, or voice trying to dominate all others. In this case, it is the story of a white, liberal playwright.
Museum overnights have become well-established, but I had never heard of a sleepover at a theatre venue before. So I was curious when I read about theatre Ballhaus Ost’s temporary project Hotel Berlin.
It was not booked out, so I just turned up and chose between three categories; mattresses on the floor in a dorm sold for 13€, while bunk beds and private rooms came for just a few extra euros. Most of the rooms, however, did not come with doors.
I got my hand-stamped at the door, night-club style, and then tried to find my bed among the 75 scattered all over the listed ramshackle six-storey building. Less than half of the almost forty guests finally decided on staying overnight, so everybody could pretty much have their pick regardless of which category they had booked. If you felt like it, you could sleep on stage or next to the bar.
Artistic director Tina Pfurr welcomed the guests. She introduced the people actually living at Ballhaus Ost: designer and performer Lisa, Brazilian architect turned mixed media artist Fernanda, and octogenarian former circus acrobat Herr Diano, who can no longer afford the rent in Prenzlauer Berg.
The members conducted entertaining tours of the building, full of anecdotes about the theatre company’s ten year history, the history of the building and adjoining enclosed park – a cemetery that is now also used for wedding receptions. Recently, the space has seen conflicts over apparently incompatible uses. For example, when a co-working space was separated from experimental theatre rehearsals by only a plywood panel.
At first, the founders of the theatre company had rented only the theatre hall, but then they made a hole in the wall to take over the empty spaces as offices and living quarters on the sly. Some rooms are filled to the brink with props, trash, or kitschy memorabilia. There are surprises all over the place, like a game room with a miniature bubble bath in the basement.
The diverse art work is even more interesting. Fernanda presented a bedsit installation where every item apart from a suitcase was covered in white paint. She said she wanted to demonstrate what it feels like to keep moving from one furnished flat to the next where nothing really belongs to you and you have no personal connection to the objects you chance upon. She also reflected that she was a victim as well as a perpetrator of gentrification.
In between tours, there were staged live links between Tina and the company’s off ground rehearsal, which quickly descended into chaos.
At midnight, we gathered at a long table where an architect explained how the partially dilapidated building structure could be preserved and generate more income for the company. Ideas included adding a new floor on top of the building, tree house offices and camping in the park, and a regular hotel service. Afterwards there was a vegetarian or vegan pasta dinner (for a small donation) that Lisa and her crew had prepared.
Shortly afterwards, I retired to my bed. Time passed quickly. The atmosphere made it easy to start conversations with other visitors, artists, and performers. The night felt like a weird mix of sleepover, museum tour, school trip, gallery walk, TED talk, late night dinner, and of course unconventional theatre.There was also a complimentary breakfast. The night porter even got up before 5 am to serve it to one guest who needed to leave early. All of that for a very competitive price that probably no nearby hostel can beat.
Travellers tell tales around camp fires, late into the night when nothing else is stirring…
What happens when two people from different spheres in Ireland – a traveller woman and a settled man – transgress the boundaries of their communities? Actress Mary Kelly takes us on a journey into the far-reaching consequences of such an act, inhabiting five characters in a tale that spans several decades in her one-woman play Two For A Girl.
This might sound complicated – one actress playing five characters – but it is not. Kelly is a nuanced actress whose posture, demeanour and energy change as she transitions from one character to the next; sassy teenager, prim housewife, stout farmer…
Each player in this tale is given enough space to breathe – they have their own voice, their own truth to tell. Most interestingly, Kelly puts a marginalised voice – that of traveller woman Josie Connors – at the centre of the narrative. Not only does Josie provide a fascinating insight into a group rarely heard from, and into the complex relationship between Ireland’s settled community and traveller community, but she knows how to spin a tale.
The pared back production matches her style, drawing on the oral tradition of travellers and Ireland. This is storytelling at its purest. At an hour-long, the play will draw you in, twirl you around, delight and touch you before spitting you back out into the sun.
Lippy, a theatre piece based on a true incident that occurred in Leixlip, Ireland, where four women committed suicide by starving themselves to death, starts with a postshow discussion.
LIPPY by Dead Centre, Direction: Ben Kidd/Bush Moukarzel, Photo: Jeremy Abrahams
I was so hungover, I wasn’t sure if this was part of the show (it is) or whether I was late and had somehow missed the play. It was possible: I had already turned up to review it without something to write on, or with.
So while the reviewer next to me furiously scribbled notes in his little book, I decided to rely solely on my wits and the power of my pounding head. The theatre, at least, was nice and dark Besides, how hard could it be? I’ve reviewed loads of plays…
So in the play’s sinister and expressionist imagining of the women’s last days, starving to death in the same house, much emphasis is put on the impossibility of ever achieving clarity. Words overlap, get lost, become distorted. People speak without moving their lips, or move their lips only to have different people speak for them. The play constantly disorientates and disturbs, thwarting any attempt to grasp a coherent meaning. Yet, I continued my attempt to grasp, leaning forward in my seat – like that would help. The whole thing was enough to make my head hurt – more than it already did.
