Rimini Protocol

When the theatre explosives experts Rimini Protokoll light the fuse, the
world and the theatre are blown in the air and land, usually, happily
back on the stage. Brilliant. Neue Zrcher Zeitung
Elderly ladies, teenagers, unemployed air traffic controllers, talented
mayoral candidates, Vietnam soldiers, counsellors, Bulgarian longdistance lorry drivers, Indian call centre workers real people are
always at the centre of Rimini Protokolls directorial work. Experts of
their daily lives, they are the defining aspect of the documentary work
of Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. It is rare that the clash
between fiction and reality is made so clear, and simultaneously so
emotional and playful, as in the theatre of Rimini Protokoll.
In this volume, journalists, academics and artists present and reflect
upon the stage productions, as well as the site-specific works, audio
tours and radio pieces of the successful trio of directors. With numerous
colour photographs and a complete catalogue of works.
Articles by Eva Behrendt, Miriam Dreysse, Ehren Fordyce, Heiner
Goebbels, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Florian Malzacher, Annemarie Matzke,
Tobi Mller, Priyanka Nandy, Matthias Pees, Rimini Protokoll, Kathrin
Rggla, Jens Roselt and Gerald Siegmund.
783895 811876
ISBN 978-3-89581-187-6
Co-produced by
Institut fr Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, Universitt Gieen
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels
National Theatre School Continuing Education, Copenhagen
Project Arts Centre, Dublin
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Vancouver
Kindly supported by
Pro Helvetia
Alexander Verlag Berlin

www.alexander-verlag.com
M. Dreysse / F. Malzacher (Eds.) Experts of the Everyday. The Theatre of Rimini Protokoll
RIMINI PROTOKOLL
EXPERTS OF THE EVERYDAY. THE THEATRE OF RIMINI PROTOKOLL

Edited by Miriam Dreysse and Florian Malzacher | 296 full colour images
240 pages | ISBN 978-3-89581-187-6 | Alexander Verlag Berlin
Miriam Dreysse / Florian Malzacher (Eds.)

Experts of the Everyday
Rimini Protokoll is the label of the theatre makers Helgard Haug

(*1969), Stefan Kaegi (*1972) and Daniel Wetzel (*1969) who first
got to know each other as students of applied theatre science in
Giessen. Since 2000 they have created a series of important stage
productions in a variety of configurations (e.g. Kreuzwortrtsel
Boxenstopp 2000, Deadline 2003, Mnemopark 2005, Wallenstein
2005, Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band 2006) as well as site-specific works (e.g. Call Cutta 2005, Cargo Sofia 2006) and numerous
radio pieces. Their tours and new productions have encompassed
most of Europe and also South America and India. Rimini Protokoll have twice been invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen; in
2003 critics voted them young directors of the year and they were
winners of the 2007 Mlheimer Dramatikerpreis. In April 2008
they were awarded the Europe Prize New Theatrical Realities.
Miriam Dreysse / Florian Malzacher (Eds.)
EXPERTS OF THE EVERYDAY
The Theatre of Rimini Protokoll
Translated by Daniel Belasco Rogers, Ehren Fordyce, Geoffrey
Garrison, Mat Hand, Sophia New and Walter Suttcliffe
Alexander Verlag Berlin
Co-produced by
Project Arts Centre, Dublin
With the friendly assistance of
by Alexander Verlag Berlin 2008

Alexander Wewerka, Fredericiastr. 8, 14050 Berlin
info@alexander-verlag.com
www.alexander-verlag.com
Design: Antje Wewerka
Cover photo: Alexander Paul Englert (from Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp)
All rights reserved.
Printing and Binding: Interpress Budapest
Printed in Hungary (April) 2008
ISBN 978-3-89581-187-6
14
Florian Malzacher
Dramaturgies of care and insecurity
The story of Rimini Protokoll
Miriam Dreysse & Florian Malzacher

Foreword
Table of Contents
46
Kathrin Rggla
full scale
the landscape of mnemopark
Jens Roselt
Making an appearance
On the performance practice of self-presentation
100
Annemarie Matzke
Riminis Spaces
A virtual tour
64
104
Heiner Goebbels
What we dont see is what attracts us
Four theses on Call Cutta
Eva Behrendt
Specialists in their own lives
Interviews with Riminis experts
118
Subject: berlin report 16 april 2005

From: Priyanka Nandy
76
128
Miriam Dreysse
The performance is starting now
On the relationship between reality and fiction
130
Rimini Protokoll
Blocking Rehearsal Set Rehearsal World
Possible projects 2004 2008
Kolumnentitel
212
188
168
152
140
Tobi Mller
Gerald Siegmund
The art of memory
Fiction as seduction into reality
Ehren Fordyce
We go live at 8 oclock
Documentary theatre in the presence of performance art
Hans-Thies Lehmann
Theory in theatre?
Observations on an old question
Matthias Pees
People on the edge
South American works between rich and poor
But youve been rehearsing your entire lives!

The development of Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten
Dame
220 Catalogue of Works

237 Authors
239 Co-producers
240 Photographers
Sonde Hannover
Vorwort
Foreword
By Miriam Dreysse & Florian Malzacher
Four elderly ladies, with old voices and old bodies as race-car drivers on stage with signal flags, a stair lift and zimmer frames for
orientation. Because speed, the proximity of death and the merging
together of body and technology are important themes in old peoples homes as well as in Formula 1. Because, using the diversion of
a fictional car race, such a surprising amount of surprisingly
perceptive narratives emerge from life at the end of life.
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp (Crossword Pit Stop) was the first
collaborative work by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel
Wetzel in November 2000 (before they had even given themselves
the name Rimini Protokoll). It already exhibited almost all of the
characteristics that have so unmistakably informed their work ever
since, however much those characteristics might be varied, refined
or sometimes reduced: non professional performers as experts of
their own life, the everyday and the examination of the actual performance space and its surroundings (in this case an old peoples
home next door to the theatre). A text bearing clear traces of its own
production, simultaneously documentary and literary and blending
together disparate research material (like old age and Formula 1). A
dramaturgy that, like the text, developed out of the material it
discovered and that at the same time is always a dramaturgy of care,
that protects and challenges the performers simultaneously.
In this way Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp was in some respects not
only the prototype for a number of major stage productions that followed but also the starting point for site-specific projects, radio
plays, audio installations, small documentaries and short profiles.
Seven years of Rimini Protokoll. Actually a bit early for an extensive
book. However, it is not by chance that the work of Helgard Haug,
Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel has become so successful in such a
short time. They have been invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen
twice (where the non-dramatic is rarely represented) and most
recently were awarded the Mlheimer Dramatikerpreis and the
Europe Price New Theatrical Realities. Their tours and new produc-
tions take place throughout Europe as well as in South America and

India.
Rimini Protokoll are, in varying configurations, freelance directors who do not work with actors or existing texts and yet produce
work on such major stages as Hamburg, Vienna, Dsseldorf and
Zurich. They have clearly hit a nerve amongst, somewhat exceptionally, theatre practitioners, critics and audience alike, with a
theatre that is documentary that is, relating directly to the world
as we experience it, an experience that often seems to evade our
grasp. At the same time, (unlike most television documentaries)
they are not crudely affirming a reality but presenting a complex
world in which the individual is fundamental and the truth is
always a narrative.
War, global market economy, capitalism, unemployment, old
age, dying, death; all are Rimini Protokolls themes. They stake a
claim for the particular, concrete person against the politically generalised, in the way that documentary material is confronted with
subjective experiences, the social and the individual are combined,
and information about subjective perception is expanded. While
clear-cut theses, messages and opinions are avoided, Haug, Kaegi
and Wetzel make, to quote Godard loosely, theatre political rather
than political theatre. They avoid the notion of an authoritative centre (the classic symptom of the artist-genius), working sometimes
as three, sometimes as two and sometimes alone. They have no
fixed roles or job divisions, searching for that which is already there
rather than directing in the classical sense. The production is shaped
as much by its themes and above all by its participants as by the
collective of directors itself.
These old ladies, teenagers, unemployed air-traffic controllers,

unsuccessful mayoral candidates, Vietnam veterans, secular funeral
officiants, long distance lorry drivers, lawyers, call-centre workers,
policemen these real people are Rimini Protokolls trade mark.
They stand at the centre of the production as experts (and very clearly not as amateurs): they create the performances through their stories, their professional or private knowledge and lack of knowledge,
through their experiences and personalities. The experts also play a
central role in this book, not only in what is written about them but
also in their own words, in an article by Eva Behrendt and Tobi
Foreword
10
Foreword
Mller, in a journal by the expert Priyanka Nandy and in texts inserted between the other articles.
Annemarie Matzke shows how Riminis protagonists are not
always to be found on theatre stages, but often in their own immediate environment, in site-specific works that take local conditions
as the starting point, while Gerald Siegmund traces connections
between such sites and individual or collective memories and
describes Riminis theatre as an art of memory. Kathrin Rgglas
journey through the Mnemopark shows how Rimini Protokolls
treatment of memory can be anchored in real places as well as in fictional landscapes.
Acoustic spaces are also opened up by Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel
Heiner Goebbels went on the Call-Cutta-walk, directed around
Berlin via mobile telephone from India.
Rimini Protokoll bring the unfamiliar closer and keep it
distanced at the same time. This oscillation between closeness and
distance is given special emphasis in each project that leaves the
European cultural environment and, as Matthias Pees relates about
two pieces in South America, directs a particular view (artistically,
documentarily and socially) on exactly that which is otherwise so
gladly overlooked.
Rimini Protokoll are not the only ones to deal with the theatrical elements of our reality. Contemporary theatre is characterised by
the search for new forms of theatricality, once that do not depict
reality illusionistically but for all that fundamentally deal with it.
Precisely because the reality of society is ever more theatrical (an undeniable fact since at least the first Gulf War), theatre looks for ways
to articulate reality without contributing to making private, daily
life a theatrical spectacle. This attempt however, rarely finds such
clear yet playful expression as in the theatre of Rimini Protokoll.
Contact with the experts and dramaturgical work with the
research material is fundamental. As Jens Roselt explains, the
protagonists are themselves on stage, but are also performing a role.
Reality is not being reproduced but is finding its way into the
theatre, a thread that Ehren Fordyce also follows when he examines
what can and what cant be called documentary in Riminis work.
In this way, as Miriam Dreysse shows, reality and fiction are woven
together, questioning the ways in which the real is normally distinguished from the theatrical . Hans-Thies Lehmann makes clear
Rimini Protokoll Stefan Kaegi, Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, 2007
that this theatricality also influenced theory in the same way as

theory influences the theatre, in discussing a work that takes a book
as its main character, Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band.
In some respects, writing about Rimini Protokolls theatre approaches the boundaries of what might reasonably be judged: how
does one critique the appearance in the theatre of a model-railway
collector, a stewardess, a heart patient? How does one describe their
impact on the stage?
On the other hand, a book such as this one is also simply telling
a story. It follows particular traces, some journalistically, some
academically, some in detail, some as overview and leaves some
aside altogether. It develops a dramatic structure. It accentuates,
organises, dramatises. It contradicts itself or repeats itself, but it also
brings it all together, turns a blind eye, emphasises. It recounts a
reality. Its own reality of Rimini Protokolls theatre.
11
Ulrike Falke: 30th July. German Grand

Prix, Hockenheim Ring. As it starts to
rain, the drivers follow each other into the
starting box. Not Rubens Barrichello. He
skids on dry tyres from the last starting
place to the first row. That shrugging of
his shoulders on the winning podium.
How he cries and laughs at the same
time.
2nd August. Niki Lauda says I dont care
about memory. (to Frau Dring) Frau
Dring, say: I dont care about memory.
Wera Dring: I dont care about memory.
Ulrike Falke: 6th August. Frau Gries from
the home says You are welcome to try to
get our residents for your project. But I
warn you that the schedule will be difficult: presentations, trips, wine tastings,
piano concerts, memory training, seated
gymnastics our residents are very
busy.
9th August. Meeting with Dring and
Falke. Frau Dring says. Earlier, I thought
that one only got older much later. Frau
Falke, thats me, says, Bernd Rosemeyer
already drove an average of 276 Kph in
1937. Then he had a fatal accident. And
the teacher asked the class, Was Bernd
Rosemeyer a hero?
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp

The story of Rimini Protokoll
By Florian Malzacher
A man comes on stage and shows some slides of chickens. He talks

about deep litter systems, key issues of feeding, pest control,
slaughter. The audience is baffled or amused, three or four are angered. After an hour of slides it is time for questions: questions about poultry farming and questions about representation in theatre. But does the
man on the rehearsal stage of the Giessen Institute
for Applied Theatre Studies actually know that
everybody here expected something completely
different a real performance but not a real person?
And is the audience really sure that Herr Heller is
real an expert in poultry farming and not acting?
Peter Heller spricht ber Geflgelhaltung (Peter
Heller talks about Poultry Farming) from 1997 is a
candidate for the prototypical origin of Rimini Protokolls theatre. The idea arose in a student bar in
Giessen, around a large table, over beer and
schnitzel. Stefan Kaegi, who had just recently arrived in this small town in Hessen from the F+F art
school in Zurich, had a real poultry farmer up his
sleeve already. He had actually come for just half a
year to see whether there was anything to learn at
the institute, founded by Andrzej Wirth in 1982.
The conservative paper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung later described it as the greatest source of
calamity for German theatre because this was
Great Dane in Ulla vom Solling, 1998
where, amongst others, Ren Pollesch, She She Pop,
Showcase Beat Le Mot and (some members of) Gob Squad emerged
to challenge or undermine conventional state-supported theatre.
The Institute for Applied Theatre Studies was, and in this respect
still remains, the only German-speaking university department to
combine theatre theory and practice and above all to dedicate itself to
the production of contemporary and experimental theatre forms.
14
In this context Peter Heller was a quickly produced experiment, a

theatrical game designed to irritate those who, through their studies, were constantly having to deal with the irritation of theatre. A
theatrical readymade. For Stefan Kaegi and Bernd Ernst (who came
to Giessen in the same year as Kaegi), it was the first in a series of inquiries into how powerful the black box is as a representation machine and how far whatever you place in it automatically becomes
theatre. But also how the view of the black box is changed through
that which is placed in it.
After Peter Heller, Bernd Ernst and Stefan Kaegi
staged productions featuring a pedigree Great Dane
and a neurotic ufologist followed. In 1999 they
named themselves Hygiene Heute (Hygiene
Today in opposition to dusty old German theatre), producing their first full-length show Training
747 for the Staatstheater Darmstadts Cutting Edge
Festival. The piece was an intricate and playful
story about mysterious parallels between two
legendary aeroplane landings: the crash landing of
Joseph Beuyss bomber in the 2nd World War and
amateur pilot Mathias Rusts landing near
Moscows Red Square. At that point their interest
in theatrical readymades had already been replaced
by the desire to create complex theatrical events.
There are other precedents for Riminis origins

however. Fellow Giessen students Marcus Dro,
Helgard Haug und Daniel Wetzel had been
developing performances since 1995 under the
name Ungunstraum Alles zu seiner Zeit
(Unfavourable Space Everything in its Time).
These performances worked above all on discarding or explicitly revealing theatrical mechanisms. In doing so, they also repeatedly put non-professionals on
stage as experts for particular functions.
The three found each other in the context of a scenic project set
by the composer and director Heiner Goebbels who was guest professor at the Institute at the time. The basis for the students project
was Kafkas story fragment The Great Wall of China and so the 1st
Etappe: Fernsehreif, 1997
15
Stage of Ungunstraum led us on an imaginary journey from Giessen

to Peking. The group subsequently called almost all their series of
related performances and installations at the time stages (Etappen).
There was no recognisable narrative actually almost nothing
recognisable at all. Factual train connections to the Great Wall replaced Kafkas text. The performers too disappeared in an installation made from steamed-up panes that could be written and projected on, as well as all kinds of sound and technical equipment. The
performer-self (to say nothing of the actor-self) was regarded very
critically. Something had driven us onto the stage
but then we hid ourselves the whole time we were
there. (Haug)
The name Ungunstraum came from a brochure
about China that highlighted the difficulty of
transporting people and goods in a country with extremely unfavourable spaces (Ungunstrume).
Dro, Haug und Wetzel wanted their unfavourable
spaces to demonstrate precisely where for them,
infrastructure appeared to overwhelm form and
content more than in other art forms: in the theatre.
They were suspicious of technical perfection. Their
task as performers was to operate and serve the light
and sound equipment placed in full view on the
stage and not to play themselves. The more
polished and carefully built the settings became, the
more their own appearance on stage was mistrusted. They wanted to be professional dilettantes,
following the only half-ironic maxim: rehearsing
is for cowards.
The trap of representation (and that was essentially the whole of the German theatre landscape)
was to be avoided at any price, and was considered
Etappe: Zu schn, um wahr zu sein, 1996
at Giessen, more than anywhere else, the primary
cause of all theatrical ills. Everything pleasing, everything that could
be accused of trying to give an audience what it wanted, everything
that concerned purely visual effects and surface, that was to do with
conventional dramaturgy stood under the general charge of nonthinking (Wetzel).
16
Ungunstraums works often found their dramatic structure in

the use of technical appliances and their instructions. In their 1996
Piraten: Piraten (Pirates: Pirates) Marcus Dro was nailed into a
box by Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel while a translator translated everything that was not said into Czech. The idea, in which yet
another performer was removed from sight, was to understand
Dro as a human soundcard who was being built into a computer
according to an actual instruction manual. If your box is equipped
with audiovisual functions you are able to install a person with audiovisual plug-ins. [...] Most of the persons have to
be installed by an authorized person due to the possibilities of damage. In case you want to install the
person by yourself you are not insured against
damages of your box.
At around the same time Stefan Kaegi was working

on his own disappearance from the stage as an art
student in Zurich. One time he wrapped a blood
sausage around his head, another time he sat for 5
hours in a cupboard and blew little balls of paper
with text on them through a pipe at the audience.
Then again he built himself into a desk for 3 hours
or was suspended high above the audience with a
typewriter. For Kaegi, in contrast to Ungunstraum,
it was about the production of text; he saw himself
above all as an author. Only gradually he was led
from the performativity of his texts to the performance of the lecture and from there increasingly to an
interest in performance itself also because his
readings were more successful than his literature.
The radio play became an important medium
for him because it allowed him to continue working on performances in which he transformed the
text live for instance with a simple guitar delay pedal and to
duplicate them afterwards. Kugler Der Fall (Kugler The Case) was the
first to be published and then broadcast on the Radio in 1998. Live
performances after the radio plays Dagobert (2001) and Glhkferkomplott (2002) also belonged to this series.
Training 747, 1999
17
Of ants and men
Many of the radical interventions to the theatre system that were

tried out in a playful or serious way were not just the results of per-
Ungunstraums vanishing performers required replacements that

could be given specific instructions to fulfill on stage. So as early as the
2nd Stage in May 1995, the first experts came into play: right and left
of the installation, which was once again comprised of a lot of equipment and steamed up windows, sat two firemen whose presence was,
in fact, necessary on health and safety grounds (therefore sort of
belonging to the infrastructure), because lots of candles were to be
blown out with bass sounds towards the end of the piece and then lit
again. Haug, Dro und Wetzel convinced them as
fire experts to take on this task themselves.
The precise carrying out of instructions on stage
(switching off machines, changing the projected
pictures, writing in the condensation, switching
from one piece of equipment to another, stopping a
record, spinning it backwards, letting it go) was very
obviously influenced by performance and conceptual
art. These actions however, should under no circumstances be understood as falling into performance
and conceptual arts trap of creating an aura. Ungunstraum was about the implicit and the functional,
not about the explicit act and certainly not about
loading the actual with the symbolic. The use of
experienced professionals, even for small duties, was
a good solution, if only because they did not make
this earnest Giessen face, but rather enjoyed that they
could just do what they could do (Wetzel).
In 1996 Stage: Alibis brought an entire choir into
the small castle of Rauischholzhausen. Bei wieviel
Lux schalten Wurst und Kraus das Licht ein? (At what
lux level do Wurst and Kraus turn the light on?) in
1998 showed (perhaps) the last evenings work of an
Europa tanzt.
engineer called Wurst (who appeared under the
48 Stunden Meerschwein Kongress, 2001
name Wetzel) in the Frankfurt electricity distribution centre, and watched him switch on the towns lights for (maybe)
his last time: one push of a button and Frankfurt glowed in the night.
18
formance theory and philosophical or artistic speculations but also

a question of pragmatism, of working with what was to hand. As
first monitors and later the first video projector were purchased, so
monitors and then the projector (and then later, soundtracks from
the new sound department) came to be used as key elements. If your
audience is made up entirely of fellow students, who not only know
everything already but also view each production analytically, then
why not turn the production into an analysis of its own materials?
If you have no actors other than yourself available, you strive for
modes of expression that are not to be found in the
regular actors lexicon, (as with Ren Polleschs
rapid speech and screams inspired by John Jesurun,
a regular guest professor at the Institute) or you actively place your own technical deficiencies at the
centre of the performances (like She She Pop and
Showcase Beat Le Mot), remove yourself from the
performance like Ungunstraum, or even see what
happens when you put your neighbours on stage as
real people. While Ungunstraum were not yet putting this at the centre of their work, and were legitimising their complex experimental designs in
practice, Bernd Ernst and Stefan Kaegi were interested in the thing in itself and leaving everything
aside that might obstruct the viewpoint. With
Kongress der Schwarzfahrer (Fare Dodgers Conference) in Hamburg in 2000 sixty specialists from a
beggar to an NLP-Manager to an endosymbiotic
theorist presented their knowledge of parasitical
systems. Besides human experts, Hygiene Heute
also repeatedly put animals on stage as an ideal of
complete absence of narrative, psychology and
stage ability. In the Tanzquartier Wien in 2001,
Europa tanzt (Europe dances) the Vienna Congress
was recreated with seventy guinea pigs, one year later a thousand
ants were used in the construction of the installation Staat, Ein
Terrarium (State, A Terrarium) in Mannheim. We found that the
actor who could truly be trusted was the one who needed no
rehearsal (Kaegi). Stories could be projected onto the animals
although they did not perform them. And the discussion about the
Etappe: Alibis, 1996
19
20
animals reflected the metaphors and language used in a discussion

about people.
In this way, the work of Hygiene Heute and Ungunstraum approached each other, but it did not really overlap nor was there any
great interest in collaboration. Helgard Haug had long since finished
studying and had been working in Berlin since 1997 on her own
artistic, primarily visual, projects and earning money as a copy editor for a theatre publisher. Marcus Dro had left Giessen in 1998
after his Diploma exams. Ungunstraum was a closed chapter when,
in 1999, Daniel Wetzel and Stefan Kaegi introduced each other to
their respective work, which they had previously barely known,
over the course of a long night in the Institutes sound studio. More
important however, than lists of their previous works, were current
connections, shared ideas and above all an actual project that both
had been developing along parallel lines: Kaegi, as well as Haug and
Wetzel, had been planning a project using the old peoples home
next door to the Frankfurter Knstlerhaus Mousonturm. Soon afterwards their application to the Plateaux festival, a newly-created
platform for emerging artists, was accepted and work on Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp (Crossword Pit Stop), their first production in
this line-up, began. It premired in November 2000, while Hygiene
Heute continued to work on their own projects and Haug and Wetzel worked together on the radio play O-Ton -Tek.
Herforder Quittung (Herford Receipt)

At first they worked in informal configurations, each with slightly
different aesthetics and interests (more exactly: Kaegi on his own,
Haug on her own, Haug/Wetzel or Ernst/Kaegi, Haug/Kaegi/
Wetzel or Ernst/Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel). But as professional and
press interest in them increased, this casual arrangement became
harder to maintain. By 2002 it had become clear that the child needed a name. Matthias Lilienthal, then head of the Theater der Welt
festival, wanted a name for the group presenting Deutschland 2 in
Bonn, and he wanted it now.
Haug and Kaegi commissioned a pub poet they had met by
chance. The poem itself, a play on the initials of the four directors,
didnt really help much, but it was written on a bar bill with the title
Herforder Quittung. In the end this too was rejected as a name

Quittung (receipt) somehow sounded too negative and nobody even
knew where Herford was but it did suggest a direction to proceed in.
Quittung belonged to a particular genre of words and the combination of a place name and this type of word sounded time was running out somehow plausible. The word that seemed best suited was
Protokoll (protocol, journal or minutes). Then, after long nocturnal
discussions that had vaguely to do with German tourists in Italy and
the riots in Genoa, Herford turned into Rimini Rimini Protokoll.
The casual pragmatism of finding their name is symptomatic of
the way the group understands itself to this day. As one in which,
along with friendship and joy in the collaboration, there is a nonideological, almost businesslike association. It is a brand name that
facilitates communication, an effective working network, an umbrella organisation without an official statement of intent, that
maintains separate accounts even today.
Rimini operate as a team of equals, without specifically designated

roles, and as such are different from well known avant-garde groups
like the Living Theater, Wooster Group or Forced Entertainment
which are all based on a central persona (to say nothing of traditional director-led theatre). They have always had different interests and
skills and still do. Daniel Wetzel works in sound studios and as a DJ,
Helgard Haug concerns herself with spaces, Stefan Kaegi has for a
long time been interested above all in the production of text, Bernd
Ernst has always looked for a story, a plot. But sticking to such a clear
demarcation of interests has never been a feature of their work together. Initially this was tricky to explain to artistic directors who
wanted clear job descriptions to put into contracts like director, dramaturge, designer, fitting these titles into programmes and above all
budgets.
Working as a collective in this way has to be learnt and persevered with. The strengths of Rimini Protokoll come from their differences, not from the similarities that have grown over the years:
We still listen to each other with a sense of detachment. That is
what is interesting: that you work on other projects in other
arrangements and are altered by them. We have to rediscover each
other anew every time. (Haug). Dissent can in this way be maintained over long periods it is all about discovering new things, sur-
21
22
Kolumnentitel
Stefan Kaegi, Bernd Ernst, Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel

German Bundestag, 2002
prising yourself, developing fantasies together, challenging yourself. The script rotates between them and objections and reworkings are discussed at length before and after rehearsals. The
process of sharing information, updating both production and text,
requires more time than the rehearsals themselves. Any residual difference of opinion and concern must remain within the team. When
the work with the experts begins, they need to speak with one voice,
which is why normally only one of them will take a rehearsal.
Often at the start of a new project they will rehearse separately,
each with a different performer. In the meantime it is essential to
find yourself anew each time and to ascertain what it is you actually
want. (Kaegi) While dissent can be dangerous, so too is the agreement that leads to routine the very thing that the collaboration is
supposed to protect against. Of course it happens, that because of
all the mutual experiences, you use catchphrases to quickly agree on

things and keep to the stage language that we speak when we make
theatre together. But these are the very things we always want to
broaden and shift. (Wetzel)
However, even within these relatively open arrangements, working

as a group of four was not easy. They had found common languages
working as pairs and even as a group of three, things had gone surprisingly well, but Bernd Ernst above all was sceptical about the possibility of working together over an extended period. He and Kaegi
had found their own particular style of wild, intoxicated thinking,
an absorption in weird and fantastic ideas that did not really transfer
well. It really united us, that we were always working out what
more we could do... Tirelessly, without thinking about the cost.
(Kaegi) It was like Hygiene Heute to think about practicalities later;
projects repeatedly started up only to be frustrated by realities half
way through. Once they tried to persuade the residents of an entire
block of flats to take in guests for the night, once to present an explosives expert along with his profession, and once they wanted to lead
people through the centre of Friedberg near Frankfurt, underground Bernd Ernst had never fitted in that well to Rimini Protokoll his imagination went in other directions and the size of the
group was not his thing. He left after Deutschland 2, still working
together with Stefan Kaefi to produce the guinea pig congress in
Vienna, the ant state in Mannheim and the last episode of the audiotour Kirchner in Munich before pulling out during the production
of Physik in the Tanzquartier in Vienna.
Castings
Early on, Rimini Protokoll coined the term experts for their performers: experts on particular experiences, knowledge and skills. A
concept that consciously opposed amateur theatre; those on stage
should not be judged on what they couldnt do (i.e. act), but rather
on the reason for their presence on stage. The order the evening
might take, which themes were to be truncated or expounded and
what characters, text and spaces were generated, was down to them.
In this way, the usual methods of judging a theatre performance
were rendered irrelevant: technical ability, shading, depth, imagina-
23
24
tion none of these were satisfactory yardsticks. Charisma, presence? Tricky concepts in any case and inadequate to pinpoint the
qualities of Riminis performers. It was never necessarily important
what someone had experienced or which great stories he brought
along. Often it was a relatively unspectacular piece of biographical or
professional knowledge, actual experience, social function or else
the particular relationship they had with each other that made them
suitable for a project.
In the beginning, Rimini found people interesting above all because of their specific physicality. Firstly there were the old ladies of
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp with their multi-coded voices (Kaegi),
their slowness, and a risk that was palpable in their own fragility.
Then there were the pubescent boys in Shooting Bourbaki: restless,
full of energy and overly eager. Deadline, a work about dealing with
death, Sabenation, go home and follow the news, about the bankruptcy of the Belgian national airline, Schwarzenbergplatz a piece about
diplomacy, and the model-railway world of Mnemopark brought
types of work and other fields of interest to the stage in the broadest
sense. Wallenstein. Eine dokumentarische Inszenierung (Wallenstein. A
documentary staging) and Karl Marx. Das Kapital. Erster Band (Karl
Marx. Capital. Volume One) are more complex in the attributes of the
roles: in the first case, Schillers thematic motifs and characters, and
in the second, the different effects of economic theory and philosophy on private lives.
Even without an actual list of the functions, roles, or types of
performer that needed to be filled, it is at once clear that Wallenstein
remains incomplete without certain topics (failure, betrayal,
morality, war). Sabenation visibly lacked an actual airline pilot. In
the end this role was taken by a man who would have loved to fly
airliners but had been limited to amateur flying because one of his
legs was too short. He sat there telling anecdote after anecdote and
without realising, changed the whole line-up and excluded all
other pilots. (Wetzel) Likewise, without a judge (a role taken by
the audience) there was a hole in Zeugen. Ein Strafkammerspiel
experts that determined the concept.
(Witnesses. A Criminal Court Play) in the end it was the available
So much so that when Rimini started work on Urauffhrung: Der

Besuch der alten Dame (Premire: The Visit), a show that used contem-
Deutschland 2, 2002
porary witnesses to reconstruct an actual historical event (the legendary premire of Drrenmatts play fifty years earlier), a lack of
experts made them consider leaving people off the stage completely. Instead, they would simply push life size silhouettes made out of
original photographs around to off-stage sounds. Later however,
some appropriate performers were found and the paper figures were
downgraded to props.
Other projects, consciously set the threshold for choosing the
experts as low as possible: Deutschland 2 looked for people to represent every member of the German parliament. In total 237
experts were engaged; everybody who understood the idea was
accepted. Likewise Call Cutta, a mobile phone audio tour controlled
from a call centre in India, was open to anyone who could meet the
job criteria. Above all we needed to avoid misunderstandings.
Thirty highly motivated young Indians came to the first two
castings, and we had to tell them simply that we offered no chance
of promotion and no bonuses for closing any deals. (Wetzel). Likewise 100% Berlin, which constructed a demographic cross-section
of Berlin for the start of the Hebbel Theatres centenary celebrations
in January 2008, did not look to find particular connections
between different groups. Instead, people will be arranged one
after another, like pearls on a string: everyone knows why they are
there, but they do not stand in direct relationship to each other.
(Wetzel) As with Midnight Special Agency in Brussels, the theatre is
being used as a medium to bring people to the fore who would
25
Kolumnentitel
26
otherwise at most be audience members and mostly not even that.

