Overwhelmed by all the options of things to do in Berlin? We know the feeling. So, we rounded up our top picks in music, art, theater, and more for the weekend of March 13th to 15th. As of March 12th, these events remain scheduled to take place.
Art
Before Instagram, there was another way to blast logos into the world: the plastic bag. Now becoming a thing of the past, plastic bags—when not excavated from the ocean—can be seen as interesting relics that reveal interesting trends in design and style of the times they came from. Starting on March 13th, the Kunstbibliothek will feature forty plastic totes from the 1960s to 1980s in the exhibit Would you like a bag with that (logo)?—including Germany’s very first plastic bag (for Horton in 1961), an original version of the classic ALDI Fruhtrunk bag, and Anton Stankowski’s designs for REWE.
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Theater
The Helsinki-based group Jalostamo has performed international co-productions since 2016. In the live program RadioLove, on March 13th and 14th at TAK – Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg, a different local guest joins performers Anna Lipponen and Tuomas Kiiliäinen on stage every night. They promise “an absurd stage show where dreams become images, reality meets radio aether, and excess takes over…”—An hour-long experience to momentarily escape the present sounds pretty good right now.
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Food
A seven-course French tasting menu focusing on seafood and in-season produce with matching wine or juice pairing is a great way to postpone your cares for a few hours. What used to be a kebab stand on Torstraße has turned into Germany’s smallest restaurant with a Michelin Star; Bandol sur mer led by chef Andreas Saul and sommelier Alexander Seiser boasts the claim: Provence meets Berlin Mitte. The cozy restaurant serves eighteen guests per night, with the kitchen on view if you want to watch the artists at work.
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Music
“A composition indeterminate of its performance,” John Cage’s Theater Piece was the composer’s first work to use time brackets to indicate a period of time where actions may be made. The 1960 world premiere in New York, choreographed by Cage’s partner, the prolific choreographer Merce Cunningham, featured a junk-littered table, water from a plastic fountain, toys, balloons, newspapers, exploding paper bags, hair cutting, and skipping rope. Anna Clementi’s take, at Acker Stadt Palast’s black box theater this Friday through Sunday, features eight performers reacting to Cage’s score in what is certain to be a unique, inventive, and wholly off-the-wall production in its own right.
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Film
Taika Waititi’s satire on Nazi Germany, based on the novel by Christine Leunens, turns Adolf Hitler (played by Waititi) into an idiotic imaginary friend of a young boy (Roman Griffin Davis) grappling with feelings over hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKensie) in the attic of his family home. Jojo Rabbit features a fantastic cast, dizzying visuals, and earnest portrayals in the face of ridiculousness. English showings at Berlin’s cinemas can be found here.
Berlin Artifact 