About.

For Tiyatro Berlin, theatre is a public space in which a society works out what it remembers and what it would rather forget. The collective's work starts from lives that no official history records, files that were quietly closed, and the things passed from one generation to the next without ever being said. The real question is how these experiences can reach the stage without being appropriated, and how respect for testimony can sit alongside a genuine encounter with an audience.

This is why Tiyatro Berlin so often works with oral history, witness interviews and archival material, so that the theatre becomes a kind of counter-archive for stories that have no place elsewhere. The city, too, becomes material: on the audio walks, the audience moves right through the piece. Text, space, sound and performance are made together, around the same table. An arabesk song, a scene from an old film or a sentence overheard on the street can stand beside contemporary dramaturgy, because Tiyatro Berlin takes seriously the language the audience already brings with it.

For the collective, independence is an aesthetic choice. Because it does not produce on behalf of an institution, it decides for itself what needs to be told, and keeps the freedom to try out forms that do not have a name yet.

Since 2021, more than fifteen performers, dramaturgs, sound and light artists have worked with Tiyatro Berlin. Almost all of them had spent years making theatre professionally in Turkey and had only just arrived in Berlin; for many, Tiyatro Berlin meant their first contract and first premiere in Germany.

This was never announced as a programme, but over time it became the most important part of the work: a meeting place for artists to whom no institution opens its doors, and a network that makes them visible. Today Tiyatro Berlin is growing that network through projects that support arriving in the city, continued learning and connecting with one another.

Tiyatro Berlin has no office and no administrative staff; everyone here is an artist, and organising the work is part of the artistic process. Some productions were funded, others entirely self-funded, but the programme has never been shaped by what gets approved. Ticket prices stay deliberately low, because theatre should remain open to everyone. Alongside the productions, the collective runs a year-round theatre education programme for adults.

Tiyatro Berlin's productions have been supported by, among others, the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, the Fonds Darstellende Künste and the Goethe-Institut. Work by the collective and its members has been invited to 48 Stunden Neukölln, Proud Haram Festival Berlin, the Turkish-German Theatre Festival, the Bergama Theatre Festival and the Istanbul Theatre Festival.