Instead of adding further narrative levels, such portraits simply
frame what exists.
The number of characters used in their stage productions has
noticeably increased over the years. In the year 2000 there were four
people in Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp. In 2007, Urauffhrung had 21.
The team around the directors has also grown to include dramaturges,
stage designers, assistants, company managers, interns For a while
now castings have been organised by others who place the adverts and
phone around. That really changed the work. Earlier the way we
approached people and how we had found them often made its way
into the text. In this way there was some material even before the first
meeting. (Haug) In the meantime not all of the Riminis involved in
a project even need to be present at the selections.
At the same time, the increasing professionalism of the casting
process and, more significantly, Rimini Protokolls increased profile, has ensured a greater number of experts to choose from. The
fundamental trust of strangers in the directors has grown due to invitations from the Berliner Theatertreffen or the Mlheimer Stcke
Festival in the end Riminis experts are conservative theatre goers
(if at all). More than a few of the performers in Urauffhrung were,
as season ticket holders of the Zricher Schauspielhaus, passionately opposed to Christoph Martharlers Artistic Directorship.
Fame in the German speaking world does not mean much outside its borders. Not much has changed, especially when Stefan
Kaegi works in South America and Eastern Europe. The infrastructures are usually smaller and Rimini Protokoll or the Goethe Institute dont pay Argentinian porters, Bulgarian lorry drivers or Brazilian policemen a great deal. A newspaper advert is a job offer, a
chance to earn a crust, nothing more. All the same, or maybe because of this, castings often resulted in absurd scenes of relief when
the applicants realised that something else was going on. In Crdoba, the porters for Torero Portero, who were all there because they
thought that we were looking for a concierge for the theatre, immediately found fraternity through their life stories and it ended up in
the spontaneous creation of a sort of union for unemployed
porters. (Kaegi) During the preparations for the bus tour Matraca
that a foreign director was in town. Kaegi, who had lived partly in
Catraca word had got around in Salvador da Bahias theatre scene
Brazil in his youth and speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish, had to
explain to the assembled actors that he was looking for someone
with ten years experience as a bus conductor.
In the end the real motivation to participate as an expert in a
Rimini production is the same in Western Europe as anywhere
else. It is not a particular interest in new, contemporary forms of
theatre; not an interest in art, but rather in being able to tell your
story. This was as true for the conservative politician Sven-Joachim
Otto in Wallenstein, who dared to appear on the stage of the house
that it was part of his electoral campaign to cut, as it was for the policemen in Police Training Opera in Caracas, or Chcara Paraso in
So Paulo. Finally, to be perceived for once as a policeman, and not
to be hated immediately. (Kaegi) A certain freedom of speech,
which in this case was welcomed by all (even the superiors) but for
which no one wanted to take responsibility officially. Unofficially and privately of course everybody could do as they wished.
However, what a Brazilian policeman is allowed to do off-duty,
and what he is not, that is a fog of unwritten rules. (Kaegi) To protect the participants, Stefan Kaegi and his Argentinian co-director
and author Lola Arias, allowed them to remain partly anonymous,
or even completely hidden behind frosted glass. Policemen in a
witness protection programme.
Dramaturgies of care and zones of insecurity
A Rimini performance is never perfect, nor should it be. At the

point where the performers become practised enough to feel secure,
begin to build their roles and to act, the piece loses more than just its
charm. Insecurity and fragility are the defining moments of what is
understood by many to be authenticity. Yet such moments where
timing, tension, empathy and presence disappear are also agonising.
When the retired construction boss Johannes Baur briefly lost his
way in the premire of Urauffhrung, when the roughly eighty yearold Frau Dring had to trawl her memory for her next sentence in
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp, or when you heard performers in
Sabenation whisper text to one another: these are moments when
you feel uncomfortable as an audience member. You suffer too for a
moment, feel embarrassed or touched by the efforts of performers
who cannot protect themselves through acquired techniques.
27
28
It is the moments when reality breaks in that throw you back to

the banal fundamental principle of theatre sitting in a room together with other real people, facing the possibility of mistake,
breakdown, failure (even the possible death of a performer or a
neighbour, as Heiner Mller would emphasise). Theatre is always
flirting with the idea of being ephemeral and elusive, and claims
these transitory moments, this non-repeatability, as its essence,
that which differentiates it from all other arts, while at the same
time placing primary value on suggesting a reproducibility that is as
exact as possible.
It is this paradox that stimulates many leading contemporary
theatre practitioners and it is a fundamental aspect of Rimini
Protokolls works. Stefan Kaegi and Bernd Ernst (while still working
as Hygiene Heute) nominated mistakes as their primary interest
two years prior to the creation of Rimini Protokoll. Our favourite
theatre moments of 1998 were a stray fly on the snow-white set of
ATTIS, Norbert Schwientek as Krapp, whose last tape didnt work
and the coughing fit of an audience member in Jrgen Flimms Uncle
Vanja [...]. We like the possibility of these small, human, catastrophic embarrassments, rooted in misunderstanding and actually not at
all embarrassing but universally human.
That such moments in Rimini productions barely give the impression that people are being objectified, exposed in situations that
they are not a match to or even denounced is also to do with the fact
that in exactly these moments a feeling of mutual responsibility is
often detectable. Since there is no prompter, other performers
spring to the rescue, or else allowances have been made in the dramatic structure of the piece itself. The works of Rimini Protokoll
have a dramaturgy of care.
The three directors had already been confronted in Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp with actively having to help their experts
(four ladies aged around eighty) through the evening without sacrificing artistic considerations to social needs. Because of the unstable
physical condition and the living circumstances of the performers,
Boxenstopp showed more clearly than other pieces what lay at the
heart of all the works.
Even the structure of the production period itself is affected by the
specific requirements and possibilities of the current experts (and in
29
this way the contents of the piece). In Boxenstopp, for example, there
were clear limitations on how long it was possible to rehearse for each
day. This was due not only to the ladies reduced physical capabilities,
but also because the timetable of a retirement home is busier than one
likes to think: light exercises, memory training, afternoon coffee,
music-making, mealsand also the protective nature of such an institution towards its residents. Just walking in and speaking to people, or
organising a casting, was clearly not an option, to say nothing of a couple of test circuits of Formula 1 on the Playstation with the pensioners.
Getting access to the decelerated world of the aged (Wetzel), was only
possible eventually with the help of the memory training programme
leader, who in this respect at least had an idea of what they might be able
to manage. Crosswords were one of the techniques used to challenge
the memory. A kind of pit stop for the brain.
During this time Rimini found a logic that enabled their experts to act with self confidence in
the performance and to assert themselves in the
theatre system. Flag signals given from the
prompt box by Helgard Haug for instance, that on
one hand were an element of the pieces Formula
1 narrative and on the other a clear signal on stage
for literally the next step. The reports read by Frau
Falke were text, but also quite clearly the log of a
race that the old ladies (for reasons that were not
entirely clear, but had something to do with curious scientific research) had taken part in. The
small stair lift was a playful allusion to motorised
technology as well as an actual movement aid.
Necessity dictating stage events and elements as
well as driving new forms of narrative and meanKreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp, 2000
ing. The logic of care is an analogue to that of the
plot. The racing drivers only survive by receiving external signals.
Otherwise they would simply end up driving into a wall. (Wetzel)
These aids (sometimes obvious, sometimes discreet, but never hidden) have since found their way into almost all the pieces, serving
supportive and narrative functions at the same time. When the
children in Urauffhrung can put on costumes, like a mayoral coat of
office, then it conforms to their understanding of theatre and helps
them just like the flag signals did for Frau Dring. (Wetzel)
Dramaturgies of careKolumnentitel
and insecurity
30
Apparat Berlin, 2001
This dramaturgy of care doesnt just apply to these aids, but also
to the nature of the texts. These must remain independent on the
one hand and on the other be a support. The fact that some characters in Urauffhrung speak Swiss German and the others do not has
its origin in exactly this way, as do the various appearances of the
learnt-by-rote, the crib sheet and instruction boards. It is not just the
feelings of the performers themselves that play a part in this. Sometimes they need to be protected from themselves, from being exposed to an unknown situation, so Rimini Protokoll watches carefully to see when something disconcerting develops, in some way
a piece goes in the wrong direction and you decide, no, you dont
want to sit across from these people and listen to them like this. In
this way they dont communicate what you want to show of them,
about them or from them. (Haug).
The trust that the participants place in the directors has to be
newly built with each production. The long runs and extensive
tours of recent Rimini productions mean that experts often have the
possibility to see other Rimini pieces and supposedly construct
some kind of parallel expert knowledge before they begin. With
Urauffhrung it was extreme, everybody had seen Kapital before and
so had the feeling we know how this works. But even with Kapital
a few had already seen Wallenstein and approached things very comparatively. In principle they are already half spoiled by this, but on
the other hand it was a help in times of crises. (Haug)
However the Rimini directors arent necessarily nice people. As
much as they protect their performers and accommodate their
needs each evening, they challenge them greatly too. When the ex-
perts in Physik at a performance at the International Summer Academy at the Mousonturm in Frankfurt had become too secure and
could bluster through the show too routinely, Bernd Ernst and
Stefan Kaegi confronted them just before the start with the idea of
doing the performance in English due to the large number of international guests. The struggle with the language thus became the
theatrical experience.
Such zones of insecurity have become part of Haug, Kaegi and
Wetzels craft, counteracting the daily routine of the performers.
Some experts will be given little tasks to fulfill and the possibility of
asking a different question here or there or giving a different answer.
They are encouraged to move away from the script for a moment
and to provoke both themselves and the other performers. They
take this as far as actual tussles had by the students in Apparat Berlin
(Stage direction: real fighting, but dont hit anyone with glasses) and
the kids in Shooting Bourbaki.
These zones must be clearly defined. It has to remain clear that a
little in-joke on stage is OK, but also that there are audience members out there and you cant mess around forever. (Haug) On the
third anniversary of the collapse of the Belgian airline Sabena, the
former employees who were the experts of the production Sabenation, came on stage at PACT Zollverein in Essen and naturally, wanted to make this significant date the focus of the evening. However
recreating this day, in which they stood surprised in front of locked
company gates, was more than they could handle with the tears of
former stewardess Myriam Reitanos and far too many sentimental
tales from the other performers the shape of the piece was lost, the
point of which was never mute pity from the audience.
The care with which Rimini Protokoll treat the performers is
professional. They are making a work of art not making friends.
Contacts seldom persist and limit themselves to purely coincidental meetings, although sought after by the experts. The complicity
is temporary (Wetzel) and the work has long ago arrived somewhere else. At times there are humane grounds for a clean break,
particularly when the success of a show has obscured the fact that
the experts were chosen for their expertise in this one piece - not for
their fundamental talent for the theatre.
Maintaining a distance was especially important with Midnight
Special Agency where, as part of the Kunsten festival in Brussels,
31
32
each night another of the twenty-three experts got their five minutes on stage with little time for preparation and introductions.
Their appearance was very unprepared for many it was like
bungee jumping. Afterwards, they wanted to change their lives at
once. (Wetzel). With other productions too, its not always easily
understandable for everyone that the interest in their lives is limited
to one project. It is often taken as an insult that we are moving on.
(Wetzel) This is an alliance for a time, not for life.
Minima Moralia
The approach of Rimini Protokoll to their themes and protagonists
is one of empathising, of listening, not simply exhibiting and never
denouncing. The switch from Hygiene Heutes early concept of the
theatrical readymade to Riminis notion of experts stresses how important it is that the protagonists are subjects, not objects of the production. People that do things, who stare back into the audience
from within a role, but directly nonetheless.
Yet that could imply the danger of making something harmless
or even trivialising it as soon as things are negotiated that seem to
call for a clear directorial position. Such a conflict was very obvious
in Stefan Kaegis piece (together with Lola Arias) Chcara Paraso.
The Brazilian police force is often criticised for its Mafia-style structure, for corruption and for human rights abuses. Is it possible to
place the autobiographies of normal policemen at the centre of such
a work without this context coming to the fore? We wanted to
break through the way that subjects like Iraq, Israel or the Brazilian
police are reported with just one particular message. Instead of this
we wanted to represent the everyday rather than the scandals and
the scandal of the everyday. (Kaegi). They let people speak who
otherwise never speak about themselves. They depict small stories
not the big system. And in this way they trust the public to think
through the facts about the scandals themselves despite clear criticisms of the police everywhere. How true is what he says; is there
more in what he keeps to himself? The presence of an improvised
firing range as well as screens and false names attested to there being
more at stake than the biographical or simply anecdotal; that these
life stories are also political stories and stories and are a very real
danger to themselves and others. Each person has to decide in a split
Schwarzenbergplatz, 2004
second if he took aim in self-defence or just randomly at the right,

or maybe at the wrong person.
Works like this make it clear which barriers Riminis theatre
pushes against. It wants to display rather than judge and at the same
time can only display what people are willing to show on stage.
Contradictory ideas can be juxtaposed (as in Wallenstein or Kapital),
imperfections made visible. But even if the distancing techniques
used in documentary films are brought into play, they are still only
possible with the consent of the participants. It is never the intention with any of our works to provoke disapproval, as when a child
comes out of the theatre and sees the actor on the street and says
Youre bad. (Kaegi) The audience members need to keep their
heads. The question is, how far is it possible to create the necessary
conditions for them?
Because we should be shown things that we do not already
know, things that in any case are not close to us. The work really
starts from detachment, from an interest in strangers: doing something with a Conservative politician or a policeman. During the production comes a moment of complicity, which is very important.
This complicity is possible because you can clearly tell people that
the reason they are here is their otherness. They simultaneously
search to legitimatise themselves on stage, and it lies within the fact
that they can maintain this otherness and not make everything
right. (Haug)
33
34
But the experts generally want to make everything right, all the
more so when it becomes important to observe their position from
a distance. For example, how were derogatory remarks made
backstage by some experts about foreign countries and asylum
seekers to be incorporated into the diplomat piece Schwarzenbergplatz in Viennas Burgtheater? In any case, would you want these
statements repeated on stage? Is an immigration officer talking
about the deportation of illegal immigrants while putting on white
gloves, enough to demonstrate the gulf between the worlds? In
Schwarzenbergplatz, we tried in so many different ways, right up to
the second dress rehearsal, to make the backgrounds clear. But as
soon as the suspicion arose that the piece would criticise the state,
pulling out was threatened. The discrepancy between what they
would say to you backstage and what could be said openly was so
great that in the end we had to build in a video element. It was done
carefully enough for them to live with but also enabled us to show
that we were not in agreement. (Wetzel). A text-loop, running as it
were behind the backs of the experts with terms out of the diplomatic lexicon that gained a different meaning in the context of the
performance: agreed negotiated preprinted revised.
They were displayed in alphabetic order so that they could not be
taken as actual commentaries on the respective texts. Perhaps this
just let us win on points, but not really. (Wetzel)
Undercover actors and expert experts

There are other reasons why harmony doesnt always reign in the
temporary family of experts. For some the strain is too much, or
things start to go against the grain, or the roles become too close to
their own. Deadline ended with one of the female performers walking out and one of the old ladies quit Boxenstopp shortly before its
premire. She was replaced with the actress Christiane Zerda, who
took the text on unchanged. The replacement was not concealed
but even so, many audience members didnt notice it, particularly
because Martha Marbo, an actress well known to the audience for
her vaudeville work was also on stage. She too was almost eighty
and no longer so steady on her feet (basically an expert on old age
like the others) but as the narrator, an expert on stage speech as
well.
Deadline, 2003
Using actors as replacements was always a political question of

the greatest significance for us, actually a taboo. (Wetzel). But it was
one that was already broken again by the first revival of Boxenstopp
when Ulrike Falke had flu and couldnt perform so her role had to
be covered at the last minute by an actress from an agency. It was
publicised, but the ratio of professionals to amateurs was now at 3:1.
Similarly in Deadline the expert Alida Schmidt was substituted for
the final performance of the run in Ldz. The replacement actress
clearly referred back to the missing performer in the text. And did it
in Polish.
Das Kapital saw a different type of substitution. Ulf Mailnder
had been the ghost-writer on the autobiography of con-man and
fraudster Uwe Harksen, who was in an open prison and couldnt
guarantee his availability for all performances. So the presence of
Mailnder brought an experts expert into play. Not only did he
know all of the anecdotal information, but he was also familiar with
all the terms and phrases. At the first rehearsal he could already talk
about Harksens life so perfectly in the first person, that all the experts thought that it was really him, even though they all knew the
background. But then at the second rehearsal he started to get performance anxiety and was always asking things like whether he
should leave his hand in his pocket at this point and so on. He never
fully rid himself of this. (Wetzel) In the jury discussion for the
Mlheimer Dramatikerpreis the use of Mailnder was a deciding
factor in, and also a fairly shaky argument for, the designation of
35
36
Zeugen! Ein Strafkammerspiel, 2004
Kapital as a dramatic text that could be performed by anyone. The

idea being that if one of the roles could be taken on by someone else
then what prevented re-casting all of them?
Actually, after the use of Martha Marbo in Boxenstopp, there
were other attempts to work with professional actors from the inception of a project. In the Swiss Mnemopark Rahel Hubacher took
the role of a kind of narrator through the evening, and in Zeugen
(Witnesses) stage professionals were used as experts in the examination of ways that people present themselves while on trial. It was
amazing how the actors were trained to observe and analyse others
who are acting, and how much they suffered in court while normal
people awkwardly attempted to be convincing. (Wetzel) But in the
end this did not quite come together. Rimini didnt know where to
begin with the actors stage voices and trained physical awareness
when they were not being used in a clear capacity as narrators. In the
end the professionals were placed in plausible but relatively marginal positions. More like relics from a working process than protagonists.
A further attempt with the actors of the Vienna Burgtheater
failed during Schwarzenbergplatz. One of them found playing with
(or against) the experts too risky, another, who was supposed to say
everything that the diplomats didnt dare say on stage, was rejected
by the experts.
Such experiments (or sometimes emergency solutions) with actors

or other replacement experts are not just problematic for conceptual
purists: the fact that press and public were often downright
offended demonstrates how strong the wish to believe in authenticity is. The difference between the truth of the expert, who plays
himself, and the truth of an actor, who plays an expert, was never
dealt with as clearly as in Boxenstopp. However, the obvious deliberation about the nature of representational performance is
always essential to Riminis works.
This is why the theatre curtain is a recurring quotation. In Sonde
Hannover it was pulled back by a window cleaner for an audience
that looked out of a tower block onto a well-known square as onto a
stage. Sometimes it is used more metaphorically (as an automatic
door in Call Cutta). This is also why the techniques and implications
of the theatrical make-believe appear frequently as themes, like, for
example, the performing children in Urauffhrung and also with the
European Parliament interpretor in Midnight Special Agency who
suppressed his own opinions while translating in order to represent
the emotions of the speaker as directly as possible (even if he might
be a French right-wing radical).
That was something the people in Deutschland 2 understood
too: the more they followed the original, the more they could represent themselves fluently. (Wetzel) Wolfgang Thierse, at that
time president of the Bundestag, did not really understand this at all.
He cancelled a performance in the old plenary hall in Bonn as Rimini explained in vain that the act of a voter representing a delegate
brings with it a bonding moment of identification that is a long way
from the cheap distancing through imitation as happens in comedy
shows. Thierse feared a kind of Brechtian exposure and saw a
threat to the status and dignity of the German Bundestag. But
arent the basic questions of theatre not exactly also those of democracy? How does representation work, and what does it produce?
What does it mean to stand for someone else?
Facts and fiction
No matter how freely they might work with documentary materials, Riminis pieces require extensive research and above all lengthy
discussions with experts, a great deal of which does not end up on
37
38
stage. This additional material sometimes goes directly into the performances as video clips or quotations in the text. Sometimes it
serves to give the directors a sense of how a particular theme might
be developed. It is more about assessing potential, being captivated
by stories, and spinning threads than it is about making a coherent
story or simply addressing a theme.
The main themes of a work might be obvious from the start,
even before the actual research. Sometimes however, in the commissions Sonde Hannover and Brunswick Airport for example, a particular site comes first and then its specific stories have to be found.
The local context is not only significant in such clearly site-specific
projects. It is often also crucial in stage projects: the retirement
home next to the Knstlerhaus Mousonturm (Boxenstopp), the
social context in Brazil (Chcara Paraso), the fact that Mannheim
regards itself as Schillers town (Wallenstein). To the extent that
even a theatre stage itself, as with the Pfauen Theatre in Zrich, the
site of the world premire of The Visit, can become site-specific: the
stage managers instructions, the set changes, even the audience are
material that can be used
Stefan Kaegi often explains that he once spent a year working as
a journalist on the local news for Solothurn in Switzerland. Rimini
Protokolls research may take a similar form, but has a different goal.
In the end we really are not interested in whether someone is
telling the truth, but rather how he presents himself and what role
he is playing. (Wetzel) Facts cannot be separated from fiction, the
documentary technique for Rimini Protokoll (not so far from
Alexander Kluge in narrative approaches), is in telling a story, not
the factual truth. The truth often lies elsewhere, mostly in small details, not the big picture. Our research is often more about atmospheres. Or else maybe we will remember the poster hanging behind
an experts desk, and this sparks something. It is often the small
things that become important. (Haug)
The significant detail then becomes the actual material. This
material like a readymade becomes a prop, on the one hand
underpinning the documentary character of the work, on the other
destabilising it, since its authenticity is always uncertain. In Das
Kapital, the Marx expert Kuczynski contributed the one and a half
metres of rare editions of Das Kapital that were on his desk at the
first meeting with Rimini Protokoll. Once the insurance details had
been finalised, he rolled his two suitcases of books to each rehearsal

and each performance. Eventually however, most of the books were
replicated by the prop makers: authenticity is only a feeling.
Just as the human stories in the piece interweave and change,
just as one persons text might be picked up by someone else, the
genuineness of objets trouvs was mutable. In Urauffhrung the
antlers that adorn Alfred Ills house in Drrenmatts play actually
belonged to the hunting enthusiast Johannes Baur who in part took
on this role. Authenticity is fictionalised just as fiction is often
dragged into reality.
Scripted reality
Although Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzels Mlheimer Dramatikerpreis 2007 for Kapital might have been a shock for some groups
of authors, it was not given wrongly. Even though viewing Rimini
Protokolls work is in the first instance through viewing the experts,
the perceived authenticity of these characters and they are characters is not only the physical creation of the performers themselves.
It is also the result of a dramaturgy, the result of a production and the
result of a text that does not arise spontaneously and does not simply
flow from peoples mouths. People here rarely just say it like it is, and
text is very rarely improvised like it was in Midnight Special Agency. It
is, rather, the specific theatrical work of Haug/Kaegi/ Wetzel that has
led to a specific type of text. Reality has to be scripted.
And this is what Rimini Protokoll do: as the name suggests, they
primarily use techniques of journal (Protokoll) and diary writing. In
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp Frau Falke sat on a raised chair and
wound her text out from a large roll; the log of the pretend Formula
1 race is also the chronicle of the path to the premire. The racing
story is mixed together with the experience of the rehearsals, with
the creation of the piece and, though comparatively less, with the
stories of the women. Even if this particular structure was rarely so
clearly demonstrated in the future, the logic of the journal informs
almost all of Riminis texts.
Questions about how it is still possible to speak on stage at all, who

is speaking when someone speaks and in what form this speech can
exist, outside the far-reaching field of narrative, psychological, dia-
39
40
logue-based drama, have been central to experimental and anti-representational theatre since the 1980s. Rimini have found their own
answer to these questions. The format of the journal, playfully
transformed with reference to the avant garde theatre tradition of
strictly formalised or ritualised language (e.g. lists, question and answer games, or abstract descriptions and theses) offers them a real
possibility of organising the most varied narrative layers within an
invented or real chronology. Levels such as the actual rehearsal
process, the biographical material of the participants and the overarching fictional or factual larger narrative are intertwined. This
creates a micro-macro structure within which one can switch rapidly between close-up, detailed anecdotes and wide-shot big picture
contexts with ease: in Boxenstopp it was the slowness of old age that
was contrasted with the speed of motor-racing. Shooting Bourbaki
connected the violence of kids computer games to wider issues of
shooting. Mnemopark let the model railway fans collection and
building passion become questions of memory. Blaiberg juxtaposed
a successful heart transplant with romance in a twinned school.
Wallenstein categorised ex-politicians, Vietnam veterans, astrologers and marriage brokers according to Schillers themes.
The fractures that often result from such harsh contrasts open
for the audience the possibility of making new associations. Permanent, albeit often discrete, dealing with the process of artistic creation generates a transparency that makes an unreflective identification with the events on stage impossible.
The journal is a monologue, and this is the usual form used by
Rimini despite the many voices employed. These monologues are
designed to report and are targeted directly at the audience. Similar
to Brechts pedagogical plays, the experts face us and skillfully avoid
the representational problems of role-playing theatre in which dialogues are obviously performed to simulate conversations, to fake
spontaneity, and to create psychological empathy or at least a belief
in a functioning dialectic system. Riminis speeches to the audience
(who feel themselves being actually spoken to and not having to
play the role of an audience) suggests a conversation, albeit onesided, between real partners. The very fact that their words do not
appear spontaneous, but rather as somewhat uncertain presentations by not especially well-trained speakers, paradoxically increases their appearance of honesty. Brechts alienation effect, designed
to prevent an audience from identifying itself with stage content,