The play ends with a mega Beckettian soliloquy delivered from the lips of the last living woman in the house. It is dark, and impactful – especially after almost an hour of not receiving a clear sentence – leaving the theatre in stunned silence.
An affecting play, not to be watched when hungover.
Although the long table dominating centre stage is a nod to the Biblical Last Supper, the similarities soon end. Sure, the play starts with two men praying, but this is juxtaposed with another character singing Dylan’s Blowin in the Wind in Arabic. This curious mix of Near East meets West continues throughout the play, with characters taking selfies and arguing about Instagram, Emmental, and where the shopping is best: London or America?
The attempt to compare one city with a 52-state nation is of course shallow, illustrating the characters’ ambivalent relationship to the West. They have taken on our materialism, but at the same time, a character simply called ‘The General’ announces: America, and Iran, and Sweden, want to bring this country down, using Facebook.
These perceptions tickled the European audience most, and although they are hilarious, they are also disturbing. As the supper progresses, and animal carcasses are laid out on the table, so does the consumerist talk. Characters discuss servants like they are objects to be traded, the General refers to everyone as vermin, and Hassan, who is meant to be an artist, reveals an alarming capacity for violence, including rape. The atmosphere is decadent, aggressive, nihilistic.
There is something missing here. In fact, there is someone missing. That important twelfth person, who, at this last supper, is Nadia. She keeps being called to the table but never appears. Has she decided to sit this nauseus gathering out? Is she ill? Has she died? No one goes to check. Her absence reminds us of what else is absent at this table: Humanity.
Fear Industry is not really a play. Rather, it is a montage of movement and sound building on one theme; fear.
Photo by Achim Wieland
Performers Marios Ioannou and Elena Kallini skillfully switch between multiple characters in quick succession – a little boy called George, a politician with speeches about security, a mother watching her child play, a game show host – illustrating just how much our lives and society are governed by fear. The fear of wrinkles, the fear of swine-flu, the fear of flying.
The characters dance around a tightrope in the middle of the stage, accompanied by mezzo-soprano Marianna Pieretti. These people are constantly pulled, tied down by threads of anxiety. As one character says, “Birds and butterflies were meant to fly, but humans have to stay grounded.” By holding up a mirror to the ways in which our society is built on fear – from the focus on wealth to the decision to go to war – the performance encourages us to reconnect with child we once were. The child who, fearless, stuck their fingers into the lion’s cage.
However, the composition itself never manages to completely take off, hovering as it does, somewhere between drama and performance. I would have preferred it to commit more strongly to one or the other. As it is, the characters lack real depth or development, which fails to make it a satisfying drama, while the performance element is not pushed as far as it can go. Chekov famously said, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” The same rule could apply to a tightrope; if it is on stage, someone should walk it.
An interesting concept that could have been braver.
Friedrichstadt-Palast – the glitzy show palace in Mitte – recently hosted an illuminating discussion about German and British theatre.
Photo: Sascha Radke, Eventpress, courtesy of Friedrichstadt-Palast
The talk focused on the differences between British and German theatre. Alistair Spalding, Artistic Director of Sadler’s Wells in London, observed that the British prefer to be entertained, while the Germans think theatre has to be difficult and painful. Also, British theatre is commercial, whereas German theatres are mostly subsidised.
This inevitably led to a discussion about the difference between art and entertainment. Does art have to be political? Dr Berndt Schmidt, General Director of Friedrichstadt-Palast, joked that although many people do not count what the Palast does as art, it must be – because they get funding for it.
He also stated that although the shows at Friedrichstadt-Palast were not political, the theatre’s attitude was open and tolerant. This is a fallacy: Everything is political. Even the choice not to engage in politics and just entertain people is political. It is a choice that says, the status quo is fine and we do not feel a responsibility or need to question it. That entertainment is more important than politics. It is conservatism of the highest degree.
The Palast’s current home on Friedrichstrasse was the last historic landmark building constructed in German Democratic Republic, in 1984. Under communist rule, the Palast’s shows were also used to entertain and placate. In Setting the Scene: Perspectives on Twentieth-Century Theatre Architecture, historian Florian Urban writes that the Palast hosted a selection of the regime’s most popular television variety shows, including Ein Kessel Buntes (A Cauldron of Potpurri); “the Saturday-night entertainment show with which East German rulers had, since 1972, attempted to win the acceptance of their subjects.”
The Palast’s shows supported the ruling order then, just as it supported the ruling order during the Nazi era, and it is – by choosing not to question contemporary society and politics – doing the same today. Luckily, we live in an open, democratic society, which is, apparently, the ‘general attitude’ of the Palast.
But how does the Palast’s ‘open and tolerant’ attitude manifest itself? When the director of Berlin’s largest theatre was asked whether he actively sought to bring diverse voices from the city into his production-process, Berndt replied that he was not thinking about how many women or coloured faces there were in his theatre; he was just hiring people he thought were cool.
