NO LIMITS International Theatre Festival

Living means taking a certain amount of risk. Risk allows for chance, gambling and decision make us relate to time, changing our relationship to the future and the past. In No Gambling, objects from gambling culture such as dice, playing cards and billiard balls serve as all-connecting objects. On stage, Julia appears as a hybrid being, Nele as a human-sized dice and Simone as a joker – each disappearing and reappearing again, gathering things within reach, in search of the magical in the everyday, and of the risk in the game.

A mobile structure hangs in the space like a strange constellation of cosmic junk. The work on the mobile becomes creative destruction, the connected objects come out of balance, and everything threatens to collapse. The figures react to the eternal beat that puts them into a trance-like dance, making everything spin like a roulette table or even the planets. The question remains: What is at stake? When the ice melts, when the sand is redistributed, when the whole melon is eaten, what are we still playing with?

In the Middle Ages, people with disabilities were taken out of the city onto so-called ships of fools and left to die on the open sea. Some 600 years later, the fools take to the stage and refuse to continue playing the roles assigned to them by society. In this play, people with disabilities tell a contradictory story of self-empowerment and liberation. The production questions conventional notions of physicality and intimacy while playing with the insecurity that this creates. Reduced to a bizarre feast, the performance group Monster Truck, in collaboration with Platform-K, generates an confounding new interpretation full of drastic ambivalence, black humour and style-conscious cross-references to the Love Parade.

One thing becomes clear: ships of fools, on which social participation is offered as an exclusive journey and people with disabilities continue to be treated as third-class passengers, can only sink in perspective.

For a long time now, the Hora Theatre has been representing a different view of the world as well as a special experience of time and working time. But what happens when the Horas and their new management take a trip into the future? Off into the universe, to distant galaxies, starry vortices and unknown planets? Planets inhabited by alien life forms, bureaucrats, philosophers, workers and creatures who have better things to do than “hold a steady job”? Science fiction squared, the potentiated truth of the power of invention? We promise new findings on work and leisure, but above all, real insights into life on distant planets with aliens, music, dance, bands, robots and many unknowns. First conceived as a play, now realised as a brilliant science-fiction film.

We're going to die! Now it's out. Even though we are usually quite good at repressing our mortality, Argan, the imaginary invalid, is a case who cannot accept the finite nature of his existence. He feels abandoned in his fear of death and places all his hope in the supposedly positive effect of enemas and bloodletting. However, there is a positive note to this: As long as we are afraid of death, we are still alive. Theater RambaZamba's musical version of Molière's famous comedy The Imaginary Invalid is a brilliant and grotesque pop opera about sparkling love and a smiling death.

"Together we create / our own / and self-determined world". The legend of the golem has inspired many artists to this day: It is a human-like creature made of clay that often is of enormous size and strength and can follow orders. A golem is not finished – it does not yet possess a soul. This is a condition that creates space and freedom. The golem, the fantastic mass, presents itself in our case through the interplay of different artistic genres. Author Bernd Freytag, director Jacob Höhne, the ensemble of RambaZamba Theater together with many guests develop a play that tells the tale of the human dream of becoming a creator. (Please note that Golem - A wie Anfang is Part A, it is the spoken theatre part of the production Golem and it will take place on the rehearsal stage.)

DIS_move is an online dance work by artists with and without learning disabilities from Berlin, Novi Sad and Lyon, created during the series of lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic. It consists of solo dance videos and music videos that viewers can select and play simultaneously in different combinations, turning the videos into the art of on-screen choreography. DIS_move also offers audio descriptions in German for certain combinations that have been chosen by the participating artists. DIS_move was created as part of the project “DIS- is not included”. “DIS- is not included” is a programme for people with and without learning disabilities in Berlin to explore dance, movement and performance. The project tries to create opportunities for local and international artists with and without learning difficulties, to promote their collaboration and to present their work to the public. A new performing arts group was born out of this initiative: The “Tanzerei”.

