News

Berliner Festspiele celebrate Jubilee on 27 August

26 August 2011

On 27 August at 4 PM, the festive opening of the Jubilee Festival of the Berliner Festspiele takes place. Marking 60 years of the Berliner Festspiele, 10 years of the directorship of Joachim Sartorius, and 10 years in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the freshly renovated building throws open its doors to present a thrilling, top-notch programme for the entire family which will continue late into the night - on all stages, in the lobby, and in the loveliest theatre garden in all of Berlin. In this context, the stage plays a very special role: outfitted with the latest stage technology, it will be inaugurated with a grand ceremony by the MAU Company from the South Pacific, joined by co-performers from Berlin. After the ceremony, the audience is invited to dance on the stage with the Capital Dance Orchestra. The festival constitutes a highpoint with numerous surprises, among them a theatre premiere by Moritz Rinke, collages by and with Herta Müller, speeches by Thomas Kapielski and Peter Raue, and music by musikFabrik. Playing its only concert in Germany beforehand will be the Bolivian Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos - an exclusive appearance at the Berliner Festspiele. The Jubilee Festival not only offers the dazzling possibility of experiencing the entire range of the Berliner Festspiele’s programme series on a single day. Above all, the festival wants to tell stories: an installation by Gitti Scherer and a theatre piece by the young DT will transport the audience back to the early years of the Berliner Festspiele and the beginnings of the former Theater der Freien Volksbühne. Theatre tours will allow to discover the technical innovations found on, beneath, and above Berlin’s most modern theatre stage, and with the Oper Dynamo West, the audience can experience stories about people, animals, and politics all around the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Last but not least, the Book of the Berliner Festspiele 2001 – 2011, will be presented in an event moderated by journalist and publisher Jakob Augstein and in the presence of a number of the volume’s authors (including Michael Naumann, Kerstin Decker, Joachim Sartorius, and Moritz Rinke). The next highlight of the Berliner Festspiele after the Jubilee Festival is the musikfest berlin 2011; it takes place with international orchestras and soloists at the Berlin Philharmonie from 2-20 September 2011. Find the complete programme of the Jubilee Festival here.