If you are not consciously thinking about tolerance, openness, and diversity, you cannot have an open, tolerant and diverse attitude. People naturally choose to work and socialise with people who are similar to them (see Scientific American’s article on how people socialise, or Business Insider’s article on the fact that managers hire people who remind them of themselves). Berndt is a white, middle-class man. If he is just picking people he thinks are cool, he is most certainly picking people who share his background or attitudes, which is not promoting diversity or tolerance but perpetuating a system of privilege and bias.
It is the reason the director of Ireland’s National Theatre came under fire at the end of last year when he announced a line up of 18 men and just two women writers and directors. In response to the criticism, he tweeted: “I don’t and haven’t programmed plays on a gender basis. I took decisions based on who I admired and wanted to work with.”
To deny gender-bias with such a line-up is ludicrous. The people he admired and wanted to work with were people like him – men. The work he connected to was the work that related to his experience – as a white, privileged male. It was only when he was made to think about it – by a counter movement supported by Meryl Streep and Wim Wenders – that he recanted his words. But his comment is one the Director of Friedrichstadt-Palast echoed: I’m just choosing people I think are cool. As a woman in the toilets said afterwards; “Well whoopee for him.”
Lukas is a musical with a difference; modern, minimalist, set in Berlin.
The story centers around one decision; should Lukas leave his Berlin home and follow his girlfriend Olivia to Australia? Writers Nicole Ratjen, Ben Southam and Tom Hanley wanted to “explore the many facets of making a decision, simple and complex, familiar and distant,” and in this, they succeed.
They give every character in the story a voice – a song – and as these voices build to a crescendo, you realise just how complex making this decision is. The songs themselves are funny and touching, with tangible references such as playing Fifa on playstation.
Sarah Milligan (as Olivia) hit every note with a voice as powerful as any you would find on Broadway, Ben Southam (Lukas) gave a nuanced performance, and Blake Worrell convincingly played Lukas’s depressive father.
The music, provided by Laura Peterson (keyboard), Kenny Stanger (guitar), Stuart Nelson (alto saxophone) and Jano González (bass), adds a layer of mood and feeling to each character, making the show an emotional experience.
But although the play manages to be emotionally complex, it falls down dramaturgically, managing to reach crisis, but never climax and resolution. Overall, however, it is a short, sweet experience, set in the intimate performance space of Berlin’s Factory, Germany’s largest start-up campus.
A hundred years ago, on 25th November 1915, Einstein proved his general theory of relativity, transforming our understanding of physical reality. Apt timing then, for Robert Marc Friedman’s Transcendence, a play about Einstein, at the English Theatre Berlin.
Photo by Gerald Wesolowski, courtesy of the English Theatre Berlin
The play transcends the barriers of space and time – running from 1911 to the second world war, spanning from Berlin, Prague, Zurich and Sweden to the USA – as it spins together three story strands.
One strand is the relationship between Albert Einstein and his fellow physicist Max Planck. Einstein and Planck came from vastly different backgrounds, with little in common but physics and music. Although their friendship builds despite their differences, it ultimately – in the face of a volatile political landscape (including the first and second world wars) – fails.
Another focus is the relationship between Einstein and Kafka, who almost certainly met, although no record exists of their encounters. This narrative highlights the similarities between science and art – both men use creativity and imagination in their work to search for underlying realities. Is there, they ponder, a moral equivalent to general relativity?
And finally, there are the maneuverings in Sweden concerning the Nobel Prize in Physics, influenced by politics and people who were reluctant to acknowledge Einstein and his theory (they eventually awarded him the prize for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, not for relativity = fail).
The actors (Ben Maddox, Logan Verdoorn and Max Wilkinson) approach these iconic characters in a realistic way, even lending them a comic aspect. Despite this, the play gets bogged down by its weighty subject matter. It presents too much information over too broad a scope; although each story-line is fascinating, each could have been a full-length play in itself.
Overall, it manages to string together an illuminating picture of how some of Europe’s most fascinating figures struggled to transcend harsh realities during the most volatile period of the continent’s history.
Mars One – Venus Zero is the funny, provocative one-and-a-half-man show currently on at the English Theatre Berlin.
The ‘half-man’ refers to a woman, Gem Andrews, and if you’re offended by the suggestion that a woman is worth half a man, prepare to be further shocked, because this play is all about Mike (played by Richard Gibb), an anti-feminist – or as he refers to himself, a meninist.
In fact, Mike thinks planet Earth is becoming so overrun by feminists that he’s preparing his audition video for the “MARS ONE” space program. Under the red glare of the recording light, we get an insight into his views and anger. This might sound intense, and at times it is – but mostly, it’s funny. The comedy arises darkly from Richard Gibb’s sincere portrayal of a man lacking potency, insight and intelligence.
Between recording sessions, Gem Andrews provides the emotional score to Mike’s story with haunting, soothing songs. These contrast with Mike’s on-screen persona – not just the video he’s recording – but his tweets and browsing activities which are projected on stage, provoking gasps and mutterings from the audience. It’s one thing to have such content out there in the mush of the Internet, quite another to bring it into the space of the theatre.
