Tell me something!

Not far from Berlin, near a river, a mighty peak towers into the sky. It has stood unchanged for millennia. That is, until masons came one day and quarried a huge lump of stone out of it, which they carried away with them. This is how it begins – the story of a stone. We can still see them today, the stone figures in and around the Humboldt Forum. One might be Hercules, the hero of antiquity, or Jupiter, the Roman god. Countless stories are associated with these figures. But what can the stone they are made from tell us? What adventures did it experience?

The artists Nicola Knappe and Maria Carmela have devised a programme that entwines the history of the stone figures with mythological tales from antiquity. The result is a humorous and imaginative gesamtkunstwerk [complete art of work] in German and Italian.

On the island of Elephanta reigns a good mouse king, but he is unhappy. He doesn’t know what an elephant looks like. Is it big or small, strong or weak? Does it have legs or wings? Five brave mice set off on a perilous journey across India hoping to assist their king. In West Africa, the animals are debating which of them is the strongest. They decide to resolve the question with a contest. All the animals gather and present their strengths to loud cheers and applause. But when it is the turn of the human, a deathly silence falls. “Was that strength?” wonder the animals of the forest, afraid.

In re-imaginings of two folk tales – one from India and one from West Africa – the artists Kathleen Rappolt and Jan Sell narrate the strengths and qualities of elephants. The stories are told in German and German Sign Language.

A strange wolf comes to a village, spreading fear and panic among the inhabitants. But curiosity about the unknown and the strange make for a very sociable evening – but how will it end? Will they make a new friend? Will this friend return? And what will the hunter do with the bird in the golden gown? The bird irritates him. When the bird sings, all the hunter hears is mockery. He is vexed that this bird is not like the others.

Nimbly skipping between two languages, Ilhan Emirl and Suse Weisse tell their tales of freedom, being different and tolerant in a delight for the eyes and the ears in German and Turkish.

Little Alexander wants to discover the whole world. When he grows up, he travels to South America with his friend Aimé Bonpland. They encounter wild animals and are intoxicated by the magnificence of the flora. They clamber through dark caves and climb volcanoes. They look, measure, write, draw and their fame reaches round the world.

The storytellers Christine Lander and Johanna Wollin invite you to join them on the wings of your imagination as they retrace the adventures of these two explorers. The tales will be told in Spanish and German.

At night in the museum, all manner of seats and armchairs in the Have a seat! exhibition wake up and talk to each other. The judge’s chair considers itself to be very important. It tells the story of how the pig came to live justly. The bus seat recounts the burden it had to shoulder when Rosa Parks was fighting for justice on him. An Ashanti chair tells of the Golden Chair which no one is allowed to sit on, and of how the Queen of England was outwitted.

The wingback chair has certainly heard a great many stories already, but he is still all ears when the artists Annika Füser and Mohammed Kello as Hayaka 2.0 bring the chairs to life in Arabic and German.

Ragnhild A. Mørch studied storytelling, directing and corporeal mime in Oslo and London and works as a freelance storyteller, director and producer. She runs the certificate in an Artistic Storytelling course at the Berlin University of the Arts, as well as teaching storytelling in the Performing Arts faculty. She appears at international festivals in Europe and North America and tells stories in German, Norwegian and English. She has been the co-curator at the Humboldt Forum for the Tell me something! project since 2019.

Christine Lander has been telling stories on stage since 2007. Along with her varied solo programme, she also tells stories in a bilingual duo or with musicians. She has been a member of the Theater Anu ensemble since 2014. She studied the teaching of Theatre at the Berlin University of the Arts (MA 2006) and History and South Asian Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (MA 2004). She was co-manager of Erzählbühne [narrative stage] Berlin from 2012 to 2016 and has been chairperson of Erzählkunst [narrative art] e.V. since 2018. She has been a part of the ErzählZeit [narrative time] project in Berlin schools since 2008.

Nicola Knappe grew up around music and movement. She studied Rhythm, Music and Movement at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Even before she went to university, her artistic interests focused on the creative transformation of language. She went on to study the teaching of Theatre and Dance with Tanzfabrik Berlin and the Exploratorium, amongst others. Since 2007, Nicola Knappe has taught rhythmic movement at family centres, kindergartens and music schools. She won a scholarship in 2016 to participate in a course in storytelling and in art and education at the UdK, which she successfully completed in 2018. She devises and realises storytelling projects for classes to welcome refugee families and children. She also appears in an artistic capacity telling stories at events, in theatres, at festivals and markets. Nicola Knappe lectures in storytelling at further education colleges in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. She lectures in movement at the UdK and is an active member of Erzählkunst e.V.  She lives in Karlshorst in Berlin with her three children.

