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Index
Sale
e Tabacchi
Factory
Hostel
Cemetery
Hallesches Tor
Friends
of Italian Opera
Memorial
Tablets
Lapidarium
Passburg's
Wines
Riehmer's
Court
Exterminating
Angel
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Friends of Italian Opera, named after the Mafia in Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot” is the only English-speaking theatre in the
city. It performs in the back part of an industrial courtyard in
Fidicinistrasse, Kreuzberg. The layout is magical. Tables and benches are arranged in the open air and a huge factory chimney looms
above. Artists and gallery curators work in the one or two storied workshop and studio
buildings. The theatre auditorium contains about 60 seats in five steep rows.The stage is set lower and hardly more than an arm’s length away from the first
row. A bar, meagrely protected by a canopy, provides the guests with drinks before the performance and in the
interval. A theatrical experience cannot be more intimate than this and yet is this excitingly authentic place not a dream location for the theatre
company. They would far rather perform in a larger space which is more comfortable for the audience and, as soon as
possible, would like to establish an English theatre with an international
reputation. There is no doubt about the need for this with an estimated 100,000 native English speakers in Berlin. “Friends of friends”, individual friends and patrons can help to set up this completely private initiative. Until this
happens, English-speaking friends of the theatre and lovers of the English language can happily enjoy the intimacy of the little English theatre in
Kreuzberg. |
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