As the layers of this complex production click together, so does Mike’s story and we begin to see that he is not just an angry red alien – but deeply, touchingly human.
Last night, NippleJesus, a one-man play based on a short story by Nick Hornby, premiered at the English Theatre Berlin.
The setting was intimate, with chairs arranged in a horseshoe shape around the space where Dave (Jesse Inman) talks about his job as a bouncer, or, as his wife calls him, a security consultant.
Photo: Casey-Tower, courtesy of the English Theatre Berlin
Dave is a family man. Working class, cockney, no pretensions. Until recently, he worked at a club called Casablanca but after someone jabbed a rusty weapon at him, he quit. His job was just to allow “people to have a good time without fear of arseholes” – nothing worth getting stabbed over.
His new gig is at an art gallery. Dave isn’t sure if he’s ever been inside an art gallery before, and he isn’t sure why they would need a bulky guy like him in one. All becomes clear when he sees the painting he’s supposed to be guarding. It’s a picture of Jesus – beautiful, suffering, realistic – which, upon closer inspection, is revealed to be entirely made of pornographic images of nipples. This is NippleJesus. Dave is shocked, then outraged.
But after studying the picture some more, standing in the same room as it, meeting the artist, and defending it against religious nut jobs, Dave’s interaction with the painting evolves. As his perspective switches, so does our perspective of the art world. How does art affect people? How manipulative is the contemporary art world? What is modern art? Moreover, as Dave’s interaction with the painting deepens, so too does our insight into his character.
Jesse Inman, with his shaved head and stocky build has the right physicality for Dave, and like Hornby’ text, he has the ability to play with the clichés of the character yet hint at something more. He relies on subtle gestures, like the fidgeting of his forefinger and thumb while his hands are clasped behind his back as he talks. Like a bouncer, he only uses his physicality when he needs to.
At times. it was apparent that the piece was adapted from a short story rather than written for the stage, as it lacked a sense of build and dramatic explosion. As always with Hornby, there are laughs to be had – perhaps the biggest is the pay-off for the only two stage props – a tent and an onion – at the end.
Ratibor Theater ended their season of monthly English improv last Thursday with an amusing show featuring Joe Bill and Lee White, with accompanying music by Harry Hawaii.
Photo by Sappho Wohlgemuth, courtesy of Ratibor Theater
Special guests Joe Bill (USA) and Lee White (Canada) have been touring Europe with their improv show Paradigm, which varies each time they perform it. The novelty is guaranteed by the audience, who provide prompts. The Berlin audience input included short skirts, a potter, Jurassic Park and mettbrötchen (raw minced pork, seasoned with salt, pepper and chopped onion, on bread)…
Interesting set-ups emerged – an artist with a starving family, a dinosaur in need of a therapist, a love story involving the daughter of a mafioso – although the sketches sometimes felt a bit tired, with the actors repeating lines. Perhaps this was an effect of having just two people, who were familiar with each other, carrying the show. Harry Hawaii’s musical accompaniment helped to provide accents and pace.
In the second half, however, the actors picked up the original sketches and ran with them. The humor escalated – a Scottish dinosaur-hunter picked up a boomerang to kill the depressed dinosaur, the mafioso murdered everyone in a Finnish McDonald’s because of their so-called ‘New York’ burger, and the starving artist used his skillful hands to make mettbrötchen. Bill and White had found their flow, and the audience were in stitches.
Even the actors’ familiarity with each other paid off. They got personal, and goaded one another (at one point White challenged Bill to bring in each member of a big mafia family to see their dying father, and Bill, feeling the strain after the sixth one, revealed that the rest of the family had been murdered).
As a writer, it was an interesting process to see; ideas start slowly, then characters and stories take on a life of their own. On the other hand, it might just have been the consumption of beer and wine that made things looser.
Apart from a few slip ups (the Scotsman spoke with an Irish accent), the actors demonstrated a good level of craft and creativity and, as always with improv, provided refreshing moments of surprise. Moreover, there was real pleasure in seeing characters recur, stories develop and a pattern – or paradigm – emerge from randomness.
Thomas Ostermeier’s revival of American playwright Lillian Hellman’sThe Little Foxes at the Schaubühne begins with a dinner party: A German family, united and happy, entertain an American businessman who promises to make them all very rich. There’s only one problem…
Photo: Arno Declair
Brothers Ben and Oscar, who inherited their father’s business, need one more investor for their transatlantic venture. To keep control of the company within the family, they want their sister Regina to convince her sickly husband Horace to be the third investor.
The three siblings are equally ambitious. Ben (played by Moritz Gottwald) is smart, pragmatic and hides his greed with fine talk. Oscar (David Ruland) is not as subtle and, the weakest of the three, has an inferiority complex that manifests itself in his tyrannical abuse of his wife Birdie and son Leo. But Regina (Nina Hoss), whose desire to escape her miserable marriage and the provincial life that her father’s decision not to give her an inheritance has condemned her to, is the most driven of all.
