spielzeit’europa

The theatre season at Haus der Berliner Festspiele
October 2008 to January 2009

THE END – A BEGINNING

An explosive and acutely contemporary Balkan blues opens what is now the fifth edition of spielzeit’europa, the Berliner Festspiele’s European theatre season. Dejan Dukovski’s The Powder Keg, a dream project for Dimiter Gotscheff, his actors and a genuine Balkan-Orkestar, assembles an endless loop of tragicomic Balkan scenarios of irretrievably escalating violence. This production forms the curtainraiser to the 08|09 season, entitled THE END – A BEGINNING, telling of the depths of human existence, visions of the end of time and our yearning to begin again from scratch.

There follows a spectacular Revolt of the Mannequins in the display windows of the KaDeWe created by the French theatrical fantasists Royal de Luxe; a scenic journey with no beginning from Heiner Goebbels and the Hilliard Ensemble; Michael Keegan-Dolan’s homicidal dance theatre sensation The Bull; contemplative martial arts theatre from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the Shaolin monks from Henan; the loneliest criminal in the history of literature seen through the eyes of Andrea Breth; a young director’s staging of a linguistic masterpiece by William Carlos Williams and a new piece from William Forsythe. The season ends with the story of the old king who cannot love interpreted by Luc Bondy.

Our thanks to Bernd Neumann, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and the Capital Cultural Fund for their generous support – and you, our precious audience, whom we hope to see at the Haus der Berliner Festpiele for this year’s „European Championship of Theatre“.

Joachim Sartorius, director Berliner Festspiele
Brigitte Fürle, artistic director spielzeit’europa | Berliner Festspiele