Carmela Marinelli is a storyteller, drama teacher (MA) and teacher of German as a second/foreign language (MA). She trained at the Berlin University of the Arts and at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. She works with storytelling projects in Berlin and Saxony and appears at international storytelling festivals. She provides training on tandem storytelling, multilingual storytelling and storytelling in foreign language teaching at the universities of Leipzig, Halle and Jena. Her storytelling is remarkable for its vitality, suggestiveness, humour and exuberant spirit. She tells stories in German, Italian and Spanish, and if words are not enough, with her hands, her feet and a huge heart until the sparks really fly.

Christine Lander has been telling stories on stage since 2007. Along with her varied solo programme, she also tells stories in a bilingual duo or with musicians. She has been a member of the Theater Anu ensemble since 2014. She studied the teaching of Theatre at the Berlin University of the Arts (MA 2006) and History and South Asian Studies at the HU Berlin (MA 2004). She was co-manager of Erzählbühne Berlin from 2012 to 2016 and has been chairperson of Erzählkunst e.V. since 2018. She teaches free storytelling at the UdK Berlin at the Staatsschauspiel Hannover. She has been a part of the ErzählZeit project in Berlin schools since 2008.

Johanna Wollin is a Peruvian-German storyteller who discovered the magic of storytelling on a journey through Colombia. She studied Romance Studies and Journalism and worked as a caseworker, barista, cashier and receptionist. She volunteered in a literary agency, befriended older people and sold bread. But she left all that behind to dedicate herself completely to storytelling. Since she completed her training with Erzählkunst e.V. and at the Berlin University of the Arts, she has told stories at many different Berlin schools, such as in the context of the ErzählZeit project. She has given workshops for storytellers and worked on performances for a diverse audience in cafés, gardens, libraries, cultural institutions and festivals in German and Spanish. Since 2020 she has led the Berlin Erzählbühne working alongside Sven Tjaben.

Suse Weisse holds a diploma in Psychology and is a drama teacher, storyteller, director, actress and lecturer in Berlin, Potsdam and around the world. As a storyteller she has been the recipient of many awards and has been invited to participate in many international festivals. She founded ErzählWerk Potsdam in 2010. Nine women tell stories, realise socio-cultural projects and initiate the Zimt & Zunder and verbale! international storytelling festivals in Potsdam. Her teaching work includes the advanced course in Storytelling in Art and Education at the UdK Berlin and at the Clara Hoffbauer University of Applied Sciences Potsdam for the teaching of Language and Storytelling in Social Work courses. If she isn’t telling stories, she’s reading, writing, singing, running or playing (football, for example). She is mum to two big boys.

Ilhan Emirli was born in 1957 in Istanbul in Turkey, where he got to know the world of colours at a vocational school for textiles. He got his first taste of the limelight on stage at the further education college in Bakırköy in Istanbul. He has lived in Berlin since 1978 and has worked as an actor in various theatre and film productions. Alongside this, he is undertaking additional professional training as an educator and social worker. He was involved in the expansion and leadership of two theatre groups for young people and adults in Neukölln and Mariendorf in Berlin. His storytelling experience includes narrating fairytales in the Moritatenzelt in Berlin, studying Artistic Storytelling at the Berlin University of the Arts, participating in storytelling workshops at the Tempelhof-Schöneberg further education college. He has acted as an organiser and storyteller for a fairytale festival in Sirince in Turkey as well as working as a storyteller in Berlin, Potsdam, Cottbus, Düsseldorf, Turkey and Switzerland.

Hakaya 2.0: Annika Füser was born in Cologne in 1988. She was already telling stories to her little brother at the age of seven. Now she is an independent storyteller, performer and director in Berlin. She studied the teaching of Theatre to Master’s level and completed the certificate course in Artistic Storytelling at the Berlin University of the Arts. Mohammed Kello was born in Afrin in Syria in 1993 and inherited storytelling and many stories from his grandmother. He is an actor in Club Al-Hakawati, works as a translator and has been participating in the Artistic Storytelling certificate course at the UdK Berlin since January 2019. Mohammed and Annika both work with Community Theater X in Moabit in Berlin. They have both taken to the stage to tell stories together as Hayaka 2.0 since 2017.

Kathleen Rappolt studied Early Years teaching at the ASH Berlin Centre for Further Education. Following that, she completed a Master’s degree in teaching Theatre and Artistic Storytelling. Storytelling in Art and Education (UdK Berlin). Since 2012 she has worked as a freelance storyteller, drama teacher and lecturer. She has been engaged to perform at many different theatres, national and international storytelling festivals, as well as working with educational institutions and in various projects, including ErzählZeit. She has been a member of the Theatre oN ensemble since September 2019. From 2015 to 2019 she was artistic director and presenter for Erzählbühne Berlin.

Jan Sell grew up in a boarding school for deaf people. Even then, he told bedtime stories to other children in the dormitory and created exciting dialogue for films on TV as there were no subtitles in East Germany. At the age of 15 he took to the grand stage and since then has participated in various theatre productions. He received awards for Best Actor for his performances as Bruno in Martha (2003) and as Gildo in Gott ist taub (2014). Since then Jan Sell has worked as an actor, editor and operator in the media division of ZfK e.V., and also as a storyteller.