This stage is for freely told stories. With professional storytellers from all over the world and an open stage in the second half. Stories are told freely with words and wit, hands and feet, music and song.

An event organised by ERZÄHLKUNST e.V. - running in Berlin Prenzlauerberg for 20 years!

Guest: RACHEL DONALDSON CLARKE

Rachel has reinvented the ballad for our time. A ballad is a story told in verse. Rhythm and rhyme lend the story power and dynamism. Even everyday events become epic. The great poets and storytellers Robert Burns, Goethe and Schiller wrote ballads in their day. The Scotsman Burns recited his ballads to audiences on stages, in salons and pubs, to entertain local audiences on dark nights. Rachel discovered this form for herself when she translated Burns' ‘Tam O' Shanter” (Scots for Tam of the Devil) into German verse. Now she performs two of her own ballads live, each dealing with an important current issue of our time - in English and German. Unlike her other stories, she does not narrate freely here – but of course without a script in hand – because a script is taboo in oral storytelling. Feel welcome, everyone.

The second half of the event is an open mic. Here, people from the audience tell stories freely. Many of them are also professional storytellers, like the main guest. But here they try things out. Just as they have been doing for almost 20 years on Berlin's oldest and most welcoming storytelling stage.

Welcome – as listeners and/or storytellers.