Regina manipulates the people and situations around her with skill, switching from charm to blackmail. Hoss portrays her with ice-queen composure, negotiating percentages and luring her husband home from hospital, but when it becomes clear that Horace has no intention investing, fissures appear. Regina’s brothers hatch a murky plot to get the additional funds, and we realise that once more, Regina is being disempowered by the men around her.
Photo: Arno Declair
Indeed, this is a play about women, and the tragic consequences that follow when they are denied self-determination, like Oscar’s aristocratic wife Birdie (Ursina Lardi).
Lardi steals the show with her portrayal of a musically talented woman who has turned to drink, going from breathless enthusiasm to writhing about on a floor – someone whose wings have been clipped by marriage.
But Ostermeier’s decision to move the play from its original 1900 Alabama setting to modern Germany is jarring. It provokes questions such as why do these two women – Regina and Birdie – stay in their marriages? Why does Regina, so intelligent and calculating, not figure out other ways to do what she wants? Why did her father leave her out of her will? While it is believable that maybe one of these things could have happened in a modern German family, as the questions pile up, they interfere with one’s suspension of belief. After all, there is a big difference between the American South over 100 years ago and Germany now.
The skill of the actors distract from these questions of logic and that final moment when Regina stands alone on stage, having gotten what she wants at the cost of her familial relationships, is still potent.
Impro Embassy is a fresh and funny English-language show at Ratibor Theatre that takes place the first Thursday of every month.
I went to last Thursday’s performance entitled City Beats. The show featured professional improv actors from different countries – Helena Lindegen (Improvisationsteater, Stockholm), Luisa Schnittert (Die Gorillas, Berlin), David Arcuri (Teatribu, Milan), along with music by Rudy Redl (Die Gorillas, Berlin) and Mike Russell (Black Heritage, Washington D.C) – working together in a unique constellation.
Each player took turns in providing a prompt, either from the audience, a video, song, or a personal tidbit inspired by their city to get the action going. What resulted was a series of entertaining, sometimes surreal, always surprising sketches that took us on a whirlwind journey from a rap performance on the streets of Washington D.C. to breakfast with a suicidal Swedish family.
Mother: I’ll wake the boys. Larsen! Andersen! Nielsen!
Daughter: Why did you name us all with surnames? It’s so difficult…
Other sketches included a noirish love story featuring a cat called Snowball, a woman addicted to dressing up as a lizard and scaring Berlin clubbers on their way home in the early hours, and a contemporary movement performance illustrating the life and death of a snowman.
Detective: I’m looking for this cat.
Woman: Yes, he is here.
Detective: That was easier than I thought. This is the first place I have visited.
Woman: Well, this is the only cat hotel in Poland…It was a good idea.
The actors worked hard to find a tone and sense of narrative in each sketch, aided by the musicians who intuitively provided a score. The creative process was fascinating to watch – affirming the importance of play and rolling with an idea until it turns into a gem – and the evening sparkled.
The most telling piece was one in which each actor spoke only in their native language (Swedish, German and Italian). Through the confusion, they eventually managed to connect with each other and create an engaging, comprehensive story. For me, this is typical Berlin; that on a rainy night in Kreuzberg, people from different places can come together and collaborate despite their differences, to create a special, one-off experience.
Photo by Magnus Hengge | studio adhoc, courtesy of the English Theatre Berlin
Friday night saw the European premier of Isaac’s Eye – a snappy play tackling the history of science – at the English Theatre Berlin.
Young Isaac Newton desperately wants to become a member of the Royal Society; his older partner Catherine wants to get married and start a family, and the renowned scientist and member of the Royal Society Robert Hooke wants Newton to stop pursuing his work on light.
In Lucas Hnath’s imagining, these three maneuver around each other in an engaging plot involving a sex diary, a man dying of the plague, and an experiment involving the insertion of a needle into the eye…
The play is self-aware, letting the audience know which of its parts are fact and which are fiction via a delightful device in which things that are based on fact are written on one of the multiple blackboards that make up the set. This self-awareness is also manifested in the playful light and sound design.
While the play’s self-reflectiveness takes away any need to simulate a 17th century setting, and results in a fresh, direct approach, it can be clunky at times (I could have done without the act /scene announcements and a few of the “he saids / she saids”).
The actors, however, execute the piece with a strong sense of rhythm and flow; Oskar Brown is straight-backed and serious as the slightly-awkward young Newton, Ben Maddox is energetic as the drug-addled rock star of science Robert Hooke, and Mary Kelly is empathetic as the warm yet weary Catherine.
It’s only after the curtain has gone down and you’ve stopped smiling that you realise how serious the play is, dealing with great minds, personal sacrifice and questions of what’s important in life.
Isaac’s Eye is is on at the English Theatre Berlin (Fidicinstrasse 40, 10965 Berlin; 030 691 1211; U6: Platz der Luftbrücke) until 10th May 2014.
