David Cassel’s “Exit Strategy”
Busland Film and Music Studio presents David Cassel’s “Exit Strategy – A Berlin Story”, January 28th, 2023. There are two ticket tiers. “PAY WHAT YOU CAN” and a guaranteed seat for €25 each, for those that want to support the project with a financial injection. Those who book tickets as “PAY WHAT YOU CAN” will be given seats if room is available after all full paying tickets holders have been seated. Pay for these tickets by sending your donation to the paypal.me address listed below.
Reserve seats by choosing your Ticket tier. Seating is limited to 20. Select the number of tickets you want, click “add to cart” and then click on “view cart” to check your order. If all is in order, you will be taken to the PayPal site where you can pay by PayPal. If you don’t have Paypal, you can pay for tickets using a Bank transfer to IBAN DE49 1005 0000 6015 5470 98. Then send an email to theukuelebandito(at)gmail.com to confirm payment. You will be then sent a map to the location.
These will be the last performances at Busland. On May 1st, 2023, Busland will permanently exit this once in a lifetime location. Don’t miss this very unique Berlin event.
Pay What You Can Tickets
To secure a seat, send a donation of any amount to
David Cassel’s Exit Strategy
Using original songs, comedy, film, poetry and his very own, very personal style of madness, David Cassel brings his 45 years of performance experience into an energy charged evening that presents the story of how he and his daughter came to live in an old 1985 school bus on one of the last remaining undeveloped prime pieces of real estate in the center of Berlin’s capital city.
With a few comic side journeys to “Fear of the future” and “Life during lockdown”, “Exit Strategy” delves into how the Cassel family innovates while the world continues to throw ridiculous and completely unnecessary curve balls.
Ticket price includes Homemade pizza and a soft drink. A guaranteed good time.
David’s father, Wilhelm Heinrich Oigen Cassel, was born in Berlin in 1931. He escaped Nazi Germany as a 7 year old child in November 1938. His exit was engineered by his Aunt Hilda who had moved to England shortly after the Nuremburg Laws had been passed on September 15, 1935. With a specially acquired visa, he was one of only 10,000 children to be spirited off to England, and safety from persecution, under the British “Kindertransport” program.
His parents, noticing the change in political temperature, feared for the safety of their family. In 1935, they decided to leave him at an orphanage that was housed in a Jewish Synagogue in central Berlin. During the infamous Kristalnacht, the synagogue he had called home for 3 years was targeted by nazis who threatened to burn it down with him and the other children in it. Thus began an endless journey of displacement and disenfranchisement.
In 2019, at the height of the pandemic, David and his daughter Grace found themselves without accommodation. They moved to Germany from Canada in 2017 to exploit work opportunities by travelling around the country in their bus home. Then the pandemic hit and they got caught in that special place where, although 10,000 apartments were available in Berlin, none were at a price that they could afford. Of course everybody remembers that all work and income earning opportunities had completely evaporated.
People were being told to lock down in the comfort of their own homes but no thought or plan had been put in play to deal with people who found themselves, unexpectedly, in precarious situations. Thankfully their tour bus “LUL522X” filled that void, but the problem that immediately presented itself was that there was no place to legally park and “The State” completely ignored their needs.
It was in February 2020, after 9 months of living from parking lot to parking lot, that several national news services picked up on their story and decided to do what they could to draw attention to their situation. Shortly thereafter, the good people at Theater Haus Mitte came to the rescue and provided a parking space in the back yard of Berlin’s premiere cultural rehearsal and production facility.
A story was done by Germany’s national broadcaster, ARD, that summed up the circumstances. You can watch it here:
From May 2023, they are on the move again. Watch this space to find out where they land!