has long been seen as a supposed guarantee of authenticity, and as
docudramas and contrived TV talk shows were not the first to
imply, monotonous speech is automatically an attribute of real
people.
Recently dialogue-like moments in Riminis work have made an
appearance, tte--ttes as representations of different characters
perceptions. And disagreements between those on stage are also to
some extent possible these days. In Boxenstopp the only representative of the other group, i.e. racing drivers, was removed during
the rehearsal process because he didnt fit the picture. Different
approaches, like in Kapital or Wallenstein, and different configurations of performers brought with them a greater range of perceptions and internal contradictions. The artificiality of these moments
of dialogue (which normally consist of two or three people exchanging sentences or derogatory looks) is openly displayed and
made clearly visible not only by the experts lack of stagecraft.
Different opinions, stances and also conflicts are made and kept
visible. A scene from Urauffhrung, performed by the children
(demonstrating that The Visit remains a popular piece for school productions), takes the form of a traditionally presented piece of theatre
with everything that this infers: There is a risk that it could appear
as though we are taking this form of theatre seriously. For us, however, it is just some fun, since we have hardly ever put dramatic dialogue on stage. (Wetzel)
Riminis texts come into being through a process of questioning and

listening. Before and during the rehearsals, this heard material is
brought into a form that has to be reconciled again and again with
the performers reality. What does it sound like and how does it feel
when the experts speak texts which began as their own, but have
been taken away from them, refined and given back? The text is
reconciled with what they are both willing and able to say. What
sort of phrasing are they resistant to? Which grammatical structures
dont ring true? Which bits of content do they insistently modify?
The experts tend to learn the rules of this process fairly rapidly,
and note how what they have said goes into the text and how it is
transformed. The denial of previous assertions is not unusual, This
I didnt say it like that is very often incorrect. But when it is out, it is
41
42
often uncomfortable, especially at the beginning, because they cant

guess what it will mean in the context of the piece. (Wetzel)
So the establishment of the text is often a negotiation, a process
that can have significant repercussions later on. An expert may, like
the Marx-expert Thomas Kuczynski in Kapital, exchange the correct
word, against their better judgement (in this case use-value) for a
more casual but essentially wrong one (namely: value) in order to
assert their independence from the production and to distinguish
between themselves and their role. At times, the creation of Rimini
performances bears some similarity to family constellation therapy.
Characters in time
The Giessen rehearsal stage ten years ago probably saw the only
stage appearance of poultry farmer Herr Heller. Martha Marbo, the
impressive boulevard-diva from Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp, has
since died. The kids from Shooting Bourbaki have grown up. Peter
Kirschen the amateur pilot is still not allowed to fly airliners, the
former mayoral candidate Sven-Joachim Otto has left the town
Shooting Bourbaki. Ein Knabenschieen, 2002
where he was humiliated, and one of the Brazilian policemen is on

trial.
Rimini Protokolls snapshots can only briefly capture the moment; they disappear with the production. They focus the present
and do not collect for the future. A museum of the instant brings
characters from our time together for a time, arranging them sometimes by fields of knowledge, sometimes by jobs, by age, by destiny,
and then disperses them again.
An essential ground for the success of Rimini Protokolls theatre
is that it is dependent neither on the ultimately manageable reservoir of existing or newly-written dramatic characters, nor on the
same age-group performers that other independent theatre practitioners have to rely on. It shows people that you rarely or never see.
In contrast to reality TV and talk shows, it does not present them in
states of crisis (either real or artificial), but shows them calm and
centred. And it does not try to hide the fact that on stage their
authenticity is simply a role. Even if it is the role of their lives.
43
Sven-Joachim Otto: It went so far that

we were careful to maintain strict parity
within the party when designing advertising material. Two from one group and
two from the other group were supposed
to appear on the posters. We all stood
next to each other to be photographed
and then each person had to come forward, take a bow and smile into the camera. Then each persons head was cut out
and added to the bodies of the group
photo.
If you look carefully you can see this, by
the way. Frau Egler-Huck smiled in this
photo in a way that I have never seen her
do in real life.
Wallenstein. Eine dokumentarische Inszenierung
46
Kolumnentitel
On the performance practice of self-presentation
By Jens Roselt
They were real people. Anyone who has seen a Rimini Protokoll
piece for the first time, and tells other people about it, will probably
not be able to avoid using this sentence if he wants to explain what is
unique about the groups style of work and performance. The bafflement, that all too often shows on the face of the listeners, reveals
that such a succinct assertion is not especially revealing. Dont you
always see real people in the theatre? Is a repertory actor somehow a
fake person? Is not the performers identity and physicality inextricably linked to their performance?
Absolutely, you could admit, and then go on to clarify that in
Rimini Protokolls work they act themselves and, in doing so, their
own lives. However, in that case to what extent can you say that the
performers are really acting at all, to say nothing of acting themselves ? Their form of speech tends to be an address rather than
dialogue; something is recited, not performed. Even explicitly biographical scenes appear more as reconstructions than as representations. What you are presented with is more like the reading of a
chronicle, or to take the name of the group literally a protokoll (transcript), than some sort of variety show, the amateurish charm of
which entertains the audience. A protokoll, according to the Duden
dictionary, is the written presentation of the content of a meeting,
negotiation or hearing in either literal form or paraphrased into its
key points. Riminis performers perform their stories as chronicles,
using their own bodies and their own voices. The representation of
the chronicle in the here and now of the theatre is created through
the liveness of the performers on stage and is therefore always a
form of hindsight. This makes it obvious that the events being
chronicled on stage have actually already taken place.
But, one might say argumentatively, drawing breath, the
material that is being presented here as a chronicle is to do with the
individual lives of the protagonists. At least the audience can conclude that the reported events are authenticated through the biographies of the performers. This is not a case of a role being played,
which a dramatist might write into a book without knowing the

performers. However, there is something in such an statement that
one must also be aware of: what is happening on stage is not spontaneous or improvised. What the performers do with their voices and
bodies is subject to a running order. That such rules for the performance exist is apparent to the audience, if only in those moments
when the performers occasionally forget their text. Whoever forgets
their lines has to have had lines that have been written for them, but
are for a moment unavailable.
However you approach it, a description of the performance style
of Rimini Protokolls work is never satisfactory. Somehow you
know what is meant by terms like real people, true life and authenticity, but they dont properly hit the mark. The real people on the
stage are disorientating. You are never quite sure where you are. You
are confused, thinking up hypotheses but immediately questioning
them. However, reflecting upon these theories about such scenes
doesnt end the confusion. Rimini Protokoll places you amongst all
the opposing theatrical theories that exist. The most obvious of
which appears with the question of what these real people on stage
should be called. Actors? Performers? Players? Amateurs? Or experts of daily life?
What follows will not attempt to find a new concept with which
those chronicled by Rimini can be signified, but will rather look at
the oscillation between categories like person and role, actor and figure, reality and truth, or knowledge and belief, as a starting point for
analysis. The argument is that a fundamental problem is always
raised when people appear on stage in front of an audience, namely
the question of how one can distinguish between what a performer
does and what a performer is. This should in no way be taken to suggest that there is no significant difference between Rimini performers and professional actors, but rather how can this difference be described and what are their similarities?
If you, as an audience member, examine the performers on stage
while watching a Rimini Protokoll performance, a whole series of
questions will immediately strike you; questions that can hardly be
answered directly therefore prey on the perceptions of the audience
member in a way that is sometimes disconcerting. An example of
this may be found in the question of how the participants are actually chosen for a production. Rimini Protokolls work is always pro-
47
48
ject-orientated, meaning that there is no permanently fixed group of

performers, but rather that a group is formed with regard to an actual work, which in turn takes shape through the biographies and contributions of the participants. How does the theatre come by these
people, or how do these people come to be on a stage? The rehearsal
process can also be this thematic: how do these productions come
into being? What is rehearsed and what happens spontaneously?
Are the performers in the end simply following the instructions of a
team of directors hidden from the audience, and as such just agents
of the production teams aesthetic agenda?
This links in with questions about the actual motivations of individuals. Why do the participants choose a medium that they seem
not to be familiar with and whose conditions of perception are
sometimes unsettling? What drives them to the stage? What lures
them to show themselves or what is it that compels them to compromise themselves? All of these questions also apply to professional actors, even in mainstream theatre. It is not so rare when you
watch actors performing on stage to suspect that they do not know
exactly what they are doing and what their motivations are. Impressions and questions like these are virulent, but they are often chastened with the argument that they miss the specifically artistic
essence of acting. It is precisely the question of motivation in reference to the profession of acting, which one can be diverted by. They
are doing their job, which they have studied and, as professionals, are
distinguished by the fact that their embodiment of a literary figure
bears no trace of their own personal histories, opinions and motives.
So, one method of differentiating could be that of professionalism.
Professionalism
As audience members, we can assume that Riminis performers are
not professional actors. They have not spent years training, never
passed an exam and do not aspire to make a living out of appearing
on stage. However, it should also be pointed out that historically,
the concept of a professional actor is a relatively recent one. An academic and nationally regulated training scheme only came into
being in Germany in the 20th century. Up until then budding actors
had found their way on stage, not through school classes and examining boards, but via front of house and backstage, where people
made themselves useful to get noticed and so possibly come by

small roles. Alongside this system of learning by doing , which
gained literary ennoblement in Goethes Wilhelm Meister, came
studies in expensive private schools or tuition with older actors,
who would provide their numerous pupils with real help and advice, or at least entertaining anecdotes from a life in the theatre. So it
should come as no surprise that the 20th centurys most important
theorist of acting, Constantin Stanislavski, was an autodidact.
The theatre always had a place for actors without formal training.
Even in times when the acting style was in danger of becoming stifled by standards and conventions, the often derided performances
of amateurs and semi-professionals brought essential impetuses for
the development of new performing styles. Just as untrained bodies
on stage could provoke new approaches to performance, so too important phases of the theatre were shaped and affected by dilettantism. For example, alongside the rising interest in the then new and
unaccustomed dramatic movement of Naturalism in the 1880s,
came the realisation that the normal idealised style of performance
and declamatory speech current in court theatres would not provide
an adequate representation of the new texts. And it was an amateur
group that the theatre-loving bookseller Andr Antoine gathered
around himself in 1887 under the name Thtre-Libre in order to
perform these unusual texts. The spare-time actors of this first
European fringe theatre wanted to create a new form of naturalism
in part because they were unable to meet the demands of conventional acting. They made mistakes that would have made an actor
from the Comdie Franaise curl up in shame, like the frowned-upon
practice of turning your back on the audience. As a result they created a performance style of such psychological realism that it is still a
relevant paradigm for many actors and audiences today. The formation of this style, which appears to be so opposed to the practice of
Rimini Protokoll, also involved the participation of amateurs.
Finally, it is important to point out that the contemporary
professional actor is a child of the literary theatre, and the central
function of their work as an actor is to serve drama. But here too it is
possible to see a significant shift in the way that state funded theatres are functioning, by working in a project-oriented way that does
not necessarily start from or end up with a particular dramatic text.
On the other hand, Rimini Protokoll appear to be re-discovering
49
50
drama through Wallenstein. Eine dokumentarische Inszenierung (Wallenstein. A Documentary Staging) and Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der
alten Dame (Premire: The Visit).
Wallenstein
The events to mark the 200th anniversary of Schillers death had already got under way in the April of that year with a flourish from the
Federal President. Horst Khler declared himself in defence of the
classics, and in his introduction made a call to reveal the beauty and
strength of these pieces rather than further problematising them:
A complete Tell, a complete Don Carlos! That is something! The
ensuing debate about Khlers attack displaying an overwhelming
hostility towards director-led theatre, which was believed to have
been long since settled, made one thing clear, irrespective of personal tastes: that, for many, classical theatre is in the first place a theatre
of dramatic texts. How these texts are to be handled, however, is far
from clear. The more that one tries to assert Schillers poetry as our
cultural heritage, the clearer it becomes that we have never fully
adopted this linguistic legacy. In this way every production represents some attempt to adapt the most cumbersome parts of the text.
This material aspect of the text is presented on stage by Rimini Protokoll right from the start. A big pack of newly printed leaflets lies
on the stage floor, some still bound and some torn up.
The first performer to enter is Friedemann Gassner, who is described in the programme as electrical engineer and Schiller fan. He
speaks a sort of prologue, in which he reports on his relationship
with Schiller, whose poetry, as we later find out, strengthened him
during a period of existential crisis. The audience learns that Gassner
memorises verses from Schiller daily.
Not only does he explain how he goes about it, but also chooses
a verse from his edition of Wallenstein and memorises it in front of
the audience. In doing so he paces up and down, looking sometimes
at the text and sometimes at the ceiling, and gradually takes in the
text, meditating on it line after line. The idea of learning by heart
brings up an area commonly associated with professional acting; the
memorising of long passages of text is an integral part of an actors
skill. However original Gassners process might have appeared,
basically it deals with a question that every professional actor ought
to ask at the beginning of a rehearsal period: What have I got to do
with Schiller and what has Schiller to do with me? Not every professional manages to find as convincing an answer by the opening
night as Gassner. His approach shows that the appropriation of a
classic does not necessarily have to take the form of an intellectual
debate or an interpretation of Schillers ideas, but can be fulfilled as a
verbal and also bodily process. Gassner does not embody
any one of Schillers characters, but he incorporates his language, spoken in a mild Swabian dialect. The act of appropriating the text through speech has become an existential
necessity for him.
Right from this first scene, the audience could ask of the
performers those crucial questions that may consistently
arise in course of the evening: Is the performer performing
theatre or not? That actually means: is he really committing
Schillers lines to memory right now? Did he pick a verse
that he didnt know and had not been used in a previous
performance? Or is he just pretending to memorise the
text, when in actual fact he has been familiar with it for
weeks or months? As in professional theatre, there remains
nothing more for the audience to do during the performance than to decide whether to believe the performer or
not. It is conspicuous that Rimini Protokoll do not pursue
such scenic motifs further in their dramaturgy. You will
never find out whether or not Gassner could now repeat
the sentence by the end of the performance.
During the whole performance the Schiller fan wears a
football referees uniform. His clothes are therefore a clearly recognisable costume, while other performers appear in
suits or in other clothes that they are likely to wear in their
daily lives. In addition, Gassner has a whistle with him,
with which he gives a piercing blow to begin or end the
sections of the evening. In this way, the three parts of the
Wallenstein trilogy are clearly designated.
In the first part (Wallensteins Camp) six men enter and
turn their faces directly to the audience. The pensioner Robert
Helfert was, as a little lad in 1944, an air-raid defence helper in
Mannheim. He also talks about how his life relates to Schillers
drama, and has remained close to him ever since it was the subject of
an essay at school. The unemployed Hagen Reich is a former cadet
51
Friedemann Gassner in
Wallenstein
Kolumnentitel
52
officer, who wanted to join the army in order to earn money. Ralf
Kirsten, now the deputy superintendent of a police station in
Thringen, had joined the East German riot police to avoid doing
military service. The American veterans Dave Blalock and Darnell
Stephen Summers fought as GIs in Vietnam and Wofgang Brendel
served various members of the political elite when he was head
waiter at the Hotel Elefant in Weimar.
At first glance this group appears very heterogeneous. The men
appear to have nothing in common. You suspect that without Wallenstein they would never have consciously decided to meet and
would have had nothing to say to one another if they had. They
come from different generations and their lives have followed different paths. Their different accents bear witness to their East or
West German origins and the American ex-GIs seem to speak little
or no German. There is hardly any direct dialogue that takes place
between them. Even from the first scene it is clear that the performers are either performing actions and are therefore self-absorbed, or
are are turned directly to the audience. Even during united actions
such as marching, the appearance of any explicit interactions between the performers appears to be the exception. Herein lies a clear
difference from the psychologically realistic method of performance
that is prevalent in the professional theatre and upon which it depends, because actors must act with each other so that a dramatic situation can develop between them. Indeed direct contact with the
audience is detrimental to this end, and actors must therefore engage in what Stanislavksi termed public solitude .
Over the course of the performance of Wallenstein a number of
similarities become apparent, or are revealed. All of the men have a
personal connection to the military or can talk about experiences of
war. In the presentations, the romantic and glorified side of the soldiers life also becomes apparent, as, for example, when a photo of
Dave Blalock on guard as a young GI in Vietnam with a rifle, cigarette and a peace sign on his bare chest is projected onto the back
wall of the stage. Or when Robert Helfert sings Schillers song Auf,
auf Kameraden which he learnt in his youth group and marches in
a circle. All of the men found that the line of duty brought with it a
conflict between obedience, responsibility and self-interest. When
Ralf Kirsten describes his superiors encouraging him either to leave
his lover, who was seen as politically unreliable by the GDR, or to
Dave Blalock in Wallenstein
leave the service, we see allusions to the character of Max Piccolomini, who must decide between his loyalty to the Kaiser and his love
for Wallensteins daughter. Also Robert Helferts military upbringing as a young boy in a youth group can remind us of Maxs story,
who spent his whole childhood and youth with soldiers at war.
Despite these associations, the idea that a performer is from time to
time taking on the role of Max is out of the question. The production
continually demonstrates associations to Schillers motifs without
a single performer explicitly taking on the corresponding role.
Alongside these biographical connections to the dramatic material there is another decisive connection between those on stage:
53
Kolumnentitel
54
Kolumnentitel
they are creating the performance together. They know what is to be

done, they create the stories, talk about themselves and they have
planned and rehearsed this structure. Just as in Wallensteins Camp a
host of different motivations (conviction, habit, money) combine,
so a mixed group of performers arrive on the Rimini stage joined by
a common objective: to perform Wallenstein. Naturally behind any
common objective the personal motivations of the participants may
be very different. For example, the Vietnam veteran Blalock spoke
about his performance in political terms in an interview about
working with Rimini Protokoll, I have learned over years that
every arena of life contains a political agenda. And that this agenda is
generally set by the ruling elite of our society. The theatre arena is no
different except for one thing it appeared to me that the Wallenstein project could be a gust of fresh air that begins to clear out the
stuffy, conservative, stagnating smog that dominates much of the
theatre world today.
In the second part of the trilogy (The Piccolomini), the explicit

connections of individual roles to particular performers begin to be
established. As in Schiller, the title-role appears late on: It is SvenJoachim Otto, who had been the leading CDU candidate in the
1999 Mannheim mayoral elections and now gives the story of his
sharp rise and sudden fall in the party. Otto had stepped into the
breach when the CDU could not find a candidate willing to stand in
red Mannheim, a seat that held no realistic chances against the
SPD. The depiction of Otto is associated directly with the character
of Wallenstein, becoming especially clear in the third part (Wallensteins Death) with his description of how he was expelled by his
own party allies at the height of his power. On stage Otto acts confident. As soon as he appears he gives instructions to other performers as a matter of course. Over the course of the performance he divulges the machinations within his party, and at the same time describes the role that he had played within its mechanism. In so doing
he speaks of his colleagues and competitors by name, and not least
because of this, it becomes clear that Otto too has his very own reason for taking part in the project. He uses the opportunity of a public theatre performance as a forum for his own interests such as the
exposure of his opponents. The reception of his performance can,
therefore, remain ambiguous. It fluctuates between rejection of the
vain self-portrayal of a failed local politician and sympathy in the
face of the hard-hitting disclosure of his ensnarement. Otto appears
as the victim of a campaign of which he was both the head and the
centre of attention. The attitude, therefore, towards this character is
somewhat ambivalent, because it remains unclear what attitude
Otto himself takes towards past events and his current performance.
Although he describes his own errors unsparingly, he does not appear the righteous hero. While he seems to enjoy his performance
in front of an audience, he is still sensitive to the embarrassment
that such events can generate. He seems neither competent as a
politician nor as a performer. He becomes competent only in his
more removed role as the chronicler of his own story.
Nevertheless, it cannot be said of him that he embodied one of
the characters in the Wallenstein drama. That is true for the others
too, including the only two women involved in the project. Esther
Potter, an astrologer from Mannheim, has charted the performers
horoscopes and, in analogy to the character of Schillers Seni, tells
55
56
the hero of a precarious constellation of the stars at the moment of

his downfall. The performer Rita Mischereit represents the theme of
matchmaking, taking on the role of Schillers Grfin Terzky.
Mischereit runs an infidelity agency, which she promotes through
newspaper small ads. She offers discrete meetings primarily for
married men and women. The audience discovers from the performer that she conducts most of her business on her mobile telephone. As availability is her business, she has her mobile with her
during the performance. In the course of her story somebody actually gets in touch, the performance is interrupted and the audience
becomes witness to a matchmaking conversation. Whether there
really is a love-sick caller on the line, or whether this scene is contrived, planned and rehearsed, remains unclear for the audience.
Performed Journals
Fundamentally, the dramaturgy of the production exhibits two
types of scenes that require different approaches from the performers: reporting scenes and action scenes. In the reporting scenes, individual performers appeal directly to the audience by means of
gestures. They normally stand directly facing the audience and give
an account of biographical information from their lives or those of
the other performers. Here the form of the chronicle is very clearly
used, listing dates and locations for the events that are being described. In the action scenes, several performers work together to
carry out separate actions. In so doing the performers use techniques with which they are familiar on a daily basis as part of their
expertness . Hagen Reich, the former cadet officer, sort of demonstrates how you are trained to detect mines. In doing what they are
capable of, the performers gain a sense of security. The action
scenes are frequently characterised to show that daily life also contains staged events. Detecting mines is a role play in which the
mine beeps rather than explodes. It is explained to us that in a real
emergency a soldier can lose his limbs, but that this does not happen on the training ground. In this sense, military manoeuvres are a
theatrical game in which partisans are played by performers. Thereby, it was the fate of Cadet Officer Reich not to recognise how serious the game can become. He gives reports of how the commander, who had placed him incharge of a mission, told him and his
The Midnight Special Agency
team to go and take a shower . Reich understood this to mean that

the day was over. When their bus was stopped and ambushed by
partisans on the way back to the barracks, Reich thought that it was
just a mistake. He told the performer playing the partisan that he
must be in the wrong bus because the exercise was over for them.
But the partisan kept on playing his role. The situation escalated
and nobody from the team reacted as instructed in the training
manual and Reich didnt take on the responsibility that he had been
given. Eventually it became clear that this game was serious. The
performance of the ambush was planned in the commanders production book. The bitter lesson of this event was that it is never
home time in war and even on the way to the shower, partisans can
be dangerous.
57
Kolumnentitel
58
The narratives of other performers illustrate similar staged

events. Kirsten, for example, no longer wanted to play the stateloyal policeman at work, who has to keep his relationship a secret.
He made his feelings clear to one of his superiors, who pretended to
be on his side and later turned out to be an informant for the secret
service. Similarly, the head waiter Wolfgang Brendel had cultivated
a servile politeness for powerful guests. When he explains, not
without pride, how he had served the Romanian dictator Ceausescu
orange juice, it is unclear whether he has a personal opinion about
his customer. Also the loving gentle tone that Mischereit uses to
bring her customers together on the phone betrays little of her own
sensibilities. These staged yet taken for granted moments of daily
life are revealed most clearly in Ottos account of the machinations
of local politics, especially the power of public relations to shape the
image of the leading candidate during an election campaign.
Faking themselves, presenting themselves or making a calculated image of themselves is therefore already familiar to the performers from aspects of their daily lives and some have even been totally
and utterly conditioned by it. So real life is not making a breakthrough onto the stage with Rimini Protokolls real people, rather
every type of staging is being explored, which presents real daily
life. As such the self-presentation of individual people is not necessarily an aesthetic procedure, rather a life and survival practice. That
conflicts can always arise between ones self-awareness and the
image that is performed is made clear by Ottos persona. In the election campaign he had to present himself as somebody he was not: as
the relaxed, down-to-earth, nice family man from next door.
An appearance in a theatrical context, which means being in
front of an audience of strangers that have paid money, must, however, not be taken for granted by the performers, even if some of
them seem to enjoy presenting themselves to others. One can see
that these instances of public appearances have played a variety of
roles in the participants biographies. The professional politician
from the provinces handles them differently from the solicitous
waiter. The authority of a war veteran comes across differently from
that of an ex-army officer cadet. The audiences perceptions can be
placed in a difficult position. On one side, there is a desire in the audience to observe or to admire, even to control the observed
through an intensive gaze. On the other side, that of the performer,
one recognises the desire to present oneself, to express oneself and

to perform oneself in order to make an impression. In relation to
this, the American psychoanalyst Lon Wurmser spoke about two
fundamental impulses of cultural activity, which he called the desire
to watch (Theatophilie) and the desire to show (Delophilie). Within the realm of this theatrical perception these impulses can come
into conflict, and this might manifest itself in a feeling of shame
both amongst those on stage and those in the auditorium. This is
especially the case when a performance is seen as pushy, exaggerated, uninhibited or simply shameless. It is also conceivable that a
timid or insecure performer may in this way prejudice the very desire to observe him as inappropriate. It is not so rare that awkward
Rimini performers will have this effect; that one would rather look
away when they appear. Such conflicts of shame normally occur
when people perform before other people, therefore it happens in
professional theatre as well. It is also distinctive of Rimini Protokoll
that one clearly sees that each individual performer has to find their
own way through the unfamiliar situation and their own way
through the piece. Through the presence that they have (or dont
have), and which the audience may experience as comfortable or
uncomfortable, they effectively and involuntarily create their own
unique style. However, with professional actors who work on their
presence and its intentional application as part of their training, this
style is evened out and brought into agreement with other actors.
The extent to which they overcome something during the performance should not be apparent to the audience. This of course does not
mean that professional performances cannot appear pushy, uninhibited or shameless.
As for the performance style of Riminis participants, it is striking that they do not or barely adhere to the two prevalent amateur
dramatic performance stereotypes. One of these, that can be seen
anywhere from school plays to local dramatic societies, is that
movement and speech consistently correlate with and confirm one
another, meaning that the body will attempt to illustrate what is
being described by the text in the most obvious fashion (drawing in
the air). The opposite extreme demonstrates absolutely no meaningful, or even formulated connection between physical and verbal
signs. The mechanism of the body tends to trigger particular physical impulses, which manifest themselves in our extremities, but
59
60
these movements demonstrate no connection to anything, they

seem to be without motivation, uncontrolled and are rarely
followed through (amateur floundering). Rimini performances are
different: there is rarely any floundering or drawing in the air. The
performers react calmly and with control. The framework of the
staging gives them a certain degree of security. It is also apparent that
activities on stage are strictly formalised. So rather than giving off an
impression of spontaneity, actions appear as the calculated execution of a rehearsed sequence, which reveals the formal structure that
the team of directors created. This performance style is clearly in the
tradition of performance art, which is also concerned with the completion of real actions that are not based on fictional characters.
The difference between representing the self in everyday life and
appearing as oneself in the theatre lies in the fact that the staged
quality of the appearance in a Rimini Protokoll production is not
concealed, but this mode of perception is actually presented. The
performed chronicle that is on offer in a Rimini performance, can
also be taken as a process of cataloguing. Bertolt Brecht created a
blueprint for this in 1940 that he termed the Street Scene (Straenszene). The idea of the Street Scene is that the eye-witness to a road
accident informs other passers-by about how the accident happened. In so doing he does not perform the event physically, but
rather demonstrates the essential moments and thereby presents
the actions or the attitudes of the different individuals involved,
without physically embodying their roles. A theatre, that takes this
model as an example, according to Brecht, has as its central feature
the demonstration of a process as opposed to a complete reproduction of events. The goal of the performer must therefore not be to
confuse their identity with that of the character (Brecht is referring
to a complete transformation) but rather to make the gap between
themselves and the character recognisable. Brecht too had thought
of this idea in reference to non-professional performers, but unlike
his conception of the Street Scene, Rimini performers are giving a
report of an event at which they were not only present, but which
significantly influenced their life.
It is, however, decisive that the form of quoting and commenting is also maintained when talking about oneself. Rimini Protokolls performers do not have to make a distance between actor
and character visible, but rather they create a distance from their
character and story during the performance. That they do not appear
to allow themselves to become too emotional in moving or oppressive scenes only adds to their authority in the eyes of the audience.
That the performers continually have the possibility of distancing