Photo by Dragan Simicevic, courtesy of the English Theatre Berlin
Last night was the premier of Schwarz Gemacht, the first play to be developed and produced by the English Theatre Berlin. It’s an exciting choice; a play about identity set in Berlin during the Nazi era.
The story centres around Claus, a black actor who was born in Germany thinks of himself as German. This idea has been explored many times with patriotic German Jewish characters, but I’ve never seen the topic of Afrodeutschers (Afro-Germans) dealt with.
David L. Arsenault’s stark set design, consisting of a mesh of blank pages, signifies as much – these are untold stories. (Helpfully, there is a wonderful exhibition in the theatre lobby about the history of black people in Germany.)
Claus’s idea of his own identity is challenged by his night-time encounters with a jazz musician from the U.S (coolly played by Sadiq Bey) and reflected in the endeavours of a naive American girl to connect with her German roots – prompting a comparison of the treatment of black people in the U.S. and Germany.
However, the play falls short. This was mostly down to the writing. There was too much exposition – clumsily and undramatically done – and after one hour, the drama had barely escalated. Frankly, I was bored after the first half, so I left.
There was a time when I’d see anything through – bad films, books, relationships – just to examine where they were going and how they failed, but I can’t be bothered anymore. If I’ve given you an hour of my time, I’ve given you a fair chance to impress me and hold my attention.
Which brings me to the question; what is happening to theatre? Everything I have seen recently – in London and Berlin – has been mediocre. Either it’s conventional and Hollywood-ised – as the popular plays that travel tend to be – or it’s trying to do something different but ignores basic storytelling principles. It’s as if the only nuanced, interesting drama can be seen on TV nowadays.
Anyway, end of rant, off to re-watch Mad Men…
Schwarz Gemacht is on at the English Theatre Berlin (Fidicinstrasse 40, 10965 Berlin; 030 691 1211; U6: Platz der Luftbrücke) until 15th March 2014.
Living Room Productions is currently staging two plays by New York playwrights Daniel Sauermilch and Barbara Hammond at the TheaterForum Kreuzberg. Each play runs for 45 minutes, with a 15 minute break in between.
Barbara Hammond’s play June Weddings is about two solitary people who meet in a bar in Washington Heights. I got lost on the way to the theatre – as always happens to me in the area around Schlesisches Tor for some reason – so I missed it.
Nonetheless, here are my impressions from the foyer; a male actor’s voice projected very well; in the beginning, were noises that sounded like doors slamming; later on, a telephone rings; towards the end everything became very quiet. Then there was a big applause. I’ve seem Hammond’s work in Berlin before; she’s a talented writer, so I’m sure the play was grand.
Daniel Sauermilch’s The Rwandans’ Visit is described as Albee meets Polanski, or ”Who is afraid of Carnage?”
Two couples meet for a drink in an apartment in Prospect Park. One pair has just returned from a ‘life-changing’ trip to Vietnam and the other has been looking after two Rwandan exchange students who have just gone missing.
The characters are pretentious, racist and self-involved, despite thinking themselves liberal, politically correct and philanthropic. The dialogue is witty and it’s good fun watching their evening descend into farce. Yet the play lacks the tension of Albee and Polanski. Probably because the players always feel like characters born of other characters. This may have been the point, but it still left me wanting more. What is the history between these people, and what, apart from the playwright, is keeping them in the same room together?
Having recently seen Public Enemy at the Young Vic in London, I was keen to see what Berlin’s famous Schaubühne would make of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play.
Ibsen’s play is about a spa town’s chief medical examiner, Dr Thomas Stockmann, who discovers that the town’s baths are toxic. He attempts to publicise his findings, expecting praise, but ends up being labelled an enemy of the people by his mayoral brother, the town’s businessmen, and ultimately the town’s people, who all profit from the baths, leading Stockmann to declare that the majority is wrong, and the public itself is the enemy.
Thomas Ostermeier’s production brings the play to a modern setting.
Indeed, Ibsen’s play could be a mirror for our times of economic crises and environmental issues such as fracking.
However, giving the play a contemporary setting is problematic; with social media and the Internet, it is hard to see why Stockmann is battling to get his findings published in the town’s small paper and calling town meetings when he could achieve his goal with the click of a button.
While, on the one hand, the play does not address its modernity enough, it goes too far in its re-writing of Stockmann’s climactic speech at the town meeting, littering it with contemporary references from Ritalin to the economic crisis to sports shoe slogans. It’s too much, causing the scene to lose its power and the play to lose its original unity.
Furthermore, in the town meeting scene, the lights in the auditorium are turned on and the audience are encouraged to interact in the debate, resulting in a loss of tension and momentum when it should be at its highest. I can appreciate the idea, but inevitably, the people who voice their opinions at these things are either schoolkids or opinionated idiots and their words becoming part of the text causes further fragmentation.
Stefan Stern, who plays Stockmann, seems to completely step out of character during this entire session, before taking up his impassioned speech once again, thereby dissipating the play’s energy and obliterating our suspension of disbelief.
