photos: Anna Agliardi
Have you ever imagined taking hallucinogenic drugs before going to watch a theater play? In the new piece Jessica an Incarnation by Volksbühne Berlin you can have the experience of playing a video game of the world on LSD without taking any. Worth it? Depends on your stamina.
It does not take a lot of imagination to think of Berlin as a giant playground. In times of Pokemon Go and other augmented reality games, the street-running movement and immersive theater experiences, everything – and everybody – seems ready to play.
But I don’t think that the origin of Berlin playfulness is based on technology, fitness or even cultural trends. I remember vividly how years ago I met on a subway ride a young dude that outed himself as a philosophy professor. (The combination of young dude and philosophy professor was a surprise at that time. Nowadays I am not as easily surprised ;-)) He told me that he is part of a creative project called invisible playground. In this project, he told me they tried to research and examine how a daily portion of playfulness can affect your overall happiness.
But invisible playground is not the only creative project celebrating the idea of a playful city. The Berlin-based artist duo 44Flavours have already left their footmark in the local creative scene. Experimenting with all kind of art forms, from murals to posters, and painting to sculpture, the two friends Sebastian Bagge and Julio Rölle, have worked together since they were students. Their success formula is a vibrant combination of teamwork and creative chaos. For the #LiveThere exhibition by Airbnb they created an interactive playground where you can tell your personal Berlin story. There you can listen to murmuring teapots, talk to enchanted mirrors and have fun with all kinds of everyday objects transformed into a creative installation. The idea behind this project is to share different stories about Berlin and to emphasize how with a spark of creative inventiveness and playfulness every trip to Berlin can become a one of a kind experience.
Inspired by that idea, I thought of how we could be more active in experiencing our city as a playful place. I started thinking about the rules and I realized that the games you decide to play on your personal urban playground don’t have to follow any rules or even the norms of standard morality. Between lust and pain is the instinct to play. Therefore I dove deeply into my own imagination and created a set of Berlin-specific mind games. Follow my colorful, funny but sometimes also sensual and dark inspirations to transform your everyday life in Berlin into a crazy game-like experience.
Darkness, silence, a locked-up room – no solution, no escape…
What sounds like a horror movie at first is the opposite of it and in fact really great fun. We’re talking about a more or less new trend that has arrived in Berlin a few years ago and is now becoming increasingly diverse. In so-called Live Escape Games you voluntarily let yourself and your friends or colleagues include in a complex of rooms and have to find a way out of the premises before the predetermined time runs out. The aim is to work together, to solve tricky puzzles and to pay enough attention to even the smallest details because they could lead you to the right solution. Each game includes a detailed story and there are many – you can take on the role of thieves and steal an exhibition object, escape from a bunker or convict a murderer.
After the jump you can get a glimpse of the game procedure.
photos: Jan Freese
You think that with all the versions of Alice I have seen in my live I could be pretty over it. I thought so too but the Ballhaus Ost, my favourite theater in Berlin right now, proved me wrong. In the beginning of the play Alice Underground shows an older depressed women living in a white trash East Berlin apartment still trying to feed her dead dog. But this sad scene ends when an already dead and skinned rabbit jumps out of the refrigerator and proclaims that he’s going to waste and needs to be eaten! No time, no time! And as soon as you can blink you are already inside the magical wonderland which is quite more adult porn style than the original Lewis one. With a lot of naughty jokes, an astonishing stage design and a cast of great actors led by fabulous Anne Tismer as old Alice, this play is better than most Alice analogies in a long time and has to be seen. The dates, the trailer and more picture after the rabbit hole.