themselves within the formal structure of the production is a distinguishing feature of Rimini Protokolls work. In this way a decisively marked difference can be made in working with non-professional performers, who are currently greatly in demand on television.
Docusoaps follow non-performers buying houses, raising children,
or coping with debt. But these performers have had this possibility
of distance taken from them through the way the production has
been framed, which a clever editor knows how to hide. They are reduced to an aspect (victim, culprit, stupid, cheeky, poor) that can be
slotted in to fill particular quotas. Authority is always denied these
people. No matter how energetic or loud they may be, their personalities seem to disappear before us.
An interest in the non-perfect
It is not rare to see moments when Rimini Protokolls performers

are overwhelmed, in which they forget lines, miss an entrance or appear insecure or clumsy. The perfection of the scenic arrangement is
consistently disturbed by the entrance of the non-perfect performer. These goofs and also the performers lack of professionalism
are not concealed: indeed breakdowns and failure are integrated
61
62
parts of the production. These mistakes are not deliberate and certainly not rehearsed, but in as much as they can occur over the
course of a performance, they are part of it. This interest in working
on the non-perfect characterises Rimini Protokolls productions.
This too is a significant way of differentiating between them and
the theatre practice in state funded theatres. It is not about the contrasting of professionals and amateurs, or about real and
fake people, but rather about the confrontation of perfection and
non-perfection. The impulse for perfection implies an ideal of
closure, wholeness or completeness. What is perfect is finished, it
has a beginning and an end and as such has a defined progression
and it implies a criterion of value or quality that is deemed to be objective. Perfection is always based on standards within traditional
societal frameworks. Whoever talks about perfection accepts these
standards.
The work on non-perfection, which currently can be seen in numerous theatre projects with non-professional performers such as
the elderly, the homeless, prisoners and the disabled, not only dispenses with the ideal of completion, but casts doubt on the entire
notion of directing people and their performances according to
some definitive ideal. Instead, they are looking for inconsistency,
contradiction, heterogeneity, incompleteness and openness. While
professional (perfect) acting trains the body as a virtuoso medium of
expression, the non-perfect looks for the bodys limits and contradictions and allows them to be experienced. This aspect is made particularly clear in moments when one is overtaxed; thoughts are
raised about vocal stress, or the inability to memorise a text or bring
it across clearly.
This practice shakes one of the essential pillars of professional
acting technique, namely the idea that an actors body is an object of
the production that can be regulated and controlled. Indeed, the
body can serve as the premise for and the primary means of expression, but at the same time the bodys materiality also limits every
performance and acts in resistance to it. Since the 18th century the
ideal of acting has been to master and conceal this imminent resistance and preferably not to let the audience notice it. As such acting
is regarded as a technique that can be learned. Such is the aim of
Stanislavskis theory of the psycho-physical interaction of interior
and exterior, to allow the actors body to reveal interior processes
which are then visible in his actions. Perfect actors therefore have to
master their bodies in the same way musicians master their instruments.
This harmonic instrumentalisation through technical mastery is
experienced as a dissonant harmonic through the non-perfect. The
bodies of Riminis performers are not specifically instruments of
virtuosity or mediums of expression that can be mastered, rather
they exemplify the bodys defiance and contrariness; it is in fact, not
just a medium but also a hindrance. The stage appearances of the
non-perfect make a mockery of the actors ideal of bodily control
and mastery.
In analysing Rimini Protokolls performance practice of self-presentation, one aspect of stage action comes to the fore, that is only indirectly, if at all, a theme in professional theatre: acting is both an aesthetic and an ethical activity. The confrontation with his own biographical material in front of an audience shows the individual
relationship of each performer to the production. As such, the
process of acting creates moments of shame or fear, moments of joy,
effort and frustration. Although the performers act within a clearly
delineated and recognisable framework, they do not appear simply
as a means to fulfil higher directorial intentions. Rather their nonperfection acts as a barrier between creators and audience and as
such lends more weight to the idea of the performers being responsible for their own actions. By contrast, professional actors seem to
be ethical lightweights. This practice could even prove to be
provocative for the whole theatre business, as it becomes the subject
of the discussion, alongside acting conventions.
When Peter Steins gigantic Wallenstein project with Klaus Maria
Brandauer premired at the Berliner Ensemble, the critical mechanisms of audiences and newspapers, which have been well oiled
since the boom of director-led theatre in the late 1960s, were set in
motion. Central to the debate about Peter Steins Wallenstein again
were questions like What was the director interested in? How did
he make an old text up to date? The question of why Klaus Maria
Brandauer or his younger colleagues took part at all, and what the
professionals risked, gambled and maybe lost, barelyplayed a role.
63
64
Kolumnentitel

Interviews with Riminis experts
By Eva Behrendt
Thomas Kuczynski knows a lot about Das Kapital (Capital). He has

been engaged with Karl Marxs world changing writings since he
was a student. He comes from a Prussian-Jewish dynasty of statisticians and economists. He studied and taught economic history in the GDR and is currently engaged in editing the first chapter
of Das Kapital. The 63-year-old found the notion that this book
could provide the subject for a theatre performance a completely
crazy idea and even more so the idea that he could be in such a
production. I am always open to crazy ideas but putting myself on
stage is not something that I am interested in.
Kuczynski, who wears a beard similar to that of the great Marx
and the heavy rockers ZZ Top, is one of the so-called everyday experts or specialists in their own lives that Rimini Protokoll carefully cast in each of their projects. In Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster
Band, which won a prize at the Mlheimer festival, Kuczynski was
the only expert in the narrow academic sense of the word. During
the show he shared the stage with people such as Jochen Noth, a
veteran of the 1968 movement, Ralph Warnholz, an ex-gaming addict and technician, and Ulf Mailnder, biographer of fraudster Jrgen Harksen. Together they talked about how Das Kapital has affected their lives both ideologically and practically. Kuczynski primarily filled the Dsseldorf production with statistics and facts.
Although he did not place very much value on himself as an expert of his own life, nevertheless Thomas Kuczynski still brought
himself into the theatre. I am hopeless at moving. he says, even
though he cuts an impressive figure on stage. He is the constant factor, the reliable archivist, the keeper of the grail and the priest of the
production. He pushes his belongings carefully before him in a
shopping trolley like a New York vagrant, except that the trolley
doesnt hold a sleeping bag and old newspapers, but instead several
dozen, Braille edition copies of Das Kapital.
They have been appearing in Rimini Protokolls productions for
a few years: people like you and me. People with no stage training or
ambitions to act, with pretty interesting jobs and fairly ordinary

backgrounds that include hobbies, illnesses and voluntary work.
Theatre critics who term these people amateurs are again and again
politely reminded by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel that it is far better to term them experts, not only because amateur is contrasted negatively with professional but also because expert, on the contrary, denotes competence. The term also relates
back to the directorial concept, the replacement of fictional plots and
material as subject matter with extracts from social
reality, normally under the premise of a socio-cultural question: How do we cope with death (Deadline)? What would the characters of Schillers Wallenstein be like today? Is Das Kapital still relevant?
In addition Rimini Protokoll allow disparities to
react with one another like chemicals in an experiment, for example mixing the Swiss national ritual of Knabenschieen (A marksmanship contest for
teenagers) with teenage boys love of shoot-em-up
games, or combining two different affairs of the
heart, namely organ transplants and dating. The
theatre makers use the documentary tools of reporters and academics to seek out people with
knowledge gained by learning or experience that
can offer insights into a subject, and who are prepared to confirm their knowledge, evidence and
experiences by appearing on the stage themselves.
Players and survivors
Heidi Mettler from Stfa on Lake Zurich suffered

from severe heart problems and had lived with an artificial heart for
a long time until finally around six years ago she finally received a
new heart through an organ donor. When Rimini Protokoll were
looking for heart transplant patients willing to participate in their
project Blaiberg & Sweetheart 19 they approached the Swiss transplant association and Heidi Mettler subsequently got in touch I
was happy to give this information. The story of my illness has
turned me into an expert, said the divorced mother of two sons.
Take, for example, the process of the transplant and its after-effects.
65
Thomas Kuczynski
Kolumnentitel
66
Many people dont even know that the body tries to reject a foreign
organ. Because of this risk I have to take a lot of medication that in
turn has many side-effects that have to be treated with further medication . At the crux of Blaiberg & Sweetheart 19 which takes its title
from the name of the first heart transplant patient Philip Blaiberg
and the pseudonym of an online flirt - is the search for hearts united
both medically and metaphorically. Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and
Daniel Wetzel had, with this in mind, not only cast experts from the
realms of cardio-technology, but also a speed-dating agent and a
lonely heart. No-ones expert knowledge, however, was as existentially fundamental as that of Heidi Mettler. She would already be
dead without her second heart. Consequently her appearance on
stage was, for her, about the overcoming of trauma and the allocation of meaning. It is very important for me to talk about my illness. I cant let it eat into me, I cannot stay silent as it is a piece of me
At the same time she absolutely does not want to look as though she
is complaining. People dont notice me. For most activities I actually need to spend the same amount of time recovering as I spend
doing them. It really is not that easy to live with a bad conscience, to
spend ages being able to contribute nothing to society.
Sven-Joachim Otto, on stage in Rimini Protokolls Wallenstein. A Documentary Staging also stood for an existential and life changing experience. More precisely, the Wallensteinian moment experienced by the 34 year-old conservative politician on 17th September
2004. On this day the ascendant political career of the 29-year-old
law graduate, who had only narrowly missed out on the mayoral
candidacy in Mannheim, was ended with one blow. Against all expectations his Christian Democratic colleagues did not vote for him
to be party treasurer and in so doing openly humiliated him. This
betrayal was, for Otto, the loneliest moment that one can experience as a politician . In this production whose themes and dramaturgy are based on Wallenstein, in which the experts life stories replace Schillers characters the story of Ottos rise and fall fit perfectly with Wallensteins Tod.
No other story divided audiences and generated so much media
attention as that of Sven Ottos Wallenstein. He even received two
nominations for Best New Actor at the 2006 Theater Heute (Theatre Today) critics awards and despite his office look and head boy
demeanour managed to bring across the ambivalent charm of the re-
cidivistic schemer on stage. Through the eloquent confidence of an

experienced speaker and the inner fragility brought on by the memories of his embarrassment he appealed to audience members from
both the left and right wings of the political spectrum. He also immediately aroused suspicions that his self-critical revelation was designed merely as a calculated political manoeuvre. Interestingly it
was those furthest removed from me politically who were the most
positive, noted the ex-politician. Within the left wing scene in
Berlin, for example, I am seen as an absolute freak.
When, however, I appear to be different from their
preconceived impression of a conservative politician I become a more likeable figure. If Id have
started campaigning for improved video surveillance so people feel safer on the city streets they
would have stopped sympathising immediately.
Perhaps it was also because his account was cathartic for him that Ottos appearance was so moving.
He does not find it embarrassing to allow his betrayal to be played over and over again in the theatre. Even today it is a release for me to be able to
talk about what happened in the open. I find that it
is possible for me to work through difficult periods
of my life by talking about them. That is my technique. I have to let it out!
Priyanka Nandy is 23, still lives with her parents and is currently studying for her Masters in
English Literature at Jadaypur University in Calcutta. Seen from a European perspective she is the
embodiment of the consciously post-colonial girl.
She reads and blogs in her spare time or chats online with her friends, most of whom, she says, she has never met in
real life. If she had ever reached an existential turning point, then it
certainly played no part in Call Cutta, Rimini Protokolls German/
Indian sightseeing tour. Other skills were required; The only talents I needed were that I enjoyed listening and loved to chat. It just
so happens that I also like to make up stories. Call Cutta brought
these three things together in a really nice way. Yes, said Priyanka
the Riminis did use my expertise in a certain way. Unlike Heidi
Mettler, Thomas Kuczynski and Sven-Joachim Otto, however, she
67
Sven-Joachim Otto
Kolumnentitel
68
did not stand on a stage. Her and her colleagues task was to direct
individual theatre-goers through Berlin-Kreuzberg via mobile
phone from Calcutta with reference to an elaborate timetable, to
suggest mysterious stories about the Indian freedom fighter Subhas
Chandra Bose and at the same time to conduct a friendly, enjoyable
and even flirtatious conversation. No problem for Priyanka, rather
an amazing, creative high. For me each performance was not only
an improvised piece of theatre but also a cultural exchange with
people who asked me all sorts of questions about, amongst other
things, Bollywood, my education, how old women in India are
when they marry and arranged marriages. They also told me the
most private things about themselves, things that they would normally have kept private. The trust that some people placed in me
was very touching.
After Ventzislav Borissov answered an advertisement for a driver from the Goethe Institute in Sofia, he thought that he would only
have to drive a truck for Stefan Kaegis mobile theatre project Cargo
Sofia. That he was actually supposed to be the star of the piece was
something he first realised just before the premire in Basel. Surprised? I was scared and didnt think I could do it. However, since I
like new and adventurous things, and my job involves a lot of routine, I decided to try it anyway. The 53-year-old Bulgarian was not
the only one to be taken by surprise. Despite clear messages from
the directors, other experts, like Heidi Mettler and Sven Otto, for a
long time refused to believe that they would actually stand on the
stage, as they simply could not conceive of a theatre without actors.
Since June 2006 Borissov has been on tour in Europe. He has visited places that he had previously only known from motorway exit
signs. Instead of cargo, 45 audience members now sit in his converted trailer. He and his colleague Nedjalko Nedjalkov show the audiences their own towns from the perspective of an East European
long distance lorry driver. It is a sightseeing trip made up of ring
roads, car parks and warehouses. Borissov says no more words than
are necessary, both in the production and on the subject of his own
expertise. I know what a good driver needs to know. I know the
streets, I know Europe and even the countries beyond it and I talk
about the experiences that I have had there
Role or readymade?
Experts Heidi Mettler, Thomas Kuczynski and Sven-Joachim Otto

regularly heard the dubious compliment The acting was really fantastic! regarding themselves or their colleagues. It was dubious because the enthusiastic audience member obviously thought that the
performers were playing a role rather than being themselves. A misunderstanding. These experts, who stand on stage in their everyday
clothes introducing themselves with their own names, are saying
we are not performing theatre. We are just ourselves.
Theatre theorists and critics have labelled Rimini Protokolls performers theatrical readymades.
But reality abandons one in such an unusual theatrical situation and places the performers under the
audiences scrutiny. For the readymades to remain
in place the direction must lend a hand and stage
them as such. Sven Otto remembers, When I
raised my voice, Daniel Wetzel immediately imitated me and said that I should not be so theatrical.
We were certainly protected from ourselves to a
degree. There was always the danger that it would
be unintentionally funny . Another precautionary
measure is the script, which serves not only as the
basis for the text but also as a running order and
memory aid. As far as possible, however, the script
should not be committed to memory. Ultimately
the stability of the piece lies in its instability. It
must not become a piece that is played out. We
should constantly be reminding ourselves anew,
explains Otto. In other words, on stage the experts
are ideally themselves, staying highly focussed,
free from stage fright and absolutely not falling into a routine.
The extreme fragility of this characterisation is confirmed in discussions. Thomas Kuczynskis answer to the question Did you
have the feeling that you were yourself on stage? is initially a convincing Yes, absolutely. Then he qualifies it with I know that
people are always playing roles and therefore it doesnt matter. He
adds, It matters for Angela Merkel that she is bad at playing the authority figure. Her predecessor Schrder was much better at it.
However, because one can see her mistakes it somehow makes her
69
Ventzislav Borissov
Kolumnentitel
70
more agreeable. Maybe real people though imperfect, are better

actors? On this Kuczynski wishes to remain undecided, I believe
every person is replaceable. I also think it would be possible for the
people in this piece to be replaced by professional actors. The mark
of a professional actor is their ability to fill someone elses shoes.
I really was myself, says Heidi Mettler Maybe my voice was
different. But ultimately I did not pay any attention to the effect I
have. I dont think I can be anyone else. she laughs. I am much too
conventional for that! That sort of thing has to be taught. I just dont
have the ability to act. I am an accountant, and thats all! Maybe
Heidi Mettler had no time to think about the effect she was having
because she was genuinely occupied with her body. The cortisone
that she has to take weakens her leg muscles and she was worried
about falling on the steps of the set. Once she even briefly had to
hold on to a colleague. The audience too was aware of the physical
strain that the theatre put on Heidi, but people connected her shortness of breath to her heart condition. Mistake. I did not have one
anxious moment about my heart! At last it is healthy. Most of all it
was important for Heidi to present herself to people afresh in every
performance. People have no idea about my story so I have to explain everything to them precisely. I found that if I switched off and
repeated from memory it did not work.
Priyanka Nandy, in contrast, had fun constantly rediscovering
herself in the telephone theatre. To the question of whether she had
felt like an actress she answers Absolutely! But without the airs and
graces! She explains, When we received the script, I had the
feeling that anyone with an Indian accent could have played this
role. But even in the first telephone conversation I created this character that on reflection was similar to me but a bit more interesting.
This started with what was written in the script the grandfather of
this character had been an adventurer and freedom fighter then I
made up some more stories, some of which were truthful and I
made up other interesting stories spontaneously over the course of
the conversations. The apparent ease with which the English
student fell into a virtual identity had something to do with the
anonymity of the telephone guides in Call Cutta. This was also the
case for the theatre-sightseers, who were never completely certain
who was navigating them through the seemingly enchanted neighbourhood south of Potsdamer Platz or if they were actually speaking
to someone in India (the time delay in the telephone conversation

was the only evidence to support this). The invisibility of ones
counterpart made two aspects of the game the in your face
openness combined with playful make-believe surprisingly easy.
The invisibility principle worked so strongly that many of the sightseers forgot themselves within the game. Priyanka Nandy observed
that her conversation partners were amazingly willing to follow her
(occasionally absurd) instructions. The average German theatregoer was very sporting. They did embarrassing
things such as running around in public shouting
just because we told them that this was a part of
the show. Some hesitated, some laughed, but they
did it!
Sven-Joachim Otto also feels there were some
aspects of his character that needed creating. On
the one hand I was Wallenstein, on the other I was
Sven Otto and I told a real story. I basically slipped
into the role that I had had in Mannheim. One
takes on several roles over the course of a lifetime,
particularly if one changes jobs as I have recently
done. If now I slip back into my old role for the last
Wallenstein performance, as though I were still a
conservative party whip or mayoral candidate then
this is a piece of reflection, a thinking of oneself
into a previous function and role. As time passes
and people change, Rimini Protokolls productions appear to be very fragile formations which
are not able to be reconstructed at will because the
people get older and sometimes become ill. If
someone leaves the piece is finished. That was
always our fear.
Total strangers in interesting configurations
For us it was a big surprise that someone from the theatre was remotely interested in the life of a trucker, says Vento Borissov. In
the beginning we thought that there could be absolutely no audience for it. So it was another big surprise that so many people came
every time. In Denmark we had to turn people away. How is it that
71
Priyanka Nandy
Kolumnentitel
72
from the supposedly unspectacular everyday aspects of our globalised world, Rimini Protokoll can create something spectacular?
Sven Otto believes that the answer lies in the attitudes of the directors. They are curious. They are looking for the origins and developments of the things that underpin the real world. It is not being a
know-it-all or lecturing, but rather a heuristic approach. They do
not give answers, but instead ask questions. As such they carefully
navigate their way through each and every character that they place
on the stage. Within this frame their own life stories, their own
opinions are totally unimportant. Thomas Kuczynksi adds with
customary dryness total strangers are always interesting.
This is not only the case for a predominantly educated middle
class audience that would normally only encounter a Bulgarian
truck driver in the theatre if another intellectual had made him up.
Sven Otto rhapsodises, Theatre with Rimini Protokoll was a new
experience for me. It brought me into contact with a group of totally different people. I would probably never have met any of them
without the theatre. This element of Rimini Protokolls process
seems to result in an exhilarating experience for most of the performers. The meeting and sharing it enables within the arena of high
culture represents a much more powerful breaking down of social
boundaries than is possible in a traditional theatre production and it
is no coincidence that it is the intellectual theatre audience that subscribes to these observations.
The social spectrum covered by Riminis casting is broad. Academics meet workmen, the jobless meet high earners, the old meet
the young, theatre fans meet those who were never in the theatre,
healthy people meet the disabled and, as in Thomas Kuczynskis
Marxist formulation, wage earners meet capitalists and intellectuals.
Sven Otto says To unify these people, to make them into a whole,
is an enormous task. This has a great deal to do with the personalities of Rimini Protokoll who sometimes speak like angels to people
but, if needs be, can also be slave-drivers. They have very sensitively tuned antennae. This is something they have in common with all
successful people in todays service based society. An instinctive
feeling for psychology plays an increasingly important role. None
of those interviewed had the feeling that they were being played:
on the contrary, many of them stressed how seriously they felt they
were taken.
The fact that all performers can stand on stage as themselves and
make important contributions as experts gives a Rimini project the
feel of a social experiment, a social utopia, a theatre in which each
person is interesting and valuable on his/her own terms. Since Riminis concepts are based on the use of text as communicative,
rather than artistic, they can be translated throughout the world
even functioning simultaneously in cities as diverse and distant as
Berlin and Calcutta. They require only a curiosity about people and
their stories. There is also financial detail that contributes to a positive experience of ensemble work.
Unlike their professional colleagues all of the performers earn the same wage as honorary extras
no matter whether their role is large or small. In
the theatre production everybody is the same, says
Christian Democrat Otto.
Even if none of the interviewees would say that
Rimini Protokolls theatre has really changed their
lives, which might be a little too much to expect, it
has nonetheless had a positive, if not euphorigenic, effect. Vento Borissov is happy to get to
know towns he was previously only familiar with
from the lorry park for as long as Cargo Sofia stays
on tour, Thomas Kuczynski is gradually visiting
the exhibitions in the towns where Das Kapital is
being performed, Heidi Mettler continues to provide information about her life and disease to interested students, Priyanka Nandy has promised to
keep an eye on the time when she is chatting to
people in the future (she learnt this working with
Rimini Protokoll) and Sven Otto says that the encounters with different spheres of experience such as those of pacifist Vietnam veterans made a deep impression on him: over time, I
have come to share their stance towards the war in Iraq. But above
all, they now go to the theatre whenever Rimini Protokoll have a
new production.
73
Heidi Mettler
Kolumnentitel
Peter Kirschen: I always wanted to

become a pilot but all the circumstances seemed to be against it ! In
1969, I had a medical examination,
because I can not move my leg more
than like this. The Doctor said: You can
never fly!
All: OOOooohhh or MMMmmmhhh
Danny Rits: September 2001, we

expected more and more troubles,
pilots were on strike, metalworkers
were present at the airport, well-known
as heavy trouble makers. About one
and a half months before the crash, my
boss told me to make a list of the weak
points of the Sabena buildings. And
that is what I did:
Peter Kirschen: In 1973 I found an
ad in the newspaper. So I took the
opportunity to become a flight attendant. But the Doctor said: No, its not
possible, because one leg is 5 cm
shorter!
Danny Rits: Hangar 26: gas bottles,

they can be used as weapons or bombs.
Peter Kirschen: In 1974 I told the
doctor: Listen this is my body, I take
responsibility for it, so if I want to fly,
please let me do! He said: Okay. For
MAXIMUM two years and at your own
risk!
Danny Rits: Hangar 23: there is

enough Cyanic acid to kill all the people of the village of Zaventem.
Sabenation. Go home & follow the

news
76
Kolumnentitel

On the relationship between reality and fiction
By Miriam Dreysse
In the performance Bei wieviel Lux schalten Wurst und Kraus das Licht
ein? (At How Many Lux Do Wurst and Kraus Turn on the Lights?) from
the series Ungunstraum Alles zu seiner Zeit (Unfavourable Space
Everything in its Time) produced in 1998 by Helgard Haug, Marcus
Dross, and Daniel Wetzel, the audience is taken by bus from the theatre to Frankfurts main electricity control centre. The sentence the
performance is starting now is heard twice in the bus following an
explanation of the evenings events. It is heard again upon arrival at
the control centre, where the audience can watch the engineers and
controllers of the public utility at work from a visitors gallery partitioned off by soundproof glass. Monitors and plans are consulted; keyboards, buttons and levers activated; telephone conversations conducted. One of the employees, who is introduced as Mr Wetzel, delivers a lecture on the history and workings of the grid. We learn that
Frankfurts electricity has been coming out of the socket since 5.30 pm
on the sixteenth of October 1894, that the new building, where we are
now, was constructed in 1977, and that the visitors gallery was not
opened to the public at the time due to the tense political situation in
Germany. In addition, we learn a lot about the technology, generation
and use of electrical power, about powerless districts and emergency
power operation-boards, about electrical peaks and electrical troughs.
The listeners cannot assess the accuracy of this talk, and some of the
expressions seem so theatrical that they cannot help asking if at least
some of the material has been made up for this performance. Even the
events taking place below in the control centre constantly flit between
normality and theatricality. In quiet moments, everyone seems to potter around independently, occasionally speaking to someone, occasionally laughing. Then suddenly small lights come on, flashing frantically, and there is a brief frenzy of activity, like a staged climax, that
resembles a low budget Hollywood film. The peculiarity of the moment is intensified because it is difficult to believe that those few people down below can control the electricity supply for an entire metropolis with the push of a button. Perhaps they are only pretending.
77
Via headphones one can switch between three channels: Wetzels lecture, a live relay that features all the sounds and conversations coming from the control office and visible through the glass
screen, and a crime story read by one of the controllers about his
colleagues. Just as we can move freely about the visitors gallery and
take different positions, we can also adjust the channels ourselves.
The individual channels seem consciously composed and produced,
even the one coming from the control centre with its different background sounds and warning noises, the bubbling of an aquarium
and partly absurd-seeming conversations. This aspect is intensified
by the possibility of mixing different channels together.
Towards the end of the performance, Wetzel celebrates his departure after thirty-five years of service. A retired utility employee
makes a speech. Wetzel receives a certificate, a present from the union and a
bicycle from his friends. He immediately rides a circuit around the switchboards. Sparkling wine is served and
glasses are raised inside the office as
well as in the gallery. Wetzel about
whom we still know nothing for certain, not even if that is actually his
name, or if it is taken from Daniel
Wetzel is allowed to switch on
Frankfurts street lights one last time
as the final act in his job. But he must
Bei wieviel Lux schalten Wurst und Kraus das
wait until the right lux count has been
Licht ein?, 1998
reached. This occurs, we learn, when at least five measuring stations
around the city report a measurement of less than seventy lux.
Below, the control centre waits, and above, the visitors gallery
waits. Then a gong sounds and Wetzel operates a small and inconspicuous lever on a switching box. A glance out of the glass pane on
the other side of the visitors gallery confirms it: the street lights
come on outside.
Even in this early work, produced by Helgard Haug and Daniel
Wetzel together with Marcus Dross, the borders of reality and
fiction blur in an almost imperceptible way. The performance is
starting now is announced three times and one can never be sure
whether this time it really is starting. When does reality end and
Kolumnentitel
78
the performance begin? When does the performance end and reality begin again? When the street lights come on? But isnt this actually a decidedly theatrical moment? One is never sure: is Wetzel
actually retiring today? Do they really have to act so hectically or is
that just put on for us? Are the control lights flashing for real or
just for the audiences sake?
The production consists here principally in framing reality and
perception. The directorial teams work is rather one of research, of
seeking and finding, linking and structuring, than of creative invention. The participants are protagonists; they are not placed in the
scene as amateurs, but as professionals, masters in their field. The
theatricality of work and of daily life is presented and doubt is consistently raised as to the authenticity of the proceedings and the
reliability of our own perceptions. Ultimately, one cannot clearly
divide reality and production, and so it is that the appointed signal
to start the return journey to the theatre (or to reality?) is once again
the performance is starting now .
How does one act old?

In Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten Dame (Premire: The Visit), Rimini Protokoll interweave the text of Drrenmatts drama with
questions of memory, the fictional narrative with the participating
experts real attempts to remember the 1956 world premire. How
does one act old? a performer asks the audience during the performance. The question relates to the representation of the dramatic character, but also to the age of the experts themselves, and to the
staging of the fifty-one-year time span that separates the world premire from Riminis production and that equals almost an entire
lifetime for the participating experts. It also refers to the idea that
theatre, as shared time, is always a shared experience of passing
time, ephemerality and transience. How does one act old? In Urauffhrung, Rimini Protokoll decided not to act old in a representational sense, but rather to let the whole performance revolve around the
themes of recollection and passing time. The world premire is not
re-enacted, but rather re-presented through life-size photographs of
the actors who performed it, thus maintaining the unbridgeable gap
to the past. The experts on stage are incapable of reconstructing a
unified picture of the past; individual memories are too different;
apparently objective forms of commemoration such as photography and writing are too unreliable. Becoming old is also a process of
memory: I constantly discover and re-invent my own past. Thus the
experts recollect and ask the audience, How will you remember this
evening in fifty-one years? And so, through the passing of time,
awareness of their own transience descends upon the audience.
How does one act old? This question is also a reminder of
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp (Crossword Pit Stop), the first collaborative work by Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel, which was made in the year
2000 in Frankfurts Knstlerhaus Mousonturm. Here, too, age is not
acted, but rather enters the theatre in reality. The performances protagonists, Wera Dring, Ulrike Falke, Martha Marbo and Christiane
Zerda, are actually old: their average age at the time of the premire
was around 80. Mrs Dring and Mrs Falke are residents of the retirement home next to the Mousonturm. Mrs Marbo and Mrs Zerda
(who replaced another resident, Mrs Nicolai, shortly before the premire) are actresses. The performance deals with Formula 1 racing on
the one hand and growing old on the other hand. What does an old
hand say that a young one does not? How quickly can a tyre be
changed? What about a hip? While motor racing is represented
through texts as well as individual design and scenic elements, age
enters the stage through the actual presence of elderly bodies. The interweaving of reality and fiction is already apparent in both the topic
and the choice of cast. This interlacing does not only play with opposites such as youth/old-age, masculinity/femininity, speed/ slowness, technology/human bodies, vitality/bodily decline, but it also
brings out commonalities such as the threat to physical integrity, the
constant presence of death and the experience of time during the
seemingly never-ending repetition of the same routes, whether on
the race track or in the corridors of the retirement home. The intertwining of topics that seem at first glance to be at odds with one another sets a process of fictionalisation into motion. It makes certain
aspects unreal and others concrete; possibilities are transformed into
realities and vice versa. In this way, surprising new perspectives are
opened on both motor sports and ageing.
The female performers are not only experts on the daily experience of being elderly, but their actual age also determines the events
on stage in a very concrete way. At the same time, these real conditions are translated into an artistic form: Ms Falk is unable to mem-
79
80
orise text, so she sits during the performance at a desk on the

forestage and reads the protocol that gives the performance its structure. The concentrated manner in which she reads gives clear form
to her and her speech, both supporting and protecting Mrs Falke and
simultaneously revealing the performance as a construction. The
clear format and the matter-of-fact language of the text in turn highlight the trembling of her voice, which is not only a sign of her age,
but also inscribes the reality of an aged body into her speaking. Even
on the vocal level, staging and reality merge the consciously constructed text about old age, speed and death with the fragility of the
performers bodies.
In Mrs Drings case as well, an artistic form is used to highlight
the reality of her age and the frailty of her body and memory and to
simultaneously to produce a distance that respects the performer
and enables a process of fictionalisation. The mode of speech found
for her was that of questions. Her entrances are announced by a
Formula 1 flag, which she follows by walking directly onto the
forestage. She remains there and each time Mrs Falke gives her the
cue, Mrs Dring asks, she asks, Will it ever again be as it once
was? or How quickly can you think? In this way the commonplace form of the question is distanced and estranged, so that here
too real and fictional moments are knitted tightly together.
A spotlight follows Mrs Marbo, who walks slowly across the
stage with head and shoulders bowed slightly, her gaze focussed on
the floor in front of her. In her left hand, she holds a walking stick
that she leans on lightly. She slowly places one foot in front of the
other. In the middle of the stage, she stops and faces the audience
directly. She begins her tale. The slowness, the posture, the visible
concentration on the act of walking are all familiar signs of old age,
but Mrs Marbo, who plays Mrs Marbo, is actually old; she is not just
pretending. The reality of her body is brought to attention through
the clear framing and scenic isolation of her walking, but simultaneously one can see that, aware of the public setting, she stresses
particular aspects of her physicality. Thus through theatrical means,
reality is highlighted and at the same time made ambiguous: the ambiguity between fiction and reality.
Marbo relates how she and three other women, who bear the
names of the other performers and who, although already old, intend
to once more take part in a race in order to test the effects which
Wera Dring, Ulrike Falke and Martha Marbo
cannot be simulated of high velocity on the human body . This

story of former racing car drivers, who once more take part in a race in
their old age, continues throughout the performance. Mrs Marbo
comes before the audience again and again to drive the story on:
The evening before going to the training camp, I looked for my old suit
in the wardrobe. As I was looking, a slip of paper fell out onto the floor.
I had to laugh: typical Dring. Before races, she had always hidden little
heaven .
messages in my pockets: Drive carefully , or Well meet again in
The various styles of text and speech constantly re-negotiate the relationship between reality and theatricality. Falke reads aloud, Zerda
talks about life in the retirement home, Dring asks questions,
Marbo tells her story using the characteristic diction of theatre. The
border between reality and fiction becomes permeable. Could there
perhaps be some truth in the story about the team? Is there really an
old age simulator that managers use to ride through supermarkets,
in order to improve the presentation of their products for an elderly
target group? Is it true that scientists agree that the time span
between the past and the future the present lasts for three seconds? Many of the anecdotes taken from motor racing and science
sound so absurd that one begins to doubt the criteria for differentiating the real from the fictional, the true from the false. And meanwhile death regularly appears with a terrifying casualness.
81
Kolumnentitel
82
Kolumnentitel
a fatal accident. And the teacher asked the class, Was Bernd Rosemeyer
a hero?
Illusion and fiction
How does one act old, without presenting clichs of elderly people?
How does one act old without overacting the process of bodily
decline and the impossibility of representing it? How does one
create space for subjective memories and for the subjective experience of ageing? And, last but not least, how does one act old and still
allow it to be enjoyable? Old age in Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp is
not merely brought to the stage and certainly not exhibited in the
form of the elderly women, but it is rather reflected upon both verbally and scenically, and its representation is rendered problematic.
This reflection arises through the process of rehearsals, research and
textual work together with the performers, so that they appear on
stage as protagonists in their own realms and enjoy playing both for
the audience and for themselves. The distance brought about by the
aesthetic form, allows them to maintain a distance from themselves
and to face the audience consciously and confidently.
13 August: Hkkinen wins the Hungarian Grand Prix
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp
14 August: Mrs Simon becomes GDA-Correspondent.
You reach the highest speed when you fall and suffer a femoral neck
I thought that one would became older much later. Mrs Simon says,
9 August: Meeting with Dring, Simon and Falke. Dring says, Earlier
The intertwining of the real, elderly bodies with the artistic/aesthetic form and linguistic reflection repeatedly raises the question of
how it is possible to represent the ageing process.
25 August: 70 days remaining until the race
24 August: Photograph all the paintings in the residence.
23 August: Will the hearing aid be switched off when you are dying?
22 August: Dunlop facility visit.
19 August: Rain machine perforated.
16 August: Memory training.
Rimini Protokoll do not simply attempt to place reality on stage in

the form of experts. Nor do they create a self-contained illusion;
rather they create an actual, extra-theatrical reality in the form of the
experts, as their biographies and documentary material are brought
into the theatre. Yet this translation into a theatrical context always
entails an adaptation and alteration of reality. The performances are
characterised by a closely-knit interweaving of reality and fiction.
The term illusion comes from the Latin verb illudere, meaning
to deceive, to play, to mock. In the model of the bourgeois theatre of
illusion, illusion refers to a deceptively realistic reconstruction or
copy of a reality that exists outside the theatre, which depends on
the objectivity and objective reproducibility of this reality. The
foundations of this concept of illusory theatre date back to the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, to the theoretical writings of
Lessing and Diderot for example . It is essential for theatrical illusion
in this sense to disguise its production, its as-if character. Any distance from reality whatsoever must be made to disappear, and the
representation should be merged with that which is represented. As
fracture. You cant represent that . Falke, thats me, says, In 1937 Bernd
Rosemeyer drove at an average of 276 kilometres per hour. Then he had
83
84
the term deception implies, the illusion is all about the audiences
perception, and it is essential that the theatrical play be taken for
reality by the audience.
In comparison with such an understanding of illusion, the theatre
of Rimini Protokoll is decidedly anti-illusionistic. The relationship to
reality outside of the theatre is not representational, but one in which
reality is brought into the theatre. At the same time, distance is indicated from this reality, which has been brought into the theatre
through transference. Rimini Protokoll work in an almost Brechtian
fashion, using methods of disruption, separation and revelation of
their devices. The assembly of individual elements is for the most
part abrupt, preventing the formation of an illusory whole and creating space for subjective points of entry. Links within the content are
offered, but ultimately the interpretation of the connections comes
down to the individual audience members. The rehearsed, as Brecht
would say, takes centre stage, because the demonstrative and distanced moment of theatre, the act of appearing and speaking before
an audience, is clearly conducted for all to see. The experts almost
always stand facing the audience directly and recite their text into the
auditorium from this position. Often the entrances are further emphasised through scenic elements such as lighting or structural
equipment. There is almost never a closed stage dialogue: normally
the experts talk in long sequences without interruption. The auditorium is included as a space for speaking. The public nature of the situation and the place of the audience are made known. The distance that
is created is also a distance of the experts from themselves, from their
own stories. They are not presented as affected parties, but rather
introduced as the subjects of their own biographies or rather their
own subjective versions of their biographies, as the case may be. This
introduction has the personal quality of a process of getting to know
you , and is simultaneously processed by the subjective imaginations
of the audience members. The throwing into question of the factual
content is a consequence of the distancing, and this makes a process
of fictionalisation possible.
The term fiction or fictitiousness comes from the Latin fingere,
which originally meant to picture, to form or to shape and refers to
an intentional act of giving something form. The Latin verb further
means to invent, to feign, which means that we are to understand
fiction generally as an invented world primarily created within
language. In such a fictionally created world, categories such as true

and false are rendered meaningless. For theatre, the term fiction has
long referred only to the fiction produced by dramatic texts, which
is staged as a self-contained illusion as in the case of the theatre of
illusions. Only recently has attention turned to forms of theatre that
open and play with fictional spaces independently from a dramatic
text. The interplay between theatrical techniques and the perceptions of the audience sets the process of fictionalisation in motion.
If, following Wolfgang Iser, one understands the fictional not as
something opposed to reality, but rather as an intentional act of simulation that translates between reality and the imaginary, then it is
just as impossible to maintain a clear distinction between reality and
fiction in the theatre. For Iser, selection and combination are the
essence of fiction. It is not the selected and combined elements that
are fictional, but rather the process of selecting and combining. The
choice of experts and their accounts, as well as the attendant decontextualisation, are therefore as much acts of fictionalisation as are the
dramaturgical and scenic arrangements. The fictional allows the
imaginary to be conveyed in concrete form, as well as to reformulate
reality and create new perspectives. Iser explains in The Fictive and
the Imaginary that fictitiousness must be revealed and recognized as
staged so that all natural attitudes to the world may be suspended and reality may be made into an object of observation . Such an
understanding of fiction contrasts strongly with the idea of illusion,
which aims at being indistinguishable from reality and affirms natural attitudes to the world.
In the stage works of Rimini Protokoll reality is consciously
shaped, so that on the one hand its status as reality is crossed out,
and simultaneously the process of fictionalisation is initiated and
new perspectives are created on what appears to be familiar. In so
doing, the barriers between reality and fiction are destabilised with
regard to both the content and the staging. So, for example, the biographical stories and accounts are held to be real because they are
related by the experts, while at the same time, these stories have a
fictional quality, since they are created verbally in the context of the
performance without from the point of view of the audience any
ontological consistency. Signs of authenticity, such as insecurity and
speech flaws that give a sense of unprofessionalism, become rapidly
intertwined with the distancing effects that are used to make the
85
86
staged nature of the events clear. These are then in part linked to the
devices of illusionistic theatre, such as coloured lighting or a revolving stage. Here they are used in such an isolated and reduced
fashion that they are immediately recognisable as theatrical devices.
The biographical accounts fluctuate in this way between giving the
impression of authenticity, as a consciously formulated version of
an individuals story or life, and the possibility that everything could
be freely invented.
The speech uses slang and everyday language, rather than an educated tone. However, it becomes clear through the use of complete, thought-out sentences or an obvious attempt to articulate
clearly that it has been rehearsed for the public. Rimini Protokoll
clearly favour untrained voices in their experts. No real effort is
made to improve their articulation, to iron out speech defects or to
change dialects into High German. The untrained nature of the
voices for example the way they concentrate on the act of speaking
is highlighted as evidence of the authenticity of the experts. The
impression of authenticity, however, arises via the theatrical framework, against which the individuality, rawness and errors of the
untrained voices grate and become audible as an incursion of the
real. The traces of the real, subjective body in the voice are revealed
through the clear form and largely straightforward manner of speaking of documentary reporting. Ultimately, the impression of reality
is an effect of the staging on the vocal level as well.
The manner of speaking of the individual experts varies, even
though most of them adopt the basic statuesque posture of facing
the audience directly. The relationship between the theatrical and
the everyday, between non-professionalism and confident selfpresentation always takes a different form. In Wallenstein. Eine dokumentarische Inszenierung (Wallenstein. A Documentary Staging), for
example, the professionalism and politically-honed rhetoric of the
ex-mayoral candidate Sven-Joachim Otto are juxtaposed with technician and Schiller-fan Friedemann Gassners concentrated efforts
to speak clearly in a style that constantly switches between the
slightly monotone recitation of Schillers texts and formulations
that use regional slang. The proprietor of a dating agency, Rita
Mischereit, is absolutely confident when she talks on the telephone,
but seems insecure, quiet and hesitant when she is in front of an audience. Robert Helfert, an old anti-aircraft gunner, sings military
songs from the Second World War; Hagen Reich demonstrates military orders; the Vietnam veteran Stephen Summers raps against
war. The different modes of speech reveal the theatrical character of
non-theatrical discourses, such as those found in politics, the military or science, and have the potential to open up fictional spaces
and also disrupt them. This happens, for example, when Robert
Helfert suddenly breaks off his narrative, told in the style of a personal memory about the last days of the Second World War, to
move immediately into a presentation of contemporary research
findings on the connection between suicide and heroic death. His
memories are capable of calling up images from the subjective, familial and cultural memories of individual audience members. The
break into a scientific mode of speech not only broadens the topic in
content, but also unsettles the manner in which it should be received and the associations evoked up until then. In this case as well,
a distance from personal memory is maintained; appearance and
speech are clearly staged. Helfert stands in the centre of the stage in
front of an aluminium-covered wall. He is introduced and dismissed
by a whistle. He speaks slowly and clearly in complete sentences
with considered pauses. Even his subjective memory appears to be a
conscious formulation of his own history. The relating of biographical events, as becomes clear, always contains fictive aspects.
As with the scenic devices, the montage structure of the texts
works against creating a self-contained illusion. The distance that is
created from the object from the biography enables the audience
to suspend their normal attitudes, as Iser would say, and to develop
subjective perspectives and points of entry. Focus is directed precisely on the apparently unspectacular things in the lives of individuals, which appear in a new light: the everydayness of ageing, the
turmoil of puberty, a life-crisis that is stabilised through assimilating a fictional text, a biography without suicide or heroic death,
but with the fear of both.
With Sabena, you are already there
Reality, in the form of talk show confessions, docu-soaps and

shows such as Big Brother, has increasingly taken on a central role
on television since the nineteen-nineties. The realness of the candidates or amateur performers is supposed to guarantee the reality
87
88
of the stories, feelings and emotions. It is essential to this guarantee

that the illusion remain self-contained. The talk shows, reality
shows and docudramas hide the fact that they are staged and claim
to be true to reality. This ubiquitous practice forms part of the background to all of Rimini Protokolls work, but sometimes they explicitly confront the methods of representation used by the media.
In Sabenation. Go home and follow the news, the expert Myriam Reitanos explains how, on television and in the press, she and her
daughter became a symbol for the bankruptcy of the airline Sabena.
Myriam Reitanos had been a flight attendant for Sabena for 27 years
when she was forced into early retirement as a result of the bankruptcy of the Belgian state airline. The audience is able to read this
on a conveyor belt-like written scroll at the beginning of the performance. At a later point in the performance, a newspaper article
on Sabenas bankruptcy with a photograph of Reitanos in the middle of a crowd is projected onto a screen hanging in the middle of the
wall at the back of the stage. She wears a scarf over her head and
stares out of the picture with wide eyes, looking like a mourner.
Myriam Reitanos places herself in a cut-out section of the screen so
that one can see the Myriam of today standing on a ladder next to
the oversized newspaper picture from the time of the bankruptcy.
Then a report from Belgian television about the bankruptcy is
shown featuring workers protests followed by an interview with
Reitanos. She explains briefly how she was told to pack her things
and go home, and then says tearfully into the camera that she is desperate, she doesnt know what to do. She has a 5 year-old daughter;
what will become of her? The television report is paused and the
real, live Myriam Reitanos tells the audience with reference to the
television picture that these two sentences are the reason why the
media descended on her and her daughter. Soon the television followed her everywhere. Further television reports, interviews with
Reitanos and pictures of her and her daughter in an everyday setting
are shown. The film clips reveal how the politics of marketing and
of information function in the media: the information is charged
with emotive pictures of mother and daughter, so that both the people and the information are reduced to the lowest common denominator a touching picture. In contrast, the performance allows the
participants to tell the story, revealing political and economic structures and making their significance for the individual people tangi-
89
ble. While Reitanos was portrayed in the media purely as a victim,

she is able to reflect on, comment on and criticise her media manufactured role during the performance. She not only tells her own
story here, but also takes a position vis--vis her own biography and
as such reclaims her role as subject of this biography. Such a conscious
engagement with ones own history is pushed and prompted by the
rehearsal process and by the significant contribution of the participants in the formation of the performance. It is this sense of actively
taking part in the formation and of
sharing responsibility that becomes
visible on stage in the form of the
experts self-confidence. This way
of working is also, alongside an engagement with social reality, a political dimension of Rimini Protokolls theatre.
Similarly to Myriam Reitanos,
other participants go from being affected by to being subjects of their
biographies over the course of the
performance. Kris Depoorter is introduced through a list of his biographical information on the already mentioned scroll: name,
date of birth, Sabena personnel
number, eleven years in Sabenas
employment, unemployed since
the bankruptcy. He enters and begins to stick white strips of tape
Myriam Reitanos in Sabenation
onto the stage floor. While doing
so, he explains that this is his apartment. Here is the living room;
here is the kitchen, the dining room, the hallway. The text, At
home, I walk up and down the rooms. I cant stand still, can now be
read on the script roll. Kris explains that he has been unemployed
ever since Sabena went bankrupt, that he paces around his apartment: dining room, living room, kitchen, dining room again; he
goes around the table, kitchen again. His wife is not there. He de-
Kolumnentitel
90
scribes the view out the window, describes his garden and his dog.
He speaks as if he were giving a report, walking out of the area
marked with tape and addressing the audience again and again. He
continues to repeat his text and his route even when another scene
has begun on the right hand side of the stage. Despite his everyday
way of speaking, he fictionalises his own story, using minimal scenic and physical devices to describe not only the fiction of the
rooms and the appearance of his
house on stage, but also, through
the repetitive structure, a comprehensible representation of his situation: the emptiness of his daily
life as a result of his unemployment. The theatrical devices are reduced to such an extent that while
they refer to the practice of producing an illusion in theatre, they
do not reproduce it. On the contrary, as much as the repetitions
and tape marks provide an impression of his daily life, they also give
his restlessness a form and create a
distance from Depoorter the person. Through such explicit processes of fictionalisation, we are
not only presented with information about Sabenas bankruptcy in
Sabenation, but also the experiences of individual people. The information on socially, politically
Kris Depoorter in Sabenation
relevant topics is linked to the subjective experiences of individuals. While, as audience members, we
might not completely identify with these individuals, it is precisely
because of the incompleteness of this identification the distance to
reality that they provide us with an opportunity to experience reality beyond the reception of pure information.
Kolumnentitel
Welcome to Bulgaria
In front of the Mousonturm in the middle of Frankfurt, forty-five audience members climb into the trailer of a lorry and sit on the chairs
that are oriented to face sideways. They are greeted by two men:
Welcome to Bulgaria. My name is Vento. I once drove toilet paper from
the Ukraine to Serbia in an identical lorry. At that time, there was an em-
bargo against Serbia. So, dont worry, I have been a lorry driver for fifteen
years.
And
Welcome to Bulgaria. My name is Nedjalko. I have worked for the Bul-
garian freight company Somat for twenty-five years, three years of
which in Kuwait. It is now seven oclock. We will leave Sofia in an hour.
Hopefully we will reach Serbia by tonight. Tomorrow we go through
Croatia, the day after tomorrow, Italy We will be in Frankfurt in five

days at the earliest.
It is already clear from this prologue that Stefan Kaegis Cargo Sofia
links real and fictional elements. Over the next two hours, the audience members are driven through their respective towns (Basel,
Frankfurt, Berlin, Strasbourg, for example) in the lorry. From the
drivers cab, the two drivers, Vento and Nedjalko, talk about their
daily lives as lorry drivers, about the different countries that they
have driven through, about themselves and their families and about
the route that they are driving at the moment. The starting point is
Sofia, Bulgaria and the destination is the town of the performance.
As one drives through Frankfurt and looks out the glass side of the
trailer into the city at night, one learns details of the route from Sofia
to Frankfurt: how bad the streets in Serbia are and how corrupt the
police are, what it looked like during the war, where you can rest,
how long you have to wait at the Bulgarian/Serbian border and how
many cigarettes you are allowed to bring through. The view of the
city alternates with images from a video camera in the drivers cab
and videos of the drive through Sofia, Belgrade, Croatia and Slovenia. In addition, short documentary films about the organisational
and operational methods of various international transport and logistics companies are shown, as well as a continuous text loop about
91
92
Kolumnentitel
the rise of the German transport firm Betz and its illegal employment practices, exploitation of drivers and bribing of politicians in
various countries. The factual accounts of the political, social and
economic structures of globalisation are juxtaposed with the subjective perspectives of the two drivers Vento and Nedjalko about their
occupation, working conditions and positions in life. The combination of the two levels focuses on the effects of economic realities on
individuals and their experiences in a world organised by capitalism.
The illusion of a self-contained personality with whom one can
fully identify is not provided here either. The two drivers representation of their own experiences their biographies and the day-today reality of their work is conveyed through devices that create a
distancing effect. Apart from the greeting at the beginning, they are
separated from the audience spatially. Their voices and images are
transmitted only via media and only at specific times. They generally speak in a manner that resembles factual reporting. We only learn
about them and their private lives incompletely, just as we almost
only ever see them in profile and their families in unclear photos
that they wave in front of the camera. The intimacy of the situation
is played with at the same time. While the audience is packed tightly in a space that, as becomes clear from the drivers narration, is almost a private space for them, only a mediated and fragmentary
view of the even more intimate space of the cab is provided. And
while the lorry is a space in which they spend weeks of their lives,
we take part in this life for a couple of hours, are allowed into their
Cargo Sofia. Eine europische Last-KraftWagen-Fahrt
daily routine. The shaky family photos could be seen as a symbol of

familiarity. The distance that is simultaneously maintained is one of
respect for other people. It is a realistic distance, one of estrangement between performers and audience members who have never
met before, and it is not plastered over. There is always a residual insecurity. On saying goodbye we ask ourselves whether we have
actually learnt anything about these people into whose eyes we now
look for the first time.
Passing by on the other side of the glass pane, the city streets appear similar to a film set and are made unreal by the motion, the expectations of the audience and the montage of text and film clips.
The journey and the passing images conjure up numerous
mnemonic, associative and fictive spaces especially in the moments when nothing is said and nothing is projected. Through the
length and staging of the trip, this becomes increasingly significant
as a way of experiencing motion, perception and time. The proximity to filmic representation becomes clear. The outside fundamentally changes its reality status through this modified form of perception. Far from the districts usually visited by residents and tourists,
the journey leads to parking areas and motorway bridges, to Frankfurts East Harbour, a container depot, a haulage company, warehouses and a waste sorting plant. Stops are made at various stations
and employees there explain work procedures and global economic networks. We look through the glass at spaces that seem unreal:
fortresses of containers in diffuse, coloured light, a man in front
93
Kolumnentitel
94
wearing a yellow protective suit. He talks about the movement of

goods, about distant countries and about shift work. As factual as
his explanations are, they are also rendered unreal by the staged situation. He stands outside in front of the truck, framed for the audience by the glass as if on a stage. His daily work surroundings become the set for his scene. The situation is similar to a sightseeing
trip, which of course also frames the unfamiliar and enlightens it.
The difference from a sightseeing tour lies to some extent in what
is shown: those urban sites and spaces that are absolutely necessary
for the life of the town, but which are normally invisible and look
the same everywhere, i.e. they are not places of interest . But above
all, the difference lies in how things are shown. The theatricality of
the situation, the aspect of framing via perception, is rendered visible and in this way directs the gaze onto that which is foreign. As
such, information about the unfamiliar broadens into an experience an experience of the foreign, which despite the information
is not capable of being assimilated, but rather remains at a distance
from us.
The spaces that one moves through during Cargo are transitory
spaces: streets and motorways, petrol stations, parking lots and all
sorts of sites for handling cargo shipments. The experience of the
town is fleeting. It appears to conform to the conception of urban
life as a service society shaped by post-Fordist production. Simultaneously, however, concrete sites of worldwide trade in actual
goods are shown. But a sense of fleetingness is also inscribed in
these places. They also seem somehow anachronistic. The reality of
driving, the understanding of this movement that belongs to the
life of the driver, mixes with the spectral unreality of the terminals
of the global economy. It also mixes with the fiction of the other
places where we are not, but which are referred to verbally and also
sometimes cinematiically: Sofia, Croatia, Italy, Austria. We find
ourselves in limbo between the reality inside the lorry and that outside the window, between the generally static position of audience
member and the constant driving, between everyday, theatrical and
filmic types of perception, between Frankfurt and all the places that
Vento and Nedjalko describe and which seem much more real than
the industrial and harbour areas of Frankfurt that we have never
seen before.
In Cargo, Kaegi shows the city as an economic and social power

and, simultaneously, as a subjective realm of experience. Thus, we
look out from inside the warm truck onto a windy parking place and
Vento explains that some years ago he lived in Germany as a foreign
labourer in containers like these. Always two people to a container. Another container for shower and toilet. What is proposed is a
questioning of our own attitudes, of the generally passive observation of reality out there , a closer examination not only of our status as audience members in this precise moment, but also of our
own relationship to other peoples daily realities, of our own connection to reality. A little later, Vento says that you can only see
lights when driving at night. The people in the cars do not have
faces. But that does not even interest me. I only think about my
family . A little later, he announces, Welcome to Germany . Thus,
different spaces shift into one another: real spaces in front of the
window, such as a container on the parking lot and the imagination
of a life inside this container, the individual experience of the journey and the things the driver says about driving, as well as all those
other spaces that are verbally and associatively conjured, the geographical and fictional space Germany , the interior spaces of other
vehicles, Ventos family, his memory of his home, my own memory of home. No self-contained illusion of another place is created.
Rather, the destabilisation of perception is played with through the
interweaving of real and fictional elements. And when we then hear,
Welcome to Germany , we do not know exactly where we have
been the entire time, if we are now really in Germany, and if we
even know this Germany .
Simulated reality
In Wallenstein, Hagen Reich, an ex-soldier who had been training to

become an officer in the German Bundeswehr, gives an animated
account of events from the NATO mission to Kosovo. Reich reports
on how he was provoked by fighters while on patrol with his company, how they picked on, stole from and kicked an old lady. It was
only ten metres away from us. We stood there and did nothing. He
begins his report with the words First scene, first day , then relates
the events with illustrative gestures, impressions and vocal effects.
His vigorous, at times emotional, speech makes the narration so
95
96
Hagen Reich in Wallenstein
Kolumnentitel
much more convincing. The audience is sure that the old woman
was actually kicked in the stomach and that Reich suffered from
having to watch and do nothing. Over the course of the performance, we find out about other things from his time as a NATO soldier, about military rituals, about pretend ambushes that were supposed to teach the soldiers the necessity of being permanently on
guard, about situations in which it is vital to
be able to make a clear distinction between
truth and appearance. At the end of the performance under the heading last scene, last
day , Hagen Reich tells us that he was never
in Kosovo, that all the experiences in fact
occurred in a training camp. It was a simulation. During one such simulation, a simulation of a rape, he finally broke down. Because he could no longer stand his passive
role, he ran across a simulated minefield.
This put his military leadership skills into
question. Today he is unemployed. Hagen
Reichs failure, as much as his emotional involvement in the scenes he relates, reveals
how much the category of reality depends
on the individuals perception, and how
closely reality and fiction are linked to one
another. The suffering he experienced from
the passivity of his role is real, even if it was
triggered by a performed fiction. The reality
of his emotions refers to specific symbolic
fictions that structure social reality, such as
the ideas of freedom and justice. In social reality it is clear that fiction and reality are
closely linked as well. In this way, as in
other biographical accounts given in Wallenstein, the question of individual responsibility and its position within social reality is negotiated.
The character of Hagen Reich presents the interweaving of reality and fiction outside the theatre as its content and simultaneously complicates its reception. Even when Rimini Protokoll attempt to
render visible the mechanisms underpinning reality, simulation
and the theatre, the audience is still unsettled. Reichs emotive style
of speech gives his tale authenticity and plausibility. It is thus even
more disturbing to find out that it was merely a simulation. How
real is what we have heard today? The style of speech appears to bear
no relation to the truth content of what is related. Ultimately, it is
clear that the criteria for differentiating are extremely unreliable.
Here truth is not presented as an alternative to the theatrical, but
rather different aspects of fictitiousness, reality and theatricality are
shown. The exposure of fictitiousness establishes new ways of looking at reality and examines certainties and conventions of perception. In the middle of this stand the experts who are given a lot of
space and time to tell their stories, since Rimini Protokolls theatre
of experts is a means of approaching other people, their experiences and memories. It keeps a basically ethical distance from the
individuals, who are not exhibited to the audience as private persons, but introduced as the subjects of their own biographies. It is
through this distance particularly concerning existential topics
such as war, age and death that questions over the ability to represent reality are raised. Can one simulate war? Can one theatrically
perform pain and death? Rimini Protokolls theatre is not least of all
an attempt to articulate subjective experiences that cannot be
represented, and to simultaneously to problematise their representation. These acts of simulation may have the function attributed to
izek in Grimaces of the Real of making the hard
them by Slavoj Z
core of reality bearable.
97
The performance is starting now.
Rahel Hubacher: Watch out Max,

there are leaves! Be careful!
(Hermann begins to throw fake
leaves, Max stumbles hand-held
camera turns on its own axis / Max
struggles with his back to the camera.
Camera points to the pedestrian area
in the white model. Max disappears
from the picture. Everyone runs to
Ren. Max stands up.)
Rahel Hubacher: Max? Maaax!
Maaax! Do you hear me?
The connection is broken, he has
fallen into the white model, why
didnt you paint it? It looks like that
could be the future! How do we get
him out? Is there anything in the
model railway catalogue about the
future?
Hermann Lhle: How could we
have a model of the future when its
world doesnt exist yet? We always
build from reality! Models are always
in the past.
Rahel Hubacher: Then we must
think about what the future could
be
Mnemopark
100
Kolumnentitel
full scale
the landscape of mnemopark
by kathrin rggla
if someone showed a picture of this landscape, what would we see?