Is a plate really just a plate? A dinner party dreams of the leap that makes the impossible possible. The dinner runs into difficulties, the plates really aren’t just plates, but instead a landscape of objects that constantly change and must always be reinterpreted. In their movement, the objects and performers come together to create fantastic images. Let´s jump! Like in a completely new type of circus. But be careful – the objects are fragile and dangerous! Without paying careful attention, everything can end up broken. There is a lot at stake: the shared dream of flying, the dream of daring a new world together – it’s nothing less than that. LEAP … into the Unknown is just that, the leap into the unknown that is necessary for daring something new.  
 

HandStimmeHerz is this year’s project by Shut Up and Sign*Speak. For this, the group brought BIPOC, deaf*, FLINTA, and queer artists together to develop primarily autobiographical performances over the course of multiple workshops. The programme that has been created from this is a mixture of sign language performance, storytelling, visual vernacular*, spoken word and new, creative flirts between sign language and spoken language. The performance deal with the living realities of deaf people, experiences of racism, toxic masculinity, parenthood and much more – a mixture of the touching, the serious, and the funny. The works were presented on 17 and 18 June 2022 at Festsaal Kreuzberg. 

The film profile now being presented as part of NO LIMITS shows excerpts of these very successful evenings and provides insight into the political and artistic work of the group Shut Up and Sign*Speak and also uses additional materials. Afterward, an artist talk with the protagonists will be held where the audience can also take part.

Arnasa is translated from Basque and means “to breathe”. Breathing should be as simple as looking, listening, sitting or speaking. But it is rarely that simple. What happens to the breath when a situation upsets us? What happens when breathing stops? When air comes in but doesn't come out, when everything stands still for a few seconds? We cannot stop breathing even if we want to.... Arnasa travels through all the different sensations that breathing triggers in us: from the moments of total fulfilment when we feel intimately connected, to the dark, irreversible moments when the lack or excess of air dominates us, our consciousness and our will. Arnasa is the first multidisciplinary and inclusive piece with live music by Companie Organik – founded in 2002 by Natalia Monge. In a gentle and playful way, the ensemble explores different perceptions and sensations of breathing through movement and dance.

Natalija Vladisavljević is a choreographer, author and dancer. She has worked in the theatre and dance collective Per.Art in Novi Sad, Serbia, for almost 20 years. About Dance in the 21th Century, she writes: “When Saša Asentic asked me what I would call my new performance, I said: ‘Dance in the 21st Century’. To cut a long story short: We live in the 21st century, and that is exactly when we will have our performance. A century is one hundred years old. I have written many scores. We will gradually work out one score after another. But everyone can be independent, meaning, they can work without me. And sometimes I will also give dance instructions. There is dance improvisation and music improvisation. Improvisation is also about us, about our attitude towards the dancers. What we do for improvisation is body language with increased teamwork. I am interested in everything that has to do with dance, both classical and contemporary dance. There is contemporary dance without music, and there is contemporary dance without dance. We will put it all together as directors.”

With Het Kraakpand - the squat - Theater Stap sends a clear, albeit pleasurable, signal against our society's obsession with perfection. To this end the Belgian ensemble has brought along on their guest performance tour to NO LIMITS artworks from theatre, dance, film and visual arts - featuring first and last performances. The preview of Sea of Love after H.C. Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid impressively shows that not only mermaids find it impossible to always walk through life upright and on two legs. Definitely the last performances will be seen of Peter Janssen's brilliant dance solo Blade Racer. And two short films take us on surprising, partly tragic, partly humorous journeys into strange worlds.

It really isn’t easy being in a body that say “yes”, but also “maybe” at the same time. Vertigo means dizziness - the uncertain ground you end up stumbling all over when you try to relate to others. In Vertigo, people who are purported to be autistic describe themselves and their options for expression. An examination of inner spaces and their periphery with a rap in between, with dance and beat boxing or a manga superhero. The myth of autism: while YOU stare at what is wrong with us, we look to see what is different about THEM. A seriously relaxed breakbeat oratorio of existence.  

Drawing on personal experiences connected to his physical disability, he outlines a utopia of the human that opposes the upright, civilised, endlessly productive and – precisely because of this – endlessly destructive body with one that is close to the ground, cyclical, pulsating and metabolic. In Soiled, this very body is asserted as a profoundly human one – a body that savours its own organicity with pleasure, a body that dives into the dark pool of early memories and precisely from there, the unifying milieu of a burgeoning new community.

