We're BACK with new stories!
Dear friends,
Liz here 👋
Thank you for your patience! After the incredible success of our first story, The Toynbee Convector, we decided to take the summer off to rest, recharge, and plan for the future.
Now, that future has arrived! 🚀 We have 3 upcoming shows with 2 new stories (including our first Lesung auf Deutsch!), and our 2027 season is well on its way.
🎥 This past weekend, we returned to the Otherland in order to make a video recording of Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Toynbee Convector." Soon we'll have an official promo video that we can use to share our work and apply for funding! Many thanks to Elliott, our videographer, and to the Otherland team for letting us in to record on a Sunday.
Over the summer, we learned just how hard it can be to book venues in Berlin. But as we researched, we also made valuable connections and found venues that will be good fits for us in the future.
We also did a lot of reading! I had the privilege of meeting regularly with Sebastian Urbanke, our reader for the Zweig. We went through the chapters together, reading and discussing the text, and commenting on how relevant Zweig's writing is in today's world. I often see "The World of Yesterday" recommended as "essential" for understanding today's political climate; the more we read, the more I agreed with this sentiment. I'm really looking forward to returning to this text in our performances, and to the discussions that will follow.
UPCOMING SHOWS! 📣
Sunday, 22.11
"Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers" von Stefan Zweig (DE)
Die zwischen 1936 und 1942 verfassten Memoiren des österreichisch-jüdischen Schriftstellers Stefan Zweig dokumentieren die gesellschaftspolitischen Umwälzungen, die er in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts erlebte. Unsere Lektüre umfasst vier Auszüge, die Zweigs Erinnerungen an die Friedenszeit im Wien der Vorkriegszeit über den Ausbruch und die Schrecken des Ersten Weltkriegs bis hin zu Zweigs Reflexionen über die Menschheit und ein verändertes Europa in den frühen 1940er Jahren reichen.
Als Vorleser bei dieser Aufführung wird Sebastian Urbanke auftreten. Musik von Philip Glass, Franz Schubert, Oskar Straus, und Richard Strauss wird gespielt.
Location: Evangelisch-Lutherische Augustana-Kirche (Usedomer Str. 11, 13355)
RSVP here: https://luma.com/e3epnl2p
This performance is presented in collaboration with the Berlin Cello Academy.
Friday, 11.12
🎄"Letters from Father Christmas" by J.R.R. Tolkein 🎄
Every year for 23 years, J.R.R. Tolkein's children received letters from Santa Claus, stamped and mailed from the North Pole. These heartwarming and fantastical letters, sometimes written with the help of Santa's assistants, Ilbareth the Elf and the North Polar Bear, give a vivid picture of life in the far North: reindeer run amok, the hazards of living with a clumsy polar bear, and even goblins!
Join us for a festive and silly sing-along Christmas show, presented in collaboration with Otherland Buchhandlung.
🎁 Christmas raffle sponsored by "With Choc and Charme"
Location: Wasserturm Kreuzberg (Kopischstraße 7, 10965)
RSVP coming soon!
Sunday, 24.01
"The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European" by Stefan Zweig (EN)
Written between 1936-1942, the memoir of Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig documents the sociopolitical upheaval that he experienced in the first half of the 20th century. Our reading includes four excerpts, spanning Zweig's memories of peacetime in pre-war Vienna, to the outbreak and horrors of WWI, to Zweig's reflections on humanity and a changed Europe in the early 1940s.
This text will be read by Sebastian Urbanke, and presented alongside music by Philip Glass, Franz Schubert, Oskar Strauss, and Richard Strauss.
Location: Z-Bar (Bergstrasse 2, 10115)
RSVP: https://luma.com/puixxfqn
We look forward to reading (and singing) with you!
Warmly,
Liz, Katrina, and Lydia
P.S. We're now on Instagram!
📚 What we're reading:
Liz: Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li
Katrina: Geisterspuk in Peng-lai by Robert van Gulik (Richters Di series)
Lydia: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