we would see a fictional landscape, one that has more to do with
projections and wishful thinking, one that for some is derived from
melodramatic movies made in bavaria or even ufa studios, and for
others from hollywood or even bollywood productions. yes, this
eu-landscape can produce images today just like those of the big film
studios, images that betray nothing about how they function, for
the real landscape, like brechts factory has slipped into functionality. it has disappeared from view, it does not and actually cannot
show itself any more, since it is made up of relations of production,
blueprints, legal agreements, eu-programmes and the politics of
subsidy. these relations of production are now, however, in a crisis:
over-subsidising, sugar prices, butter and meat mountains threaten
us, un-payable bills tear a billion euro hole through everything, a

hole that cannot be photographed. thus it is quite logical, as the euagricultural commission says, to move into landscape conservation,
so we move away from food production and into image production.
in reality the majority of the european countryside has for years
functioned as a single, massive, heavily subsidised culture business,
and it is tacitly agreed that primarily this type of image production
is desirable.
we should, therefore, move away from the genetic modification discussion and enter the image discussion, which also refers to the relations of image production if one were to show an image of this
landscape but nobody does. no, it is always passing us by, since we
are permanently moving through it. sometimes at 30, sometimes at
50 but normally at 100 km per hour. we increase the speed, asthey
say, whether on the street or in the train. and only one thing seems
certain, that this landscape out there is in a scale of 1:1. but what is
that? the celebrated full-scale? how do we know that it is not in a
ratio to something else? and even worse, that we are not also in this
Mnemopark
101
full scale
102
full scale
ratio ourselves? to some other world outside that still blooms for us.
how do we know that we dont exist in a 3:1 ratio, or a 30:1 or even a
300:1 ratio. that we are not a model of a far larger real world, which
we do not have available as a reference? an idea, already formulated
by walter benjamin with regard to the essence of language, which
states that all language is translation, that therefore all higher forms
of language are translations of lower ones, since the whole of nature is underpinned by a nameless silent language of which the
highest translation would be the word of god.
one can at least accept that we live within a context of translation.

are we not wading through these in our world of frameworks and
mediated staging? the gestures of the media are to be found in even
the smallest folds and branches; we fumble our way through the
everyday like big brother contestants or are caught up in the web of
soaps and sitcoms, promoting the awareness that every human utterance is a type of performance, that there is no space free from
staging, no holiday from production. and if we were framed, indeed,
placed in those moving pictures, perhaps we could see how the idea
of nature is constantly being manufactured, how authentic effects
are produced, and how the gestures of actors first create the reality
that we try so hard to find.
Mnemopark
103
full scale
104
Kolumnentitel
Riminis spaces
A virtual tour
By Annemarie Matzke
Berlin, Alexanderplatz, U2 line Platform, 08/06/2000

A machine sells the smell of the Alexanderplatz underground
station. For two Marks the passer-by can buy a phial filled with the
scent of the underground station and take it away with him wherever he wants. A little piece of Alex in the pocket or on the skin of the
purchaser, just as he wishes.
How do I get a place that normally enables mobility to be mobile itself? This question was Helgard Haugs starting point for her
work U-deur, for which she had a perfumer make up a special underground stations scent. The scent is on the one hand linked
directly to the place, as our memory map of a place is often characterised more strongly by specific smells than by visual impressions.
On the other hand, the scent can be detached from its immediate
surroundings. The person wearing it takes it with them everywhere.
The scent connects itself with an actual body, which is constantly in
motion. As such, the physical positioning of the work of art itself is
brought into question.
In the traditional theatre the concept of space is tightly linked to
the model of a container. The black box as a receptacle that is marked
out by walls and can always be filled again anew. The stage, the peep
box of a closed room, is screened from the outside world of urban
space. The exterior stands for reality and the interior is contrasted to
reality, the unreal, fictional, imaginary.
But theatrical space can be thought of more expansively. It comprises audience as well as performers. The way the space is structured determines how stories can be told and viewed: Who is looking and who is performing? In theatrical space bodily and architectural spaces overlap, it is a space of perceptions as well as a space of
representations. In The Practice of Everyday Life Michel de Certeau
differentiates place from space as an instantaneous configuration of
positions , representing stability. By contrast, a space comes into
being through the completion of practices inside it and, according to
de Certeau, it is not freed from the observation of temporal con-
straints, elements of motion and interaction that influence and constantly alter its consistency and density. A space is a practiced
place . In this sense de Certeaus definition can be applied to every
theatrical space. With each performance, the place (the stage or black
box) is transformed into space at the moment of the scenic event.
Rimini Protokoll use the plurality of theatrical space, particularly in productions that leave the space of the theatre. The starting
point of their productions is almost always a specific place. They
sound out the neighbourhood for distinguishing features: the elderly ladies who come into the caf of the performance venue of the
Mousonturm with their walking frames, the VW tower in Hanover
which architecturally demonstrates the power of the regions largest
employer, or the disused chamber of parliament in Bonn as a symbol of the transformation of a town. The starting
points are also, however, the narratives of a
place, which provide it with a means of creating
its identity anew. For example, the bankruptcy
of the Belgian airline Sabena in Brussels, previously the symbol of a successful Belgian national enterprise, whose collapse was the theme of
the piece Sabenation. Go home and follow the
news. Similarly the theatre building itself can
provide the theme. It could be the former firing
range, where the Lucerne Theatres out buildings are now housed, and which is the inspiration for Shooting Bourbaki, a piece about the relationship between teenagers and weapons in Switzerland. Or the
forthcoming closure of the venue Neues Cinema belonging to the
Hamburg Playhouse, which was the impetus for Deadline, a production about the culture of death in our society.
A theatre building is always part of a context. It is a part of urban
space and is not closed off from its neighbourhood, even if its neighbours are not necessarily theatregoers. Whether it is a theatre or an
urban space, Rimini Protokoll make the particularities of the space
the subject matter of the performance. As such they explore a place,
in a site-specific sense, with reference to its architectonic structures,
its historical or its social context. The place of the performance becomes a constituent factor. It is the starting point and the structuring characteristic of their production.
105
U-deur
Kolumnentitel
106
This becomes particularly clear when the performance takes

place outside the traditional theatre space. This is connected with
the alteration of the traditional perspectives and positioning of the
theatre audience; the classical hierarchy of actor and audience member is no longer suggested by the structure of the room. The relationship between watching and presenting has to be newly defined
through engagement with the found space.
Braunschweig, Waggum Airport, 04/06/2004

Brunswick Airport. Weil der Himmel uns braucht (Brunswick Airport.
Because the Skies need us) is the title of a site-specific installation. Flight
as an allegory for mobility is handled by Rimini Protokoll through the
use of an immobile building. The airport in
Braunschweig Waggum was built by Hitler in
the 1930s and now has almost no air traffic.
Firms and companies researching aviation have
moved in. Rather than flight itself, the simulation of flight for research purposes now takes
place at the airport. The audience tours the
building in pairs. At specific stations they use
headsets to follow extracts of stories of people
involved with the airport. They look out of the
window over an airstrip almost free from aeroplanes and hear about how after an air crash the
Brunswick Airport. Weil der Himmel uns braucht
black box is evaluated and in this way reality is
reconstructed. Then there is a meeting with an old, practically deaf,
pilot who has lived by the runway for almost seventy years and talks
about his time as a pilot in the forties. A biologist talks about the flight
patterns of birds. Everything is placed together without commentary.
Descriptions of Rimini Protokolls work, and above all their use
of non-professional performers, often make reference to the idea of
the theatrical readymade. At first glance this comparison seems to be
revealing as things from everyday life are being framed by an artistic
process. Above all, the question of the relationship between the art
context and reality, of the status of the displayed, as well as of the
position of the observer and producer, show parallels to the idea of
the readymade. The difference lies in the fact that the performers are
not simply being put on display, but actually take an active role in
Kolumnentitel
the rehearsal process. They are not simply placed on stage, they are
as much subject as object of the production.
What applies to the work with the performers can also be seen in
regard to the site-specific pieces. In his text Auf der Suche nach dem
theatralen Pissoir (Looking for the Theatrical Urinal), 1998, Stefan
Kaegi places various site-specific theatre works in the context of a
Duchampsian artistic philosophy and summarises, The viewer goes
to the urinal instead of the urinal to the viewer. If, in Duchamps
case, an everyday object is placed in the context of an exhibition or a
museum and as such framed as a work of art, then with reference to
site-specific theatre a place is framed by its theatrical context. This
framework, however, is not created by the act of exhibiting. In
Brunswick Airport, for example, the visual layers were separated
from the acoustic ones. The audience saw something different from
what they heard. The interviews and accounts open a new space that
puts the airports context in a different frame. What is heard distances one from what is seen, the virtual acoustic space overlays the
visible space. Connecting them is the job of the audience member.
The construction of the theatrical event and the variety of ways of
experiencing theatrical space become the themes of the production.
Hanover, Krpcke, 08/06/2002
The audience sits in the 10th floor of a high-rise building, high

above Hanovers Krpckeplatz. Armed with binoculars and headphones, a moderators voice directs their attention via the towns
roofs to the square below, coming to rest on the swarm of pedestrians. Four actors now initiate actions, stalk passers-by with microphones and relay direct sound, dance across the square, hold placards in the air, place a football in the middle of the pavement, talk to
passers-by and try to barter with them. Sonde Hannover (Hanover
Probe) turned a central square into the object of the performance.
One strategy of the theatre is to make things visible. Something
is presented and exhibited through its framework. Rimini Protokoll
play with a theatrical viewpoint on the outside real world. In Sonde
Hannover, this viewpoint is referred to with a red curtain that was
pulled back by a window cleaner at the start of the performance. The
real world outside was framed as theatre. As such, the performance
worked with the overlaps and parallels between urban and theatrical
107
Riminis spaces
108
Sonde Hannover
Kolumnentitel
space. The town space is a public space which, like the theatre, is defined as a space of observation: open to public view. In this case the
audience perspective in relation to the daily experience of the town
space, as well as to the traditional experience of theatre, is radically
altered. They observe the events on the square from above. Having a
panoptic view, they see without being seen. The surveillance suggests that there is more to see than the events on the street. But the
audiences view is not set up to exercise power here. The audience is
isolated both by their binoculars and their headphones. This restriction denotes an almost cinematic form of reception, in which the audiences view is that of the camera itself. In the performance a moderators voice guides the spectators view via the headphones, without, however, being able to control it as though it were a camera.
The audio tour is, however, only one layer
of the soundtrack. The moderators texts are cut
together with interviews with an economist, a
political theorist, an employee of the land registry office, a department store detective, a
plane spotter and others. The narrations about
the town space are mixed with snippets of
passers-by conversing and with ambient noise
from the square that is captured and relayed
back live by the actors. The surveillance from
above is confronted with a different experience
of the town. The various acoustic layers are juxtaposed: the distanced perspective of the scientist next to the presenters fictional narrative and the overheard conversations of the passers-by.
The view from above as one of control has its own topos, which
is closely linked to the development of European towns, the fiction
of a readable town. From a distance the view of the town, far from its
events, creates the illusion of manageability. De Certeau contrasts
the voyeuristic view from above he describes the view from the
World Trade Centre with the spatial practices below: walking
through the town. In daily life people move about the town, the
space is always a between-space, a space of small movements and
motions. While the view from above removes individuals from
daily life and puts them at a distance, the urban space as a space of
movement delivers proximity and immediacy.
It is not only on an audio level that the production confronts one

perspective with the other. The fiction of the absolute controlling
view is also consistently questioned. Even from above there is no
overview, rather the urban space is characterised by this continual
interaction of the most varied perspectives. In its entirety, it cannot
be thought of as available or unavailable. It is always dependent on
the observer, who can only ever perceive fragments. In that Rimini
Protokoll give a theatrical frame to an extract of urban space, they
play with the utopian idea of a perfect point of view, which they
both reflect and question through the overlaying of different spaces.
In this sense, the town does not become scenery. It does not serve as
the background for a performance, rather the urban space can be experienced in all its complexity and diversity.
Bonn, Marktplatz, 24/09/2003
The production Markt der Mrkte (The Market of

Markets), directed in 2003 by Helgard Haug and
Daniel Wetzel in Bonn, plays with a similar audience positioning. The audience observes the
market on the square below from the balcony of
the Metropol Cinema, while the sound is once
again relayed through headphones. They listen
to interviews with the owners of the 44 market
stalls, mixed in with ambient noise captured
with microphones during the performance by
extras from the town theatre. A second acoustic layer presents interviews about the stock exchange and other stock markets, and a third
reports on the trade in the much sought-after tickets for the opera in
Bayreuth. The theme is the collapse of markets, celebrated by the
market every day of the week. The close of business is shown; taking down the market and taking away the rubbish. The local market
in Bonn and the global stock market are juxtaposed and investigated
in similar ways.
In so doing, the question is raised of where exactly the economic sphere can be found. Is it in the stock exchange, is it in the banks
or even in the telephone lines on which business is done? In the age
of globalisation the flow of money is removed from actual places.
For example, stock market crashes are not just localised problems,
109
Markt der Mrkte
Kolumnentitel
110
Riminis spaces
but rather affect the global economy. How can these so-called market forces be visualised? The small market square in Bonn becomes
a model for an economic space that requires our powers of imagination. Here in this place, over conversations with the stall owners,
similar mechanisms to those of the globalised commercial world reveal themselves. The notion of the economic space, which abstracts
the connections between spaces, is dealt with by this very overlaying of real, urban space that is both accessible and observable, and in
the questioning of the relationship between market mechanisms
and globalisation.
Berlin/Bonn, Reichstag/Schauspielhalle, 27/06/2002

The piece Deutschland 2 also revolved around an actual place. When
the team of directors was commissioned by the Theater der Welt
festival, they chose the old parliamentary chamber in Bonn as their
space. It has fallen into disuse because of the governments move to
Berlin. It had lost its function, just as Bonn had lost its function as
Germanys capital city. However, the seating arrangement of the
parliamentary parties had been left intact in Bonn and this had created a situation whereby there was a parliamentary chamber in two
cities, a temporary state of spatial affairs which would be brought to
an end with the parliamentary elections in Autumn 2002.
The duplication of this space was the conceptual basis for the
piece Deutschland 2. A parliamentary debate from the Reichstag in
Berlin was to be broadcast in Bonn. Citizens of Bonn were invited to
stand in for their elected representatives in this parliamentary debate. Their task was not to imitate the respective politicians, but to
repeat their words, which they could hear via headphones. Listening and directly relaying as a mimetic process. It was less the re-staging of a parliamentary debate as an attempt to replicate the staging of
politics, a kind of re-presentation of representation. Both politics
and theatre work within organised spaces, into which are incorporated specific power structures. The relationship of rows of ministers to the president then to the rows of members of parliament and
then further away to the public gallery creates the image of a hierarchy. Likewise in the theatre, the binary division of stage and auditorium is a requirement of its content, it defines who is the actor and
who is the audience. Just before the actual performance the use of
the space provoked a debate about the relationship between art and
politics. Wolfgang Thierse, at this time president of the German
Bundestag, forbade the use of the Bonn parliamentary chamber on
the grounds that the dignity of parliament could be adversely affected by this direct re-creating of parliamentary business in this historical place , thereby demonstrating the symbolic nature of the
spaces of political representation.
Places of political representation are constituent parts of the political self-awareness of a society, which are not only recognisable by
the architectonic codes of their buildings of state, but also in the
rules about their accessibility. As part of the visualisation of state
power, architecture is an essential element of the representation of
the state. While a theatrical space is distinguished by its flexibility,
these public spaces are supposed to serve the
state in its self-presentation and in creating national identity. As such, the realm of politics adheres to its image of a controllable public space.
The piece avoids the idea that politics must
always correspond to a contained space, even
though it worked with an actual site. This revealed itself through the fact that parliamentary
president Thierse was able to forbid the use of
the space, but not the repetition of public political speaking. His political power was limited to
the building owners rights, and did not extend
to the copyright of parliamentary debate itself.
In this way, after long media discussions of questions about access
to public spaces, the staging of politics and the freedom of art, the
production eventually took place in the Bonn-Beuel theatre. Originally conceived for an absolutely specific place the production made
clear through the forced removal of the debate from this specific
place, that politics has not been bound to buildings like parliament
for a long time now. Whereas in the theatre, the mechanisms of production are there for all to see, politics works with the symbolic
power of images, buildings and events. Deutschland 2 reflected this
symbolic trade, because it rendered its basic structures visible
through repetition and as such brought the concept of a closed political space into question.
Deutschland 2
111
112
Call Cutta
Kolumnentitel
Berlin/Calcutta, Anhalter Bahnhof/Infinity Tower,

02/04/2005
The piece Call Cutta is both a telephone conversation and a city tour
spanning thousands of kilometres. It is a journey of discovery
through an unknown Kreuzberg (Berlin) with mobile telephone
and headphones, guided by a voice from an Indian call centre - a theatrical city tour. The concept of the spectator is presented here in an
entirely new way. There is speech at both ends of the line. The participant in Berlin moves through the city and the one in India
describes the route through a city he has never seen. It goes through
back yards, vacant lots, parks and streets, over the bombed-out platforms of Anhalter Bahnhof railway station and the remaining rubble of the old philharmonic hall.
Where is the site of the telephone call: in
Berlin, in Calcutta or somewhere in between?
Both participants are connected to one another,
they share the same acoustic space, which is a
variable its placelessness is the mobile
phones distinguishing feature. For the Call
Cutta participant, the phone is situated where it
rings: in Kreuzberg in south Berlin, in front of
the Theater am Halleschen Ufer. At the same
time, he is always aware that his counterpart,
although sounding near, is actually thousands
of kilometres away. The telephone becomes a
medium for two levels of consciousness, an
idea developed by the French philosopher Jacques Attali in his book
Labyrinth in Culture and Society: Pathways to Wisdom . He
describes our society as a labyrinth and modern people as nomads.
As such modern systems of communication have a special significance, communicating now means creating channels for the flow
of information, covering space with a network of channels, [] the
nomad pulls channels through time. But these channels are no
longer linear, but rather labyrinthine. Thus Attali terms mobile
phones the nomadic citizens invisible threads of Ariadne. Call
Cutta takes up this image.
It is not only spatial simultaneity that characterises the mobile
phone, but also the simultaneity of different time perceptions.
Thus, as in the theatre, time and motion are closely intertwined.
Often the movements of those using the telephone, for example

walking or driving, contrast to the conversation, which asserts one
location and one time. Thus the city tour, which directs the audiences gaze towards and through the town, is overlaid with the
conversation and interaction with the conversation partner in Calcutta.
The mobile phone user becomes part of his environment as well
as part of another asserted reality. This doubling allows the proximity to the actor to be discerned the actor who is a part of the stage
reality as well as really being an actor. In contrast to acting, this doubling is not aimed directly at any audience. The mobile phone conversation is invisible theatre, but unlike Boals sense of the term,
here a real person is theatricalised by the medium. When the participants move through Kreuzberg they become
actors for passers-by and residents who watch
the show on a daily basis. The phone conversation creates a framework that theatricalises the
user.
In contrast to the pieces Sonde Hannover or
Markt der Mrkte, the viewer and conversation
partner is down in the town. He moves through
the urban space, his view is guided only by the
instructions he is given. De Certeau describes
how moving through the city becomes a narrative itself. The town can only be encompassed
in extracts. How it is perceived depends on the
motion of the viewer: he sees what he turns to. The walkers different impressions and perspectives cohere through the characters
he creates on the way. While walking he makes his own narration
and shapes his own space, making his own footstep game (de
Certeau). In Call Cutta this journey through the town reveals a gap
in the performance. Although the person on the phone is being
guided and his gaze directed to certain places, the specificity of what
he sees cannot be determined. As such, each journey through the
town is unique. In the layering of these individual aspects with the
guided tour, its spatial outlines, its directing of gazes, a subjective
narrative comes into being that is always new and cannot be repeated.
113
Cargo Sofia
Kolumnentitel
114
Riminis spaces
Berlin, Avus Service Station, 23/06/2006

We have finished loading, the truck will now be sealed. Welcome
to Bulgaria. Thus begins Stefan Kaegis production Cargo Sofia.
There are 47 seats built into a truck. The side wall has been replaced
by a picture window that also serves as a projection screen. The audience is driven in the truck to different places. Throughout the
drive, the production plays with the overlaying of two journeys: the
real journey across the town where the performance is taking place,
visible through the picture window, and the fictional journey from
Sofia to Germany relayed onto the projection screen.
The truck is a symbol for transport. In the piece, the truck transports narratives and the audience is its cargo. The two Bulgarian
lorry drivers, Svetoslav and Vento, sometimes comment on the
journey from the drivers cab with a microphone, sometimes they
get out of the truck and talk about their daily routines, talking shop
in a motorway lay-by about different vehicle types. Depending on
the town, we hear from a customs officer, motorway policeman,
warehouse worker, the boss of a logistics company or the manager
of a warehouse.
The truck itself becomes a theatre, a place of observation, and the
audience become travellers in their own town, merging two different journeys: the four-day journey from Sofia to Berlin, which is
projected as video, and the two-hour journey through the no-mans
land of customs buildings, service stations, red-light districts and
warehouses. The virtual and the actual places driven past overlay
each other. For example, if the truck stops at a traffic light so does the
projection. When the bus drives on, the projection continues. The
urban pictures that fly by on video are synchronised with the journey through the town: from the driving speed right down to the last
corner turned the projected image corresponds to the actual motion
of the passengers. When the screen is pulled up to reveal the view
outside, you have the impression that the place presented before
your own eyes could actually be the one shown in the film. The individual site seems interchangeable (as the title of the piece changes
with the place of performance). Whether in Sofia, Basel or Berlin,
the industrial areas of a city all look the same.
Kaegi turns transit locations into the theme of his production. In
this sense, the production is site-specific, it seeks out specific sites in
its respective towns: the wholesale market, a motorway rest area,
warehouses or a red-light district. But the fact that these places exist
in every town demonstrates their interchangeability. In this sense
they are non-places (Marc Aug), transit spaces, as characteristic of
contemporary cities as train stations, underground stations, airports
or shopping malls. Aug fixes these spaces as places in an anthropological sense on account of their lack of references and possibilities
of interaction: As soon as a place is defined through identity, relation and history, a non-space is one that has no identity and cannot
be described as relational or historical. One is not at home in a nonplace, one only passes them for a certain amount of time. In the
moving truck with the audience container, the disintegration of
space in the globalised world becomes palpable. Space, audience and
theatre all become mobile themselves.
In the cultural sciences, sociology and philosophy, the loss of space

has in recent years become an important theme. People talk about the
end of space (Jean Baudrillard) and of the placeless society (William Knoke). Above all, new technologies, new possibilities in broadcasting and transport, and the effortless way in which distances can be
overcome have eroded the idea of space. When you believe you have
lost something and are looking for it, then it is often important to take
a step back, get an overview and alter your perspective. Maybe one can
similarly describe the strategies that inform Rimini Protokolls handling of urban spaces. It becomes clear in their productions that, with
regard to new technologies, the meaning of space is not diminishing.
On the contrary, they work at the site and take local peculiarities as the
starting point. At the same time, however, the concrete physical space
is overlaid with others, or different spaces are assembled together at
the same time. Their handling of space is both locally grounded as well
as virtually outward looking at the actual place. The pieces work as
much with the here as with the there . They allow the simultaneity
and variety of different conceptions of space to be experienced. They
reveal spaces that cannot be found on any map and must be generated
by a variety of means (the telephone call, the journey through the city,
the walk). The predominant strategy is to create a montage of different
spatial concepts, urban and theatrical, visual and acoustic. In the spatial principle of coexistence space is only conceivable as plurality. In
this way our ideas of space, concepts of the public and urbanity, of virtuality and locality are investigated.
115
Riminis spaces
We are training your eyes: this

park here is made out of leftovers from the last World War.
Do you see them? In the middle
of the park is a blue rubbish
bin, go over to it. (Sings a
marching song until x is at the
bin.) Are you there? kneel
down and act as though you are
tying your shoe. Look under the
lid, do you see the picture? You
recognize the man on the left?
That is Gandhi, we call him
Papuji, father of the nation. But
who is on the right? Do you
recognize him?...That is the man
who was drinking coffee with my
Grandfather on the other picture.
We call him Tiger, from the time
that he came to Germany he
called himself Netaji, Fhrer.
They look like partners here. But
Gandhi wanted independence
from England without violence,
and Netaji said, We need an
Indian army, we need help from
abroad, the enemy of my enemy
is my friend. So he came here to
Berlin to Hitler.
Call Cutta
118
Kolumnentitel