The decision to portray Stockmann as a young man in this production is interesting. He only has a baby (which we see at the beginning of the play, and then mysteriously disappears, never to be seen or mentioned again), not a grown daughter and two sons as in the original. This makes his naivety understandable, but Stern lacks the youthful zeal one would expect. Nick Fletcher, who played Stockmann in The Young VIc’s production, had more energy, and that production rose to a frenzy, whereas this play started well and petered out towards the end.
Have you been seeing posters like this all over Berlin? Wondering what it’s all about? Guest-blogger Pat O´Day investigated…
The New York-based experimental theatre company Nature Theater of Oklahoma is in Berlin for the Foreign Affairs Festival. The critics love them. I remember having seen one of their shows at a different festival some five years ago. It was the remake of a Rambo movie shot in the apartment of the sole actor, who played along on stage.
The origin of the company’s name comes from Kafka´s incomplete first novel Amerika, in which a company of the same name promises employment for everybody. Repeating this promise to the citizens of Berlin, anyone interested could come along for an interview at a set date. More than 120 people turned up.
While people waited to be interviewed, cameras swarmed around them and a cast member drew their portraits. She did not look at the drawings at any point during the process. Therefore, it was not surprising that some bore only a slight resemblance to their subjects, but rather turned out skewed and cross-eyed as if they had been inspired by Picasso´s Weeping Woman series.
Then we had some one-on-one time with a video camera. It was not quite Andy Warhol´s fifteen minutes of fame. We had four minutes and twelve seconds to spontaneously answer questions about ourselves and what we thought the company could do for Berlin. It almost felt like a regular job interview.
I received an email the next day, inviting me to return to the venue an hour later. The organisers must have just told everybody who went through the process to come back. They could not possibly have found the time to watch all those casting videos, which will also provide footage for upcoming art projects.
During their time in Berlin, the company are staging shows almost every night, most of which are based on almost 16 hours of a cast member’s phone conversation recordings. As well as this, they are putting on two marathon events of up to fifteen hours, during which food prepared by the crew will be served, creating a completely new stage production, and making a feature-length film from scratch in a matter of weeks. Tickets have already been sold for both events. Other projects comprise a remake of Warhol´s unwatchable eight-hour slow motion documentary Empire as an animation film, and a collective diary on the whole creative process of the Berlin stint.
The organisers, dependent on the support of volunteers who can commit to several hours each day, admitted being scared of not achieving everything in time. It’s not just skills-based tasks on offer, like video-editing, providing backing vocals and setting up podcasts in the theatre foyer. According to the company, seemingly mundane tasks such as food-shopping, greeting people and ushering could be turned into art just by having somebody record these activities.
For the first day of serious work, we set out to make a music video clip featuring all volunteers, which was to be an integral part of the film. There were about forty to fifty of us. Most volunteers were in their 20s and 30s, with a fair share of internationals and people with backgrounds in the performing arts – and a female preponderance. Some volunteers looked as if they had just fallen out of their beds. The female director probably did not want to create this impression by keeping her curlers in till midday in order to maintain her somewhat weird hairstyle.
Warm up exercises began in the courtyard of the theatre. It was still a bit chilly, but when people started doing jumping jacks, they took off extra layers of clothing. The warm up culminated in dancing along to a piece of choreography intended for the video clip. It had everybody moving in sync like gingerbread men, wiggling bottoms while getting down and up again, pumping the air, hopping while turning, and pretending to be cheeky chickens stepping out of water. People took it seriously though, and tried to follow the lead as best as possible while leaving enough space for the cameras.
Next, the director tried to figure out how to shoot the whole seven minute clip without any cuts. He experimented with ways of getting people to move behind his (this time imaginary) camera as soon as they had passed so that he could find and record them in different places again. It was more about moving the crowd and dividing flows of people than guiding people individually. Personally, I found it rather tedious to pace up and down the courtyard dozens of times. Some people developed individual mannerisms and personal routines, which the director neither encouraged nor sanctioned. Perhaps it was still too early for him to be concerned about these minor aspects.
After a short break we practiced the dance we had tried during the warm up. This time it was more serious. In harmony with company policy, a different person, who normally acts as production manager, took the lead. He was not yet familiar with the moves though. So he taught and learned the choreography at the same time. Some exceptional female volunteers, who had managed to remember the routine from the warm up, were able to correct him. These ladies were also eager to discuss specific details and suggest changes. Unused to this kind of activity, I was happy to just follow along. New difficulties surfaced when the choreography, which for whatever reason we had first practiced to a waltz, was carried out to the original quadruple time song. Again, the ladies mentioned above knew how to adjust. For my own part, I was not too disappointed when this activity finally stopped.
During the break, some people were picked to help set up a vegetarian buffet for everybody. While waiting, we all received free T-shirts with the company logo. Individuals with specific skills, like video editing, were singled out to have their tasks set out. Others used the break to practice the group choreography and take notes. I left.