In Das kranke Haus (The sick building) Theater Hora and Kollektiv vorschlag:hammer will collaboratively investigate the hospital as a subject and its presentation in the media. They will contrast their own experiences in hospitals with those depicted in Grey's Anatomy, they will re-enact a surgery or a visit in the emergency room, they will report on the everyday life of hospital staff from interviews with them and they will explore what the hospital as an institution means in our society and how it has developed historically. In this endeavour they will always also negotiate their own bodies on stage, which are labelled as healthy or as sick. They will identify and reverse power constellations, exaggerate, rationalise or emotionalise. – This is how the two ensembles have roughly envisaged their first collaboration. ­– This is how the press reacted: “Who actually determines what is sick - and what is healthy? As demi-gods in white Kollektiv vorschlag:hammer and Theater Hora challenge supposed certainties of the health system - and have a lot of fun in the process.” (Valeria Heintges, nachtkritik.de)

21 downbeat
"Berlin descends on me like a quilt of flaming flowers," (Irmgard Keun). Intoxication, ecstasy, confetti, dance and theatre: welcome to 21 downbeat, RambaZamba Theater’s very own band! This work was commissioned for Pop-Kultur 2022 and revolves around the 1920s entertainment metropolis – as a place of longing for pleasure-seekers, dreamers and gamblers, always teetering on the edge. To this end, the band hunts for literary traces, adorns itself with Irmgard Keun's "flaming flowers", dates Alexander Döblin's "Whore of Babylon", makes a trip with Bolle on whitsun and searches for Kurt Tucholsky's "mood for love".

station 17
To anyone who has followed Station 17 over the past three decades it is crystal clear that with this band the only constant is change. Developing, stretching music, testing boundaries - that's what it's always been about since 1989 when the band was founded as a creative-social project in the communal living group 17 of the Alsterdorf Foundation in Hamburg. Eleven official albums, two feature-length documentaries and 800 concerts later, Station 17 is an internationally acclaimed formation in the field of experimental indie rock sporting their own mix of electronics, krautrock, disco, noise and pop.

Now Station 17 won over two old companions for a joint concert developed specially for NO LIMITS. With Schneider TM and Zappi of faUSt, Station 17 will play an improvisation set, that is developed live, in real time, and partly to and with the dance of Tomoko Nakasato, whose movements will be translated into music by controllers.

Instead of the discussion “Precarious Gestures – A conversation about disability, ecology and somatic practice” led by Michael Turinsky, the lecture “Choreo-politics for the crip animal” will take place for dispositive reasons.

Taking his departure from his own notion of “crip choreography”, Michael Turinsky will propose in his lecture an ecological perspective on human movement that centers around what could be called a basic dis-equilibrium between the human organism and its environment. He argues that choreo-politics for the human as “crip animal” calls for radical “post-growth” adaptations of practices in a way that takes into account the human need for preservation while still making space for excess and lavishness, as they characterize an essential aspect of human striving.

Bogumer is an inclusive dance-theatre show about the search for one’s own identity, the dynamics of power and the methods of mass manipulation, without forgoing humour and poetry.

The breathtaking performance is the result of Vero Cendoya’s many years of experience in dance with disabled and non-disabled people. It takes as the starting point the real trial of God that Anatoli Lunacharski held in 1918. Russia after the triumph of the Communist Revolution is the inspiration for creating a timeless space in which the seven protagonists relate with one another and dance in a setting that sinks beneath their feet. Bogumer draws inspirational aesthetic references from the cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos, from films such as Battleship Potemkin, the political literature of Noam Chomsky, and the existentialist philosophy of Nietzsche. The result is a stunning firework that talks about the search for personal identity and struggle for leadership through the poetics of dance and theatre.

Camera Obscura is barner 16’s newest band project. These six musicians fuse their love for music with their fascination with the era of silent films and develop their own soundtracks for selected silent film classics. In terms of style there are many inspirations but Krautrock influences and sheer improvisational joy certainly are some of the most noticable. For NO LIMITS, Camera Obscura brings Dziga Vertov's silent film The Man with a Movie Camera back to life. This Soviet-Ukrainian experimental film from 1929 follows a cameraman through Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa and was praised for pioneering a variety of new film techniques. As a documentary silent film it is sometimes listed as the "best documentary frilm of all time" and it also comes in third in a list of the 100 best films of Ukrainian cinema. Snapshots of the big city and its inhabitants inspire Camera Obscura to create their own interpretation of the nameless cameraman’s experiences whilst aiming to also give a voice to the "speechless" protagonists by using collage-like short stories. A uniquely intoxicating experience for your eyes and ears awaits you!

“I never knew a thing could do so much. I have never thought – but now I'm beginning to think. What can I do and what can the sponge do? Is it still me who is thinking or is it the comb thinking?”
TO THING THINGS - do you know what that is? Have you heard that before? TO THING?! Is to thing a thing? Or is to thing several things? What kind of things are there around us and what can you do with things? And most importantly: what can things do to us? Can things actually think and do things?
With TO THING THINGS, Julia Keren Turbahn and Jan Rozman invite us into an overflowing world of things – into a world of possibilities in which they encounter things and things encounter them in different ways. Is that your thing? Then be part of it: In a playful performance, Julia and Jan leave room for interpretation, discovery and encounter and invite everyone from the age of five to thing.

In a tender, witty dance, Lucy Wilke and Paweł Duduś explore what is one’s own body and what is the other’s, and how we see, hear and feel it. Actor and singer Lucy Wilke was born with spinal muscular atrophy. There would be no reason to mention this in any other context, but it is in fact the point of departure for this production, Scores that shaped our friendship from Munich. Together with dancer Paweł Duduś, Wilke developed this intimate, seemingly utopian portrait of a friendship that does away with all boundaries. In seven short chapters and accompanied with live interpreted and mixed music by e-composer Kim Twiddle, the two of them explore their bodies and their dreams through symbiotic movements, attentive speaking and synaesthetic choreography. Playfully and without any moralistic attitude of superiority, they overcome society’s norms and insecurities towards people who appear to be different from the majority. (text Berliner Theatertreffen 2021)

What does dying taste like? Why is everyone afraid of it? Can a soul be composted? How can I avoid being reincarnated as an earthworm? Developed from the joint reflections of children, adolescents and adults with and without so-called disabilities, Welt ohne uns (World without Us) welcomes audiences to an irritating confrontation with life and death. Beyond esoteric kitsch and religious oversimplification, both serious and light, this performance dissects the cycle of life. Served up with morbid humour, intense elements of body art and an extravagant visual language, an existential-philosophical trip unfolds, extracting fundamental questions from the pale ribs of the unimaginable. The piece consciously confronts a topic that has often been suppressed.

Welt ohne uns is the first collaboration between the inclusive ensemble Meine Damen und Herren and the intergenerational collective SKART/Masters of the Universe, both of which explore the possibilities and opportunities of democratic and collective work processes.

Zeus is furious. What happened? Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind thereby destroying the divine order. The rebel is severely punished by Zeus. He is bound to the Caucasus Mountains and has to endure an eagle feasting on his ever-renewing liver. For Commissioner Hans-Heracles down on earth the matter is clear: Zeus is the criminal and must be hunted down so that the world will become a more just place.
This performance is a tragicomic true-crime evening in which the actors of RambaZamba Theater show that laws are universal and apply to everyone– even to the powerful few "up there".

After having spent a lifetime being an inspiration to others, Dan Daw is finally seizing the moment to inspire himself. Taking ownership of the beautiful mess that encompasses all that he is, Dan lets go of who he once was to make room for who he wants to be. Dan is joined in an intimate evening of play by performer and collaborator Christopher Owen where Dan takes back the power by being dominated on his own terms. Nominated for the 2021 National Dance Awards, and directed by Mark Maughan, The Dan Daw Show is a peep into the shiny and sweaty push pull of living with shame while bursting with pride. 

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Trigger Warnings: Depictions of kink experiences, suffocation, humiliation, dominant behaviour, sexually explicit depictions and language, descriptions of feeling othered, loud noises, flashing lights and sexy disabled people.