Four Theses on Call Cutta
By Heiner Goebbels
Early in 2005 one could see a work of theatre in Berlin that perhaps,
strictly speaking, was not a work of theatre at all. Perhaps one ought
rather to say that one did not see it. A performance that indeed offered no spectacular events, no impressive acting, no virtuosic performances, no astounding set design. Actually there was nobody to
see; one remained completely alone. But it was a performance that
affected me more, was more stimulating and more artistically and
politically engaging, than much of what one could see on stage in
the previous years. Showing up at Hebbel am Ufer theatre, one
received, instead of a ticket, a mobile phone, which rang shortly
thereafter. On the other end, a voice speaks in English with a strong
Indian accent a female voice, in my case a voice with which I converse for almost two hours, a voice that manoeuvres me with very
precise instructions through a Berlin unknown to me. Turn left
after about ten metres, then cross the street, between the two grey
buildings, under the dustbin in front of the fence you will find a
picture . Clearly the voice knows its way around very well.
Suddenly I am standing in front of a traffic mirror and the voice
even knows what I look like. She tells me what colour my hair and
my clothes are. One feels watched, is suspicious and more than confused, since one doesnt know where the voice is located. At some
point over the course of the conversation, it becomes clear that a
young woman called Prudence is speaking with me. But then again,
even that is not necessarily so, as a little later she claims her name is
Priyanka Nandy a voice from a call centre in Calcutta. And this
sounds like the name of the piece too: Call Cutta. Suddenly a stimulating and varied dialogue begins, every now and then peppered
with political and historical information about the relationship between India and Germany and with conversations about public and
private things that draw attention to the differences of our cultural
experiences. Pleasantly and almost in passing one also learns something about the theme of this staged configuration: work in a call
centre a side effect of globalisation. These young Indians change
the rhythms of their lives for their jobs, since if they work for an
American call centre, they must sleep during the day in order to be
able to telephone at night. The conversation constantly swings from
a private closeness and intimacy to public gaze and reflection. At
some point, I catch myself singing with someone on the other side
of the world an Indian song, which I happened to learn while working on my opera Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten (Landscape
with Distant Relatives). The passers-by are bemused.
In fact, the telephone tour has a fairly set route, but the gaze remains mine and usually proceeds at my tempo and, even if the conversation has a predetermined structure, I always feel that I am the
subject of the communication. I physically experience the alienation
of the process, the paradoxes of the young woman explaining the
route through Berlin to me although she has never been to Europe,
of how she shows me, between the bushes and trees, the tracks that
carried the trains to Auschwitz. Or how she conveys some experiences that are significant for the citys development as I walk across
Potsdamer Platz until I wind up deep inside a car park, where the
connection breaks up and I suddenly feel left all alone. At the end of
this tour of the city, I see for the first time the picture of a young
woman in Calcutta waving goodbye to me as a live stream on a computer screen in the window of a computer shop in the Potsdamer
Platz shopping mall.
One might not have been able to produce such a strong artistic,
political, social, intimate experience in a big auditorium. Even if not
all of the texts that we hear or make up ourselves are literary and
print-worthy and not all the sounds and songs that enter my ears are
perfectly in tune. What makes the experience so strong? As viewers,
or actually listeners, we are subjects of perception. (I use we since
every day in June 2005 up to twenty people could take part in this
experience.) To a certain degree, this is also the case for a conventional piece, but here we stand surprised at its centre (probably confused and agitated too) and experience the piece through our own
bodies. The engagement with the complexity of the theme or better yet, the themes results from our own abilities; it is suited to the
speeds at which we experience something and to our moods and
feelings, and it develops with us.
The difference from a play in a theatre is obvious to begin with.
In her Lectures in America, Gertrude Stein articulated her discon-
119
120
Kolumnentitel
tent with stage tempo, which never synchronised with her own
perception of time and emotion:
Your sensation as one in the audience in relation to the play played before
you, your sensation, I say your emotion concerning that play is always either behind or ahead of the play at which you are looking and to which
you are listening. So your emotion as a member of the audience is never
going on at the same time as the action of the play. This thing, the fact that
your emotional time as an audience is not the same as the emotional time
of the play, is what makes one endlessly troubled about a play.
In contrast to this type of trouble in a stage work, which operates

head-on (sometimes one is inclined to say in a totalitarian way) and
as a rule aims to impart something, here individual appropriation is
possible. The experience occurs through ones own individual listening, seeing, speaking and maybe singing body, which is, incidentally, not secure. It moves rather through uncertain terrain, with fear
and curiosity, desire and interest. This experience is stronger than
that of any comparable piece that might take the political discourse
that underlies Call Cutta and divide, reconstruct and represent it
through psychologising dialogue. There are topics that are larger in
scale, more individual and politically relevant than can be dealt with
as an interpersonal conflict on-stage. They cannot be represented;
Call Cutta
one has to experience them. And the discourse that we are able to
engage in here remains playful and varied. The impressions take
place on many levels: on the acoustic level, on the visual level
(which is not congruent with the acoustic), on the reflective level,
on the physical level, on the level of confrontation with public
space, with uncertain foundations, and on the level of the enjoyment of discovery. Because everything along this course is at first
unknown to us and must be discovered. And what emerges is by no
means a uniform picture.
So instead of an evening in the theatre, an afternoon on the telephone. A work of theatre that keeps perspectives open. The precision of the casting and the work with the adept performers on site in
Calcutta, who themselves are experts on the topic, is astonishing.
Despite, or even because of, the precision of the research and the apparently informal structuring of the conversation, it is possible for
us to discover for ourselves the things that are discreetly suggested
to us, the things with which we are surrounded. There is no need for
somebody to enter and present him or herself as a figure with whom
we should identify, or to act in place of us. The classical protagonist
is absent. A theatre without performers.
One could interject that there is still the voice. It is clearly the point
of attraction, but the protagonist is the audience member himself. Unlike what would happen in any conceivable one-to-one performance
121
Kolumnentitel
122
an individually staged encounter with an actor, a performer, a dancer,

as can be experienced now and again something else happens here. It
has to do with the absence of Pryanka Nandy, with the fact that this
pieces stage constantly oscillates between the audio and the visual, between Berlin, Calcutta and the telephone conversation. It also has to do
with a fundamental difference between listening and seeing. With listening, the question of presence must be formulated differently. As
Gernot Bhme proposes in his article Acoustic Atmospheres, in the act
of listening I experience the space of my own presence , primarily
when it is about listening as such and not listening to something . The
complexity, length and foreignness of this telephone conversation encourage exactly a listening as such and direct the conversation again
and again to listening itself. As I walk across Mckernstrasse, Pryanka
Nandys voice imitates all the beeps, rings, motors, noises, voices, childrens cries and animal sounds that would bombard her while crossing
a street in Calcutta. She asks me about my own experiences ( Did you
ever fall in love on the phone? ), and I feel flattered when she says that
I have a lovely voice, although it is obvious she says this to everyone
really a professional, an expert in all things call centre.
According to Bhme, it is characteristic of voices, tones, and
sounds that they can be separated from their origins. [] In a listening that does not relate tone, voice or sound to the things (and
people) from which they originate, the listener feels the voice, tone
or sound as a modification of the space of his own presence. Whoever listens in such a way is dangerously open, he lets himself go in
space and can as such be affected by acoustic events. [] Listening is
to be outside oneself, it can therefore be the most rewarding experience to feel that one is actually in the world .
(Gertrude Stein)
as I say nothing is more interesting to know about the theatre

than the relation of sight and sound.
A first thesis (and this can be said either of an extended telephone

conversation to India or of a stage performance) could therefore be
that a theatre that is essentially defined through listening, and can
separate this hearing from seeing, allows significant free space for
the perceptions of every individual each audience member.
Call Cutta
A further thesis could be that an opportunity lies in this disturbing free space, in this strange iridescent being outside of oneself
generated for example by a long telephone conversation with a
stranger, or left behind by a performance that is itself characterised
by a large acoustic presence but also by systematic scenic constraints and by an empty centre. In this absence there lies the opportunity to perceive something that we do not already know,
since the narcissistic confirmation of a mirror image on the platform is denied.
We can observe in many art forms how the refusal of representation can have a stimulating effect on perception. Precisely this absence of a traditional idea of presence and intensity, an empty centre on stage, destabilises us as audience members and, through this
destabilisation, turns us into the masters of our own experience.
Confusion is a part of this. For Georges Didi-Huberman whose article Was wir sehen blickt uns an (What we see looks back at us) provides the inspiration for the title of my contribution to give sight
always means disturbing seeing as an act, as a subject.
What takes the place of attraction if we do without the highly
compressed artistic intensity of an important actor, dancer or soloist
with whom we can identify? Wherein lies the alternative to the omnipresent society of the spectacle, the perpetually celebrated dominance of presence and the present to which we are exposed? Here
123
Kolumnentitel
124
the works of many visual artists are an important source of inspiration. Wherein lies the alternative to the state, which structures our
mediated everyday existence, of constantly being stared at, spoken
to, screamed at, and approached? What would an entertaining alternative look like that would take seriously the audiences curiosity
and potential for discovery, that would not underestimate them,
but rather open a space for them? This space should also be about
the opening up of texts and materials, not about one of interpretation. The first requirement for this space would be that it convert the
centre, but not occupy it either with an individual artistic ego or
with a protagonist who only presents himself as a self-affirming
mirror image or as a rival doppelgnger.
In order to rebut an academic conception of performance based
on an aesthetics of presence, Andr Eiermann, a young performance
artist and theatre academic, sat in a closed cardboard box on stage,
hidden from the audience. Yet we could hear his voice over a microphone saying, Critical art requires artists to disregard themselves .
He is probably right.
Rimini Protokoll was the director of Call Cutta, and it is certainly not just chance that Call Cutta was not the work of one director,
but rather of an active directors collective, which does not always
have to stage and present an ego in order to mirror itself a team that
probably could not have reached an agreement on one image, but
that finds itself more successfully in the processes it instigates rather
than in one central solution. The multi-voiced production style is
also to be found in the multiple voices of the artistic work. As audience members, we emerge from this artistic work differently from
how we come out of productions in which one director imposes his
views of the material on us. The opportunity for the audience also
lies in the absence of a conventional conception of directing and
everything that belongs to the neurotic and authoritarian practices
of the princedoms of some state funded theatres.
Staging is a structured, collective form of aesthetic production,
writes Georg Seesslen in his article Timetable of a Production :
Moral action therefore already begins with the way in which one handles others [] one can see in a production, for example, whether a director loves his actors or whether he treats them like objects, whether
he forces them to perform or follows a shared goal with them. Neither
are there rules there, nor does it do any good to try to turn theatre into
an ideological model of democratisation. After all, postmodernity has
also taught us to accept a certain degree of bitchiness, mania or despot-
ism without sustaining emotional damage, always assuming that the
thing is worth it. And yet I believe that sensuality and perception devel-
op best within an atmosphere of respect. [] I may do anything, but
there must be good reason for it. And the realisation of my vision is not
reason enough; it is actually as insignificant a reason as the fact that next
door, with even less reason, even more shameless things are being
done.
Rimini Protokoll do not realise a vision; they do not invent, but

rather research, discover, learn from experts and, with their help,
place the results at our disposal. They share them with us. To quote
loosely from Hannah Arendt, one can see every performance as a
public space in which it is crucial not to fall upon one another in
reference to the work conditions as well as to the relationship to the
audience.
A third thesis could therefore be that if the methods of production cannot be separated from the artistic processes, alternatives to
the centred form of the performing arts can seldom arise in institutions, which are not designed for this sort of thing with their gravity and hierarchical structures. Such alternatives come into being as
new configurations, the structuring of which already facilitates
polyphony within a production, which does not present just one
perspective to the audience, but rather leaves perspectives open for
us. Whoever makes a point of working in pairs or in threes, creating
directing teams and performance groups in which the configurations continually alter and responsibilities are not fixed, might succeed in doing this (like, for example, She She Pop, Showcase Beat Le
Mot, Hofmann & Lindholm, Herbordt/Mohren, Auftrag:Lorey, das
Gemischte Doppel, Eiermann and Hnsel, the duo big NOTWENDIGKEIT or the young performance group Monster Truck,
who have all, like Rimini Protokoll, emerged from the Institute for
Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen). They all work with an interplay of media, which revels in its mistrust of the constricting reduction of our perceptions to a patronising centre. Theatre, with all of
its possibilities, can be more than just a means of informing.
125
126
(Gertrude Stein)
I concluded that anything which was not a story could be a play.
What can transform the empty centre? If film, opera and theatre are
social types of production where one can see how they are made and
one understands how to behave towards one another at them, then
the same is also true of our encounter with all media and technology
used in these fields. Behind Brechts demand for the separation of
the elements , for a non-hierarchical relationship and the independence of music, movement, text and space, there lies a significant critique of institutions. Its aim is to do away with the alienating
working methods of the theatre, where the lighting technician
working on the left side of the stage doesnt know what is happening
on the right. To this end, it requires collaborators who will strengthen their own areas and techniques. Independent of material and of
object, even independent of the truth content of what is staged,
staging is a moral process. (Seesslen) This is meaningful not only
because such a working process is more fun, but rather also because
multi-voiced modes of production and presentation are clearly
more in keeping with the differences of our perceptions. The deconstruction and decentralisation of theatre logic and the transformation of narrative forms into a complex coexistence and cooperation
of impressions (thereby transferring an empty centre into a given
thematic framework), can allow for the different rhythms of the
audiences experiences. This is so not only because each audience
member brings along his own preferences in regard to perception,
but also because every perception itself already requires time differences and varied rhythms. We began with listening and seeing from
an observation made by Gertrude Stein, and we could try to extend
that to many other levels of our perception.
Hlderlin I am grateful to Detlef B. Linke for this note
stressed a poetic logic in relation to the theatre in his Remarks on
Antigone. Unlike scientific or, as Hlderlin says, philosophical
logic , this poetic logic lays claim to many of our perceptive abilities.
He talks about various successions in which conception and sensation and reasoning develop according to poetic logic . In contrast to
philosophical logic , poetic logic which appeals to the most varied senses and modes of perception and does not follow a linear narrative form deals with the different human abilities so that the
representation of these different abilities forms a whole, and the

connecting of the independent parts of the different abilities can be
called rhythm in a higher sense, or a calculable principle .
Detlef B. Linke sees here a sketch of a theory of media, in which
the clash, the impact of rhythms engenders the idea , and takes this
for an applicable contribution to brain research in relation to the intertwining of semantics i.e. the construction of meaning with the
functioning of the brain. He is particularly interested in it with respect to the question of where the synchrony of individual nerve
endings constitutes a relationship to an object . Since, as Linke puts
it in Flucht Punkt Kunst (Vanishing Point Art), if I synchronise the
entire brain, then I have an epileptic fit [] I have to have time delays.
Whereby we and this should be the fourth and final thesis return to the asynchronicity that manifests itself in the example of
Call Cutta as much in the gaps between what is heard and seen as in
the leaps between different levels that are made possible through
the telephone conversation. What is important for the success of an
artistic work in this sense or even better, in every sense is not
only that the centre should not be occupied by protagonists who anticipate our assimilation of a theme through identification, but
rather that the performance should allow approaches, assimilations
and perceptions from a variety of angles, and as such offer enough
rhythms to enable this liberating collision of parts, thus permitting
the individual capabilities and conceptions of the audience.
Adaptation of a lecture at the Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Zentrum fr
Kulturtechnik at the Humboldt University Berlin.
127
128
Kolumnentitel
such accounts. he has written to apologise for the slight delay in the walk, and
difficult to get an invitation. it was my turn to be gleeful. i told him i have TWO
this is the report of my walk with heinrich matthias goebbels, which i would
hi all,
i didnt hear clearly and was too embarrassed to ask him to repeat. i only hope it
persons nature from his or her voice. he told me something about my voice, but
he said he has fallen in love over the phone, and that it is quite possible to tell a
him next.
wants an invitation, so he can surprise his son who is in chicago when he mails
From: priyanka.nandy@gmail.com
have sent yesterday had i not received death threats from most of my col-
was nice.
leagues [just dont understand why comes from nowhere];)
it. also, apparently there was a person associated with both hitler and india in
lovely cherry tree full of blossoms there... both adina and heiner commented on
brown road after the kiesweg made of wood? heiner said it was. also, there is a
dustbin. and people call calcutta a dirty city! hrrumph! oh, by the way, is the
nised him from the glasses he wore. he also found a used condom outside the
recognised netaji in the second picture at the blue dustbin. he said he recog-
rules. and who says memory fades with age? he was my FIRST walker to have
actually, dont. i really liked him. besides, at 52, we can allow him to break a few
him!
tried to sing with me. now we have another connection, he said. at laden-
he recalled the tune and i sang him the song, and in spite of the time lapse, he
posed was indian and had used another rahman number (kehna hi kya) there.
then remembered that a few years back the first violin in a musical he com-
a. r. rahman number (aawara bhavre) to myself. he heard and loved it, and
moscow soon and would need them. to keep myself occupied i started singing a
later, at the fotofix, he wanted to take pictures because he is going off to
from morning has broken. he has a lovely, deep voice. I told him so.
he didnt want to shout, so i asked him to sing to me. he sang the first few lines
delighted when the driver waved at him.
nt have done it. my being on the phone gave him a sense of freedom. he was
he refused to shout at the courtyard said he was a shy, discreet guy. but he
some way during the war, and heiner wanted to know if netaji was the same
strasse he also met a man after 15 years and explained the concept of call cut-
stood on the platform, and at the graffiti tunnel, shouted twice to hear the echo.
person. we double checked our data, and i spelled out the name in german and
ta to him while i listened. he also said he would highly recommend the play to
heiner is how heinrich wanted to be called, and in turn, he chose to call me pru.
we came to the conclusion netaji wasnt the person heiner read about.
all his friends in berlin. i loved walking him... i am going through a lucky stage,
only because i am alone here, he said. if i was actually present there he would-
heiner is a composer, and much later, he said he was daniels and stefans good
all great walkers!!!
the signal was red at the crossing, but he crossed the streets anyway, because
friend. and every time he thought we might be deviating from the script or tak-
he said he did it all the time in frankfurt, where he is from. somebody report
ing too long, he said dont tell stefan!!! ohhh, stefan, people are scared of you!
er been in berlin! then i asked him if he trusted me enough to let me guide him
the pictures, and i told him it was impossible for me to know, because i had nev-
i told him a german caller was free. that was sweet. i hope he comes back today.
walk, but said he liked my voice a lot, so would continue in english, even though
boris, whose walk was cut off due to the server crash, actually wanted a german
at first, he asked about things on the road that were not there in the script or
through a city i had never been to. yes, he said, because this involves daniel
priyanka.
love and wishes,
and stefan. i asked him if he would trust me if his friends were not involved,
and he promptly said no. im reconsidering my opinion of him...
some work he has done. he sounded gleeful when i told him my real name,
maries following each tour.
in a call centre, the experts of the telephone tour Call Cutta composed quality control sum-
Priyanka Nandys report about the telephone call with Heiner Goebbels. As is usual practice
p.s: and i shall write even longer reports today, death threats or not!!!
we chatted a lot, and he laughed loudly when i described him at the mirror. he
also wanted to know if there was a hidden camera somewhere. i acted all mysterious, but i dont think he believed me. he played along beautifully though.
because, as he said, i knew it already! from the leaflet of course! then we went
he uses fake names in real life when he wants to avoid being associated with
on to talk about gmail accounts he says i am lucky to have one, because it is
129
Blocking Rehearsal Set Rehearsal World

Possible Projects 2004 2008
Construction site, Calcutta
Hat shop, Moscow
Safe shop, Seoul
Animal enclosure, Zurich
By Rimini Protokoll
Epidaurus Theatre, Greece
Indian fisherman in front of boats with the

inscription Donated by Hessen for the
Victims of the Tsunami
130
Flags, Antwerp
Traffic control centre, Sofia
Lane in Tempelhof Airport, Berlin
Lockers, Zurich
Great man of the theatre from another

time, Basel
Square dancers, Zurich
Greeting statue, south India
Expert in riverside buildings, pleasure

boat, Bangkok
131
Partisan Veterans, Parma
Waiting area, Riga Harbour
Migrant worker on construction site,

Beijing
Platforms, Frankfurt/Main
Photography set, Seoul
River Limmat, Zurich
Gold Seller, Sao Paulo
Car park, Berlin
Stand-ins for the lighting technical

rehearsal, Mannheim
Hotel chain, Dresden
Epidaurus Theater, Greece
Daniel Wetzels brain
Placard hanger in the airport, Madrid
Changing-room for heart surgeons, Zurich
Turbine welder, Ljubljana
Epidaurus Theater, Greece
Promotional costume, Warsaw
132
133
Baggage reclaim, Athens
Playground, Zurich
Toy shop, Thessaloniki
Park library, Lisbon
Cleaning lady, service area of HungarianSerbian Customs
Harbour policeman, Basel
Video surveillance, police headquarters

Munich
Container Hotel, Warsaw
Restorer, Ramanayah painting, Bangkok
Former head chef of Estonia, Caracas
Model of a mail distribution centre,

Calcutta
Wall with ladder, New York
Meeting of shareholders, Frankfurt
Cement mixer, former baker, Vilnius
Platform with curtain (Euro-City)
TV-studio, Mannheim
134
135
Airport personnel on strike, Puna, India
Guard in front of European Embassy,

Beijing
Historian in former office of the first

President of Latvia, Riga
Security agent with publicity shirt Master

Card, vegetable market So Paulo
Chinese Market (before 1994 Polish

Market), Budapest
Petrol station, Calcutta
Prosthetics maker, Zurich
Language teachers recruiting new pupils,

Beijing
Hairdresser, Calcutta
Payroll office, Concrete Factory, Vilnius
Collector of football stickers, Belgrade
Drivers grave, Graveyard Sofia
Palace guard, Bangkok
Slave of the Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt
Mobile shop, Athens
137
136
Edgardo Norberto Freytes: My name is Edgardo

Freytes and I am 49 years old. I have worked for eight
years as a porter, six in a block of flats and two in a
student block.
I saw the advertisement in Voz del Interior. The interview for this project was strange, much more informal
than job interviews for usual porter jobs. At night in
bed the fat one... my wife, said, You know what? In
Argentina there has come to be so little work that
workers are almost becoming museum pieces. People
will exhibit them behind glass, so that the children
can see what an Argentinian worker used to be.
Juan Domingo Spicogna: My name is Juan

Domingo Spicogna. I was a porter for three years at
the Instituto Atletico Central Cordoba.
A working day lasts eight hours.
A football game 90 minutes. A film,125.
Torero Portero is starting now.
(Music. Choreographed warm-ups

like for a football game.)
Torero Portero
140
Kolumnentitel
People on the edge

South American works between rich and poor
By Matthias Pees
From the beginning, the everyday people research project that is Rimini
Protokoll, although concentrating initially on the German speaking
world, always had a sort of international sub-label at its disposal. Torero
Portero, Stefan Kaegis first South American project, took place in 2001 in
Crdoba, Argentina at the behest of the local Goethe Institute. The piece
worked with three unemployed porters who performed on the street
while the audience watched from inside a sort of glazed porters lodge. It
then toured not only to Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin and the Theater der
Welt festival in Cologne, but also even to Bogot. Four years later, in Rio
de Janeiro and So Paulo, Kaegi adapted Torero Portero for Brazil. For this
he added two Brazilians, found via newspaper advertisements, to the
three Argentinean porters who were already familiar with the project.
The Brazilians not only related local stories and experiences but also assumed a role as doormen to the Argentineans in performance.
In this way a porter-hierarchy arose, one that on the one hand is instantly recognisable in Brazil (in the order of precedence of caretakers, day
porters, night porters and irregular fill-in porters), and on the other hand,
reflected ironically the generally difficult relationship between Argentinians and Brazilians the Argentinians still hold on to the snobbish view
that they could afford when their economy was stronger.
The reaction of the Brazilian audience to Torero Portero was striking.
This was because much of the audience did not know a lot about the
porters world, even though porters belong to the daily life of Brazil and
guard the entrances of every big apartment block or store day and night.
However, the theatre-going middle class is not particularly used to thinking about the porters perspective and consequently knows little about
their stories, living conditions and backgrounds. As in the telenovelas,
where they occasionally appear out of a sense of realism, the porters are
marginal figures and should remain so for the sake of peace and quiet:
whoever comes so physically and psychically close to me, is party to so
much about my private behavioural patterns and working routines, about
my communications network and, no doubt, my problems too, must, I
can only hope, possess absolute discretion, and therefore I behave dis-
creetly towards him. I am friendly to him but also distanced, and I give
him as little opportunity as possible to tell me his stories, jokes or even
hardships. And I pray that he does not repeat the everyday dramas that he
has seen happening to me and my delightful neighbours over the years.
That he never writes them down. And above all never performs them!
For it might have surprised some people that these were actual porters
appearing. Even the casting in Rio, for which the local theatre festival had
posted an advertisement explicitly asking for unemployed porters and
not unemployed actors, was attended by more confused members of the
latter group, who swore they could play an unemployed porter absolutely true to life. They could not understand why they were not allowed
even to audition, what on balance was the difference between a real porter
and a perfectly played one?
After one performance in So Paulo there was even a small uproar: a
female reporter from the television news channel Globo interviewed one
of the Brazilian porters, a real poor devil from one of Rios poorest favelas, who the previous week had cried from shame and rage on his way to
the first night party because he had never been to a restaurant before in his
life and therefore did not dare to eat with the production team. Full of enthusiasm for what she had seen in general and for him particularly, she
tried, with an investigative wink half way down the Avenida Paulista in
So Paulo, to charm him into revealing the secret of how a professional
actor could give such an incredible performance as a porter. The porter
had seemed so real and convincing that you would think he really was a
porter. The real porter stressed three times that he was a real porter and
not an actor, to which the reporter in front of the camera responded with
more winks and more resolute probing. The porter eventually boiled over
and, feeling his honour insulted, jumped out of the frame of the camera
and started shouting that he was not an actor! What an insinuation! What
a load of shit! Get the camera out of here!
Juan, one of the Argentinean porters was interviewed more subtly by
a group of theatre academics after the Munich performance of Torero
Portero. They asked him if he was not now an actor. But Juan also denied
it, ...rather more a type of ambassador. I am here to represent the situation of us porters and the crisis-ridden Argentineans to an audience .
Juans conception of the porters as self-conscious representatives coheres
with Stefan Kaegis own assessment of the four productions, all under the
Rimini label, that have taken him to South America since 2001. Kaegi
comes from Switzerland, where the arts and artists generally tend to be
141
People on the edge
142
People on the edge
citizens of the world. Furthermore, as an exchange student, he lived for a

