Performing Arts Festival Berlin 2021

A vibrant independent performing arts community conquers new artistic spaces
In Contributions from the Community, more than 60 productions from all genres of the independent performing arts present a diverse and inspiring panorama of current aesthetic as well as political developments and negotiate social debates and discourses from queerfeminist, critical of capitalism and decolonial perspectives. The current yearning for contact is reflected in the variability, vibrancy and fragility of a program that asks: “What does the space we live in look like?”
 
Around 100 applications for Introducing…
The newcomer platform will present productions that work creatively with the conditions of the pandemic and find new artistic methods for safely bringing audience and artists into contact. Together with Ballhaus Ost, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensæle and TD Berlin, we will present selected productions and accompany artistic newcomers in their work. The final selection will be announced in April 2021. 
 
Further highlights planned
The PAF Opening of the week-long festival will be digitally transmitted live from Chamäleon Theater. Depending upon the state of the pandemic, an Open Air Festival Garden is planned in Circus Schatzinsel. Each day, selected events will be put on here as public viewings or as programming for visiting industry professionals. With PAF Radio, we are offering exciting audio experiences each morning with reports, anecdotes and a preview of the coming day of the festival.

Students from six different universities have the opportunity to explore the festival, its schedule of programming and the various performance venues of the independent performing arts community during PAF Campus. In doing so, the focus will be placed on projects that have made digitalism an explicit part of their aesthetic and in which the digital is an essential part of how the respective project functions.

The PAF & friends Visit allows an exchange to be conducted with artists from six partner festivals from other German states (Berlin Performing Arts Festival, 6 tage frei, Hauptsache Frei, RODEO, FAVORITEN und IMPLANTIEREN) and the European festival network Bridging the Scenes will also come together to discuss current questions regarding international mobility. 

Discover Berlin through an Audio-Walk
Our Audio Tour of the Performance Venues will take you on a trip through Berlin and invites you to discover Berlin’s locations of the independent performing arts community. The audio tour will give an impression of how it feels to work behind closed doors without an audience. The individual contributions that make up the tour can be listened to directly on location at the performance venues, while walking between venues or online on the festival website. 

The full program for the Berlin Performing Arts Festival 2021 will be published at the beginning of May.