So what remained at the end of the day? Or rather, who would have profited and who would have loathed it? The experience certainly would have been a nightmare for anybody suffering from camera shyness. Conversely, it would have been perfect for somebody in need of a watertight alibi with cameras constantly pointed at them.
But what did it mean? On the surface it was an unusual day in the sun. We could do callisthenic exercises and recharge our batteries with free healthy food in friendly company. Although the organizers applied a non-authoritarian leadership style, they did not provide space for differing views. It was not about the volunteers rising to stardom or expressing individual creativity in the artistic process. Nor was there too much of an intellectual challenge, unless you find it in sorting out your dancing steps.
And then I have also been taught that there is no such thing as a free lunch, which may also be true for free T-shirts. I wonder how and where the recorded material will turn up. Most of all, I wonder how this atmosphere of creative chaos can give rise to anything worth watching in such a comparatively short period of time, that both critics and audiences might appreciate. Maybe this is reason enough to monitor the projects’ progress and see where everybody’s enthusiasm originates from and whether it is justified.
You would think that a play based on what Primo Levi called “the greatest book about German resistance to the Nazis” (Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone, or Jederstirbt für sich allein) staged at a reputable theatre (Maxim Gorki in Berlin Mitte) would be watchable, if not enjoyable. Not so.
Director Jorinde Dröse has managed to turn an evocative, insightful work into a meaningless farce. The only emotion the play managed to stir was cringe-making dread, akin to something you’d expect to feel whilst watching a particularly bad village panto. This was not the fault of the actors, who, bless them, were trying hard, but the production.
The play lacked focus, attempting to recite the novel’s various story-threads and introducing new characters right up until the end whilst refusing to commit to what should have been the central story – that of the distribution of cards denouncing Hitler by Otto and Anna Quangel. In a recent interview with ExBerliner Magazine, the director said, “I thought the final part of the book, the part where the Quangels are waiting for their inevitable execution in prison, is very long and depressing, so we decided to leave this final part out.” Herein lies the problem – apart reflecting her general idiocy (a play about fascism should not be depressing?) – the comment demonstrates the director’s fear that audience, akin to a kindergarten class, would get bored at the least hint of serious focus. The result is a continuous assault of noise and activity, meaning nothing.
Problems of unity and consistency stretched to tone (the play did not know whether it was a farce or a tragedy), to the question of whether this was a dramatisation or re-enactment of a novel (characters mostly acted out scenes, but whenever the novel seemed too hard to dramatise, they simply read passages out, referring to themselves or other characters in the third person, the curious result of which reminded me of an unartful version of The Guardian’s Digested Read), and style (Frau Rosenthal throws herself out of the window in some weird-dancey sequence, and – I kid you not – characters express their love for each other by singing renditions Damien Rice’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.)
Even the subtitles in English were bad – they were by no means complete and either ran ahead or lagged behind the lines being said on stage – how hard is it to organise accurate subtitles?! The stage design, consisting of a sloping floor which characters were perpetually sliding down, could have been interesting, but since everything else was so dire I found it hard to give a shit.
Which brings me to the question – why is theatre in Berlin so bad? I’ve been here for well over two years now, and every single play I‘ve seen (with perhaps the exception of Hamlet at the Schaubühne) has been terrible. Indeed, I witnessed the worst play of my life in this city – Frank Castorf’s Nach Moskau! Nach Moskau! (again, based on the works of Chekhov no less, at Berlin’s famous Volksbühne). That play was so bad that after over two excruciating hours, with no clue as to whether the pretentious shit of a director would honour his audience with a break, I had to walk out mid-act – the only time I have ever done this. Sitting in the bar opposite trying to recover my senses, I saw that there was indeed an intermission about half an hour later; hoards of people dashed to the nearest U-Bahn station…the theatre must have been half empty for the second half. Seriously, they could use that play as a modern torture technique…
I love German books, films and music, but theatre is one of two things that the British do better than the Germans (the other is television – and I would go so far to say that British theatre is the best in the world.) I’ve heard that a fundamental difference between the two countries is that the director carries more weight than the writer in Germany, but surely this cannot account for the creation of such trash.
Maybe the clue to the answer lies in Dröse’s interview, in which she says that to direct in Berlin “you have to be more radical in your work.” This seems to be the problem; a director’s main concern should be the story. He or she should be concerned with a work’s themes, its characters and their journeys, but in attempting to be radical, Berlin directors are only succeeding in producing radically bad plays.
Jeder stirbt für sich allein is on at the Maxim Gorki Theater, Am Festungsgraben 2, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Friedrichstr.
With its production, 
Pale, thin-faced Bruce Woolley makes a wonderful Scrooge, who is at first mean-spirited, then moved by pity, shame, and finally fear, to change his ways. He renders each emotion beautifully as he is guided along on his journey by the ghosts of Christmas, keeping the audience connected to the true heart of the story. We can see in him the lost, little boy he once was as he is forced to watch a party where the guests make jokes at his expense.