year in Blumenau in southern Brazil: where alongside other German
relics there is a giant second Oktoberfest with real Gamsbarts (traditional
hat decoration from Bavaria) and Wolpertinger hats alongside both locally
brewed and imported wheat beer. Since his year in Blumenau, not only
does Stefan Kaegi speak fluent Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, but he
also feels closely linked to both Brazil and Argentina: In my projects in
South America people are often brought to the fore who take on the role
of a sort of bridge between those who have and those who have less:
Human dividers, who keep watch by staying awake. In Torero Portero it
was porters, in Matraca Catraca (a half imagined, half documentary bus
tour through Salvador with headphone commentary in 2002) it was
Brazilian bus conductors, who only let paying customers through the
turn-stile, and in Sentate! Un Zoostituto (a theatre/zoo/pet keeper project from 2003 in Buenos Aires, a kind of bio-drama) it was zoo keepers,
watchdogs and dog walkers. Consistently in the projects, people were simultaneously both instruments and wielders of power. In their patience,
in their jokes and in their language South America told its stories.
The Brazilian adaptation of Torero Portero was followed by the most recent project at the start of 2007, this time conceived for So Paulo from
the beginning: Chcara Paraso. Mostra de Arte Polcia. It is a promenade
installation in the empty executive suite of an old high-rise office block
on the Avenida Paulista with current and ex-policemen. Each policeman
talked room for room about things from their particular daily routines
and sometimes about their private lives. This project was originally supposed to be a first collaboration between all three members of Rimini Protokoll in South America, but the number of on-going Rimini productions
in the rest of the world as well as personal reasons contrived to foil this
plan, and instead this police-art-show came into being as a collaboration
between Stefan Kaegi and the Argentinean author and director Lola Arias.
Compared to Chacra Paraso, Torero Portero in 2005 was a safe
haven, in which Brazilian modes of production could anchor themselves
alongside the basic running plan from the original production in Crdoba.
It had already transferred successfully to numerous international festivals
and there was also a video that could be seen in advance by those taking
the show. Its theme was not risky, but was on the contrary considered unproblematic by local producers; giving a voice to the permanently unheard! In Brazil on the other hand, the use of the military police as a
Torero Portero
theme for a performance stirred up the national taboo of the barely resolved and unpunished state crimes from the time of the military dictatorship. This was not only a historical no-mans land, but still remains a
minefield today due to the preservation of both structures and personnel.
Even in the second term of the current president Lula, previously a persecuted union leader and, together with many party members, a resistance
fighter against the dictatorship, the subject is still handled with kidgloves. The archives are still mainly closed, and the amnesty agreements
remain untouched. The fact that apartment block porters had been among
the worst informers during the dictatorship had already surfaced in
Torero Portero.
Currently there is little institutional theatre in Brazil, and what there
is usually takes the form of a socio-cultural service device for which the
programme organisers encourage projects from commerce and the mainstream. Therefore risky themes are often found to be too much of a threat.
Chcara Paraso was produced by the Goethe Institute together with the
Servio Social do Comrcio (SESC) in So Paulo and with the support of
the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Brazilian Ministry of
Culture. The size and provenance of the partners gave the police project
strong institutional backing and a corresponding degree of residual trust,
but at the same time the publicly and politically exposed Brazilian partners on the ground were nervous. Hardly anyone could imagine how the
project could avoid a conflict with the institution of the military police or
even with individual policemen, without alternatively giving sympathy
to the wrong side. For the Brazilian police, and especially the military police, has no social support and is despised by everyone, not only on historical and political grounds but also due to the high levels of corruption
143
Kolumnentitel
144
Kolumnentitel
and violent behaviour. These policemen tend to come from the lowest
layers of society, a further subliminal reason for the prevailing negativity.
In view of this situation, it was important to defend the production
preemptively against suspicions and fears, which were not yet off the
drawing board both conceptually and organisationally, and so therefore
to implement many things that were not actually ready even to be said.
It was actually pointed out at the beginning that this Rimini project
would wind up being far more about the audiences self-questioning than
a questioning of the police and state mechanisms, and as such the perception would be more important than the judgement. The central business
was individual, biographical and social position rather than collectivity,
ideology and political debate. However, these forced advance explanations led to a general expectation of empirically more balanced and representative examples from everyday policing than Lola Arias and Stefan
Kaegi had been imagining. In view of the aforementioned pressure, the
biographical game with unknown people suddenly seemed to turn serious. It also seemed questionable whether the research would be extensive
enough and the choice of participants satisfactory, in view of the lack of
time (ten days of pre-production and one month of rehearsals) and the
unwilling co-operation of the authorities. Arias and Kaegi visited the military police training centre, the Chcara Paraso (Country Estate Paradise
as the place they took the title from was called, on account of its agricultural function). They filmed the instructors, trainees and a replica housing settlement, which was used in training to practice storming a favella
Chcara Paraso. Mostra de Arte Polcia
or chasing small time crooks and drug dealers. They worked out that there
were about 90,000 military police in So Paulo and as such it constituted
its own society within a society, and they visited the police orchestra, the
emergency call centre, the dog training grounds, the graduation parade
and a self-help organisation. On several occasions the Goethe Institute,
the artists and the production team visited the PR office of the high command to attest to the positive light that such a biographical project could
cast on the military police as a whole. In return the management proposed its own theatre projects, within whose framework a specially contracted independent company would tour barracks with educational
pieces dealing with crises of conscience, suicidal thoughts and family
problems within police households.
However Chcara Paraso was not supposed to appear empirical or didactic, any more than any other Rimini project. Nonetheless Kaegi and
Arias were especially interested in being able to cast the participants out
of policemen as possible, covering as many different fields as possible. A
police chief from the training academy, who studied philosophy in his
evenings and was very open-minded about the project, proposed the participation of the entire body of trainees alongside the high-ranking military policemen. The longer the high command withheld their agreement
however, the more withdrawn he became; he was undoubtedly already
seen as an outsider by his colleagues because of his academic hobby. The
situation with the military police seemed to get more and more muddled
despite the support of some more participants. The official enquiry
145
Kolumnentitel
146
seemed to be being deliberately delayed. Individuals were less and less

willing to explain themselves, the others appeared ever more bureaucratic and censorious, and finally it was hard work arranging the search, conducted through newspaper advertisements, for policemen who were
willing and also, where necessary, authorised by their superiors to participate. In the meantime, civil and traffic police as well as ex-policemen and
their family members had come to be included in the restricted choice.
However, all of these difficulties also enabled the final transformation of
the project into an installation. Everything was pared down to a Police
Art Show idea, through which the audience would move in small groups
as through a living museum.
This promenade began with the ascent to the empty executive floor of
the SESC in its old private lift, accompanied by a fireman (the fire brigade
is a part of the military police), who was not only there to give information about what to do in an emergency, but rather also to talk frankly
about his occupation accompanying journalists on large police raids, and
Sentate! Un zoostituto
maintaining the image of the force. Next the audience spent five minutes
surveying the Avenida Paulista through binoculars, receiving instructions
through headsets from a plainclothes policeman looking for suspicious
elements. In the next space an anonymous telephone operator from the
emergency call centre sat behind dark screens and made a conference call
with the audience. She talked about the occasionally ridiculous calls that
she had to take, and also about the emotional blockages that the job
caused her to experience. One room further on stood a police musician
with a double bass, who not only played the military police hymn perfectly but also talked about how the music corps was situated next door to
the infamous choque task force, and how the teargas training next door
would reduce the musicians rehearsing to tears in mid-flow. Amorim, a
retired dog-trainer and his equally retired police dog Agatha, demonstrated commands that could stop people in flight without the use of
weapons, and talked about his life-threatening missions as an undercover
agent. Then the visitors came into a sort of quiet room, here a policemans
147
Kolumnentitel
148
People on the edge
two children had written a short character portrait of their absent and uncommunicative father on the wall in chalk, and now played a game of Monopoly in front of the audience. They threw a number for each member
of the visitors group that would determine into which further rooms the
audience member would proceed, either alone or in pairs.
Here you encountered policemen in private conversations, who told
you in confidence about their specific situations and biographies as well
as the current job prospects. These included a suspended patrolman who
was being held to account in court for murder and sat in front of his thick
case file hoping to be able to get back to work soon. An ex-policeman
showed a group photo of his old battalion and talked about the fate of his
ex-colleagues man for man (shot, kidnapped, crippled, arrested), before
reading out his sobering letter of resignation. The traffic policewoman,
who joined the police for the adventure and only woke up when she almost shot an angry parking offender. The plain clothes detectives who
suffer from the terrible conditions of their police stations and dream all
the time of a transfer. The pensioner, who during the dictatorship, once
had to guard the university and as a friend of the students came into conflict with the eviction orders of the assault troop. In the waiting time between the individual conversations, videos of the visit to Chcara Paraso
and of the police trainee graduation parade could be seen.
The last room brought the small groups of visitors together again.
Here the training simulation was simulated so to speak: the reconstructed favela from the Chcara Paraso training centre, where young police officers covertly rehearse an emergency. There were two policemen, instructor and trainee, aiming at cardboard cut-outs and having to deciding
between good and bad in a split second before they got shot themselves.
The good (dont shoot) were the residents and journalists with notepads,
the bad (shoot) the men with beards and the women with guns. The instructor explained how he almost lost his life himself in such a (albeit
real) mission in the favela; standing in the open door of the hut being
raided he only survived because the suspects gun misfired. Right at the
end of the tour, where the audience member had to decide between taking the lift to the exit or the stairs to the neighbouring chill-out lounge,
the trainee performer from the reconstructed favela presented one more
product from his real police training as a farewell. It was an advertising
video, for which the PR division hired him as best boy on the shoot, about
the efficiency and readiness of the military police, underscored with the
Queen track We are the Champions. Policemen played the criminals

too, their colleagues putting the handcuffs on with No time for losers.
Whoever did not go straight home could swap notes with other visitors to the Police Art Show in the bar on the roof terrace. There it became
clear above all what a strong effect the project had had on the audience
aesthetically, and also that it had occasionally disappointed those who
had come because of specific content and political interest in the police
and their role in Brazilian society. That did not mean at all that those on
the terrace lacked informed and engaged discussion about the project, the
roles and perception of the police and the population they protect. In
general, alongside the otherwise prevailing thematic taboos and clichs,
it was striking how the police could be discussed from such a variety of
perspectives and in an ambivalent, differentiated and open way. But there
were also critical police colleagues in the audience who made it clear how
harmless the presented stories were in comparison to things that they or
their colleagues had already experienced in their everyday police work.
Occasionally visitors spoke up who had themselves been victims of the
dictatorship, of arbitrary military police violence or simply of everyday
harassment. They were unsympathetic to the project maybe because the
selection or presentation of the participants seemed to them terribly random or uncritical, or because they simply rejected such an individualisation and humanisation of a military and policing mechanism that they
had experienced in its totality as inhuman.
For the majority of the visitors, who took to the project with great acceptance and in a multiplicity of ways, their own dislocation from the
readymades was perhaps the dominant experience rather than the documentary insight into the private lives of policemen and the police. This
audience experience was made even more powerful by the fact that the
readymades were policemen and not porters or bus conductors. The expectations were in this case decidedly different, more defensive. The
inner negativity or basic skepticism was deeper, and individuals surprise
in themselves and their reactions and proximity to what was seen and
heard was accordingly larger to the performers and their stories. It was
surprising to be compelled to be human.
149
People on the edge
Thomas Kuczynski: What you are looking

at here is Volume One of Capital in the
Braille edition of the German Central Book
Distribution for the Blind in Leipzig, published in Leipzig in 1958. In Braille, Volume
One takes up 13 sub volumes. It is based on
the so called brown or peoples edition of
1957, which was published by Diez-Verlag in
Berlin and is basically a reprinting of the socalled Moscow edition, which was brought
out by the Marx Engels Lenin Institute in
Moscow in 1932. This edition has no use
value for me. I cannot read it. Herr Spremberg has a copy of the peoples edition in
normal writing.
This has no use value for him since he cannot read it.
(They swap the 2 Braille and text editions).
We have swapped, creating a classic winwin situation and find ourselves on page
92, Part One: Commodities and Money,
Chapter 2: The Process of Exchange.
Christian Spremberg (reading from the

Braille edition): When the owner of goods
differentiates between the goods by name,
it is the case that every other body of
goods appears only as a manifestation of
its own worth. This defective understanding of the actual body of goods replenishes
the owner of the goods via his own five
senses and more
Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band
152
Kolumnentitel
Theory in theatre?
Observations on an old question
By Hans-Thies Lehmann
1
At least since theatre has no longer been confined within the borders of drama, stage-experiments are enjoying a right of asylum,
which present, instead of dialogically-organized textual structures
and fictional characters speech, rather the scenic rendering of lyrical, narrative, documentary and even theoretical discourse, theoria.
More specifically they present a direct and immediate rendering
for it goes without saying that theory, thought and philosophy belong deeply to what can be articulated indirectly through theatre.
Entire libraries exist which give value to thought, as demonstrated,
for instance, in the dramas of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kleist, Bchner or Ibsen. Admittedly, the liaison between theatre and theory is
complex.
On the one hand thought, philosophy, theory. On the other
theatre. They are simultaneously intertwined and contrasted in European discourse by an affinity that is as turbulent as it is insistent.
Theory and theatre are two clearly different, even opposing experiences or practices that are at the same time specifically related. Both
depend, to develop the point, on the authority and value of a type of
vision or perspective : here, the show of ideas, the notion of
thought; there, the seemingly incontrovertible sensory presence,
the irreproducible show of a world represented through the stage.
The cleavage and reciprocal entanglement of theatre and theory is
old and compounded with the difference between theatre as sensual representation and drama as mental construct. Hence Aristotle, in
one of the definitive gestures of European discourse, disparagingly
devalued the tragic theatre as mere opsis (visual aspect of theatre,
staging). Yet, according to Aristotle, the construction of tragic narrative manifests through its own particular laws (peripeteia reversal, anagorisis recognition) a deeper legitimacy and logic, a logos,
which remains hidden to the superficial normal gaze. In this sense,
theatre for Aristotle, while supposedly lapsing into mindless sensuality, remains at the same time a site and instrument of primary im-
portance for cognition and knowledge. He can thus call theatre more
philosophical than history, because it does not simply repeat
something, but rather shows what regularly happens according to
the logos of necessity or probability.
This entanglement of theatre with theory persists. We still think
of theatre as a seemingly immediate, yet penetrating representation
of reality, which the writing of philosophers, laboriously spelling
things out, can only lag behind. Theatre is thus not the adversary of
thought, but a sort of utopia for thought: evidence for how it is,,
insight into lifes relations and fundamental questions of existence,
an insight which remains in its illuminating and moving power
more or less closed to the discourse of thought. On the one hand,
theatre is formally by way of scene, tableau, sensual mousike in the
ancient sense concretised theory. Yet on the other, theatre in Europe from its beginnings was and is criticised, judged, and condemned as a merely sensual, unthinking event, based in gratuitous
sensation and effect, which confuses thought and mental composure. Its inartistic opsis serves only effect (Aristotle); it plays false
with serious matters, leading the citizen astray (Solon); the theatrokratia undermines necessarily measured thought and reflection
(Plato); its sensuous role-play subverts Christian morality (Nicole)
or simply morality itself (Rousseau). A history of theatre-hatred exists (Jonas Barish), and these charges are its leitmotifs. Theatre is required to legitimise itself through a body of theory, as something
more than mere sensual thrill, yet at the same time aesthetic appreciation insists on the explicit difference between theory and theatre.
That is, if thought emerges too obviously, this is taken as a failure of
art; as an all-too-didactic setting of the scene; as the weakness of a
poet, who should show, not tell.
From another angle theatre is also represented as a type of necessary complement or supplement to theory: from time immemorial
it has been clear to Thought that left to itself, Thought fails. When it
simply pursues its own logos, theory runs astray, tends towards
sophistry and hollow rhetoric, encountering nothing outside the
rules of its own game. From the beginning, Thought, theoria, is always challengingly inseparable from a certain looking-at [AnSchauen]; always dependent on a viewpoint, a perception, a senseimpression. (And when Hegel, at the start of his Phenomenology of
Spirit, lets hearing and seeing pass away for consciousness, which
153
Theory in theatre?
154
Theory in theatre?
has thoughtfully overcome illusory and ephemeral sensual assurance, this dialectical leap leaves behind a taste of deception. The assurance of the senses may indeed pass away for consciousness, but it
pays for its consistency with the loss of all that which, beside itself,
would be there for it to think about.) Theory attempts to place relationships of thoughts before our eyes, it produces a sight that should
actually not be one, a non-sight, an in-sight, which surpasses deceptive sensual sight. But if it insists that this metaphorical (non)sight
avoids the deception of what appears certain through the senses, it
falls into the maelstrom of empty propositions and glass bead games.
An aporia is thereby marked, the fissure opened up between thought
and sensory looking-at, between pure theory and the impure theatre
of sight . Without the sceptical supervision of logos, sight is in permanent danger of delusion, phantasm. So, since thought is continually left to square the circle, it must excommunicate mere looking-at,
or perception , as the refuge of error and must proclaim for itself a
capacity for mentally looking-at, or conception .
2
The mainstream of European thought followed Aristotle in regarding theatre as a form of insight, as logos, or in any case nearly logos:
one could say, a para-logical activity of thinking. Nonetheless theatre was also supposed to assert its own inherent rights beyond and
beside theory. It was not only capable of doing this through the feature of narrative figures and the significance of dramatic structures
in the broadest sense, which in their own way can articulate knowledge. Where the direct and undisguised presence of thought and
theory is concerned, with the expression of knowledge of whatever
nature, theatre aesthetics found a way out just to allude to a long
and complex history here in what from the 18th century on was a
naturalising of theory (that is, in the decisively founding period
for todays theatre). Thought was obliged to appear on stage as
though only naturally emerging from the dramatic situation as
speech-gesture, which was not to break or interrupt the register of
emotional/gestural expression. Regarding the equivocal status of
thought and knowledge on the stage sketched here, there is hardly
anything more revealing than Lessings remarks concerning how
the actor ought to perform what were then known as Moraliza-
tions (maxims, reflections, generalizing life-rules): namely, as an

absolutely naturally-appearing impulse of the moment, as though
more or less arising from the situation as an expression of the characters state of mind. Thought and theory were not allowed to appear as such, but were rather within the frame of art to pass off
natural human representations (Konrad Ekhof) as Nature itself.
Theory might well enter the theatrical playground but disguised.
Before we proceed with a discussion in newer theatrical forms of
to what extent and on what grounds it would be possible for a different sort of presence for theory in theatre, we should at this point
consider briefly what actually happens from a phenomenological
perspective when, instead of dialogue and narrative (as is the norm
for dramatic theatre texts), phrases from theory are cited, re-cited,
performed. What happens above all to theoretical speech on stage,
it would seem, is an emphasising of its character as thesis. Speaking,
which is in any case always already a speech-act, is immediately
marked on stage as action (parler, cest agir went the notion in 17thcentury theatre theory) and is also understood as such: as intervention, taking of sides, influencing of another, rarely as a merely neutral assertion for its own sake. In characters speech, the abstract onesidedness of individual statements comes to the fore and thus
becomes especially recognisable. In the game of theatre, what stands
out in any element of theory is its quality as parole. Freed from the
cautiously measured steps of conceptual discourse, any thesis in
scenic discourse appears as an uncertain hypo -thesis, which can
be refuted in the next moment and thus acquires a basic insecurity.
Equally unavoidable is a certain trivialisation. The non-trivial
quality of a theoretical statement depends on its context, on the way
in which thoughts proceed. As free-floating pearls of wisdom, theoretical statements are at best mere rhetorical points, mostly saying
nothing, poor. Yet just this poverty is paraded forth in the context
of the performative. Without the framework of discursivity, even
the precise and deep statement comes to resemble a bare opinion.
Here, however, the extremely complex relationship at work in theatre between sense and situation becomes especially clear. Everybody knows the counter-observation that even modest thoughts assume great (and not overly analysed) force and depth in the moment of theatrical performance. Thoughts surpassing of itself in
theatre stems from not only the context of on-stage performance,
155
Theory in theatre?
156
Theory in theatre?
but also the commonality of public reception. A statement heard by

many people simultaneously, and heard with the consciousness and
feeling that many people are simultaneously hearing it, becomes
something else. This metamorphosis (whether of the thought or of
its reception) returns depth to the theoretical statement even as the
on-stage performance takes it away. Mere points may accomplish
important and brilliant effects.
In the context of stage performance, a further transformation of
the theoretical, closely associated with the previous one, relates to
its agonistic character. Speech is controlled primarily by expressive
behaviours and not a priori by intentions. In theatre, speech flows
from the start into action as reaction; in the broadest sense, speech
becomes demarcation, conviction, refutation, manipulation. The
theatrical situation and particularly the dramatic situation interwoven with agon brings forward the instrumental character of
speech, speechs function as tool and weapon. The focus shifts from
the statement as mere corroboration of a truth, of a factual relationship, to that of speech as interested action, strike against an opponent, seduction, closing-of-ranks, defence-strategy. If the dialogue
is in principle a duel, the theoretical discourse in the scene is adapted to it in this way. So while at the first level of its theatrical transformation, hypo-thesis and parole stood out for thought, then on
this second level its quality as a means (and not an end in itself)
comes forward, which furthermore minimizes its claim to truth.
A further transformation, to which theory in a theatrical context
is subject, is the reattachment of thought to body. Thought wants
with as much urgency as futility to proclaim itself its own, independent reality separate from the body, from flesh. On stage, however, the fusion of speech with body is glaringly obvious. Speech is here
chained to physical expression. It appears as though thoroughly enmeshed with the flesh, with the voice, with the story situatted in the
body, with the gesticulations and postures of the body. As a result,
the truth-claim of theoretical speech is shaken anew. In regard to the
several transformations and displacements of meaning for the theoretical sketched here, when they appear theatrically, they have admittedly to do with a problematic that primarily, but not exclusively,
concerns the dramatic theatre. Given the combination of fictively
elaborated stage-world and narrative, thoughts presence is difficult
to materialise; narrated and dialogued worlds are hard to unite. Here,
157
thought is actually most convincing when it appears disguised, dramatically dressed up, indirect, as moment and motif in the plot.
When fictional scenes with thinkers are shown in theatre (or film),
the attempt to scenically to represent their thinking rapidly becomes,
as experience shows, embarrassing theory at reduced rates.
Theory takes a different form, however, in theatre such as that of
Rimini Protokoll, which makes a theatrical exhibit of interesting
realities, individual people with a particular knowledge to impart,
facts of the most varied sort. In the tradition of readymades, Rimini Protokoll can legitimately bring into
the theatre not only objects, but also real people, as
well as factual and theoretical knowledge. As one can
speak of acteurs trouvs, or found performers , in
analogy to objets trouvs, so too can knowledge and
text, theory and science in such a postdramatic form
suggest their own theatrical presence. They can be
exhibited as such; they require no dramaturgical cunning and trickery to warrant their presence in a dramatic fiction and situation. Here, theatre presents an
investigation, in a dual sense: first, people are found
elderly ladies from a retirement home, store detectives, teenagers, doormen, truck drivers, and so on;
second, the realities of their worlds are revealed, xrayed, illuminated with reference to their social contexts, without obviously interpreting them in a clear
cut way. Rimini Protokoll offer a theatre of memory
for an unknown present, a sort of empirical social reKarl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band
search and theatrically organised knowledge-system,
as well as an installation with living figures. That
spectators meanwhile remain dependent on their belief in the authenticity of what is communicated, not only connects such theatre
to many other contemporary practitioners, who methodically suspend the reliability of the distinction between fiction and reality,
but once again points out to the observer the necessity of critically
putting into question all received knowledge.
Whoever is of the opinion that all of this is too far removed from
what one calls theatre might perhaps be reminded that a restriction of recent date brings the concept of theatre so closely and almost exclusively together with the presentation of a dramatic nar-
Kolumnentitel
158
Theory in theatre?
ration. During the periods of the Renaissance and Humanism, the

word theatre was still used to denote types of viewing of the
greatest variety. One spoke of theatre not only in regard to the architecture of villas and gardens, which offered viewing experiences
where particular spatial, architectonic arrangements were presented; but also when one used the term teatro delle scale for the scenario of a staircase, or the term teatro dellaqua for a fountain.
Above all it is interesting that the term theatrum was chosen for encyclopaedically arranged books; that in the encyclopaedic Kunstkammern (princely collections that displayed curious and interesting scientific objects) the individual departments were each
classified as a theatrum. With the word theatre, one actually
thought of a scientific object and its reflective contemplation; indeed, the word indicated theoria the presentation of stores of
knowledge in an orderly and disciplined manner. And it appears
that this meaning existed almost equally with the sense of a spoken
(or, in the case of opera, sung) narration presented on the stage.
With its exhibition of everyday (albeit for many spectators generally unfamiliar) fields of work and life, and with its interest in the presentation of significant life-practices from various fields, the contemporary theatre of Rimini Protokoll stands in the tradition of an older
and much broader concept of theatre. Hence, it is only logical that in
Rimini Protokolls work an incorporation of informational and narrative knowledge is practiced in the theatre, and moreover, the almost
complete replacement of fictional play through an exhibition of the
knowledge, experience and thought of real experts of the everyday.
3
With these considerations as a background, the at first glance
seemingly arcane or curious endeavour by Helgard Haug and Daniel
Wetzel to put on an evening entitled Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster
Band (Karl Marx, Capital, First Volume), in fact represents a creative
and symptomatic attempt to find a contemporary form of contact
with a major theoretical field. Rimini Protokolls earlier works were
already heavily loaded with information; they presented and stimulated processes of knowledge and discovery. As such they stand in
the broader context of the development of a contemporary postdramatic theatre at the start of the 21st century, which in various ways
brings to the fore forms of speech where theoretical discourse enters. Philosophy may be performed and declaimed on stage as Einar
Schleef did with Nietzsches Ecce Homo; a text from Freud stood at
the centre of a stage project by Christof Nel; science and scientists
and their theories have been the topic in works by, for example,
Christoph Marthaler, Jean-Franois Peyret, or Jean Jourdheuil; the
theoretical language of sociology appears defamiliarized in a paradoxical way as character dialogue in Ren Polleschs work, whose
Hallo Hotel (2004) even used, without alteration, texts by Giorgio Agamben as a declaration of love between two women.
And now a thick tome, rather than a literary-philosophical
tirade, makes its entrance with Rimini Protokoll in the title role, a
book on the critique of the political economy : Capital, First
Volume. Of course there is a special story attached to this first volume (not Volume One, as the philologically correct title would have
to be). In his lifetime Marx completed only this part of his work,
after years of torturous delays and detours, new approaches and new
proof readings. After his death the other volumes had to be reconstructed from his unpublished literary remains. A book is placed in
the title role the book that, apart from the Bible and perhaps the
Koran, has had the most violent and strongest Realpolitik impact on
the world; a book that has determined countless destinies. An authentic protagonist tragic hero and villain of History, Comedy,
Farce and the Grotesque; scholarly tome; polemical reckoning with
the capitalist exchange-society; source both of utopian struggle and
unspeakable political-theoretical aberration.
In Rimini Protokolls work on Capital, their concept for a working form once again operates extremely well. It is a form that functions not simply as a theatre production, but far more as an open
concept in which records of reality of different kinds from different
avenues of knowledge arise and are represented. The theatre artists
do not try to distil a sort of best theatrical result out of these experiences and funds of knowledge, stories and opinions; instead, they
allow something that embraces all of these. The research activities
are just as integral an aspect of such theatre-work as the particular
form of rehearsal (which is about practising a non-actors appearance before an audience and as such, taking on the role of a coach far
more than that of a director). The actual theatre performance stands
alongside the equally important activities of making contact with,
159
Theory in theatre?
160
Theory in theatre?
talking to, and interviewing the amateur performers a term that

admittedly does not fit here since the people found are not sought
out as unprofessional embodiment-specialists , but as experts in
their own right. At the core of Rimini Protokolls work is the presence of these specialists coming from real life not from the theatre,
but from another everyday. And over and over again, interesting and
completely unexpected personalities are found for this theatre of
theoria, research, and analysis personalities one feels glad, as a
spectator leaving the performance, to have been introduced to
and to have (so to speak) got to know. (Rimini Protokoll performances always have something of an introduction about them, as
in the sense: may I present? )
Of course it is impossible to bring into the theatre such a concentrated and demanding treatise as Karl Marxs Das Kapital. Right at
the start of the evening, one of the actors peppily explains, with a bit
of wink:
25 chapters or 750 pages or 1,957,200 characters (including spaces). In
K: Volume One of Das Kapital encompasses, counting the introduction,

the next 100 minutes we want to present this volume. We therefore
minute, or alternatively 544 characters per second. [] But to really read
have four minutes per chapter, therefore have to read 7.5 pages per
one page of Das Kapital requires one hour of work to understand it and
to 1,500 hours of sheer work-time, that is, a normal working-year with
then another hour of intense meditation. With 750 pages that adds up
six-weeks holiday. 1,500 hours thats 90 complete performances of
Wagners Ring I prefer Das Kapital.
modity-owners think like Faust: In the beginning was the deed. They
S (reads page 92 from the Brown Edition): In their difficulties our comhave therefore already acted before they have thought.
One could pose the question, whether it might not be conceivable

to actually theatricalise the gestures and convolutions of argumentation, the ruptures and dramatic twists of a theoretical text. Is there
not a theatricality invested in many theories, which provides the
theatre with a chance to act them out? Rimini Protokoll went in another direction; in their work the academic content of the book is of
course not theatricalised in the style of school theatre, nor illustrated by way of the theatre, nor the form of theoretical discourse itself
consulted for its theatricality. Instead we experience the (self-)presentation of a handful of people in whose lives Das Kapital has in one
way or another played a role, not merely as a theory digested , but
as a theory politically suffered, and one for which most of the performers became involuntary protagonists.
They act inside and before a wall of bookshelves, which reaches
across the colourful stage filled with ladders, large drawers, small and
large ornamental objects (red carnations, busts of Marx for example).
There is glaring red and blue light. Two gaming machines are conspicuous, the sort one finds in countless pubs. And: the shelves are filled
from top to bottom, left to right with editions of Karl Marxs Das
Kapital in all possible variants, colours and formats, in quantity and
bulk. At a later moment in the evening, while a scholar discusses
problems relating to the various editions of Das Kapital with torturous philological meticulousness, the shelves are suddenly cleared.
From off stage, helpers cart on more and more trolleys with more and
more piles of books, and then every spectator is handed the book Das
161
Kolumnentitel
162
Theory in theatre?
Kapital, Band 1, or more precisely the 23rd Volume of the Marx-Engels-Werkausgabