Festival
The Berlin Performing Arts Festival is organized by LAFT – Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin e. V. in cooperation with the performance venues HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensæle, Ballhaus Ost and Theaterdiscounter.
The Berlin Performing Arts Festival celebrates the diversity of Berlin’s independent performing arts community at numerous theaters and performance venues throughout the entire city. Since 2016, this annual week-long festival has presented the work and artistic positions of Berlin’s performing artists and groups working in all genres.
Background & History
With LAFT - Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin serving as the organizer, this festival is presented by the independent performing arts community itself: Professional artists, groups and performance venues can offer their contributions in response to an open call. Young artists who are new to the community also have the opportunity to present their work within the scope of a curated Newcomer’s Platform.
The festival coordination team works for LAFT Berlin and centrally promotes the festival and the participating productions, both in Berlin as well as internationallyl. The festival’s schedule of events and the productions presented is decentrally organized and financed by the participating performance venues and locations.
The festival’s schedule of programming is intended both for a Berlin-based audience as well as interested parties and professionals throughout Germany and abroad. The schedule of programming will be supplemented by ancillary programming as well as special formats and events for German and international professionals.
The goal of the Performing Arts Festival is to present the diversity of the independent performing arts in Berlin and to make them visible within a larger framework as a successor to the 100° Berlin Festival which was held for the last time in February 2015 by Ballhaus Ost, HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Sophiensælen.
Over the last twelve years, the city of Berlin as well as the independent performing arts community have changed and developed enormously. A vast number of new, international artists and groups have moved to the city and many existing groups have established and professionalized themselves. Numerous new performance venues and locations have opened and the quality as well as quantity of independent productions have increased.
The former performance venues and organizers of the 100° Berlin Festival have decided to pay tribute to this new situation together with LAFT Berlin with the Performing Arts Festival.
More information about LAFT Berlin is available at www.laft-berlin.de
Information for Participating
LAFT Berlin invites also 2021 all professional Berlin-based artists, groups and performance venues of the independent performing arts community to participate in shaping the schedule of programming by offering their productions and events as part of the Berlin Performing Arts Festival!
The artistic schedule of programming from the community will be presented during the festival from May 26 to May 29, 2021. All Berlin performance venues and event locations within the independent performing arts community are warmly invited to participate in the creation of the schedule of programming with their productions and events created by Berlin-based artists, artist collectives and groups. The open call ended January 23, 2021.
The Newcomer’s Platform Introducing... searches for promising artists, artist groups and collectives whose work is based in Berlin or will be based in Berlin, who work professionally but who are not yet professionally established in Berlin’s independent performing arts community and who define themselves as “newcomers” in the broadest sense. The open call ended March 4, 2021.