about BERLIN NEVADA /

​

​

Berlin-Nevada is a London-based project built by Gemma Brockis and Silvia Mercuriali. They met in 2003, through experiencing each others' work in their companies (Shunt and Rotozaza), whose shows were trailblazing for new British Theatre - Shunt with its experiential spaces and Rotozaza with its use of instruction and audio design. They immediately wanted to work together, without the weight of an epic build and all the trappings of the big shows, and they began experimenting on the streets of Dalston with a car, a tape-recorder and a smoke machine.

​

Their work uses pre-existing landscapes and cityscapes - industrial parks, city bridges, deserted beaches - as the epic scenography of dreamlike mythic fictions. Their approach to finding spaces has more in common with finding locations for film than for theatre. The design, too, is blended. They take existing audio, such as real radio broadcasts, interviews, the sound of traffic, or of rain on a car roof, and amplify and twist these sounds into something stranger, so that the audience finds it hard to see where the reality ends and the fantasy begins. The audience is hidden in plain sight and exists in both the world of the show and the world outside the show.

​

Berlin-Nevade lives in the realm of the uncanny. Where everything is familiar, but nothing feels familiar.

​

Their work has been seen across the world, including Brisbane, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, London, Athens and the smallest villages of Sardinia

​

The project name is shared with a ghost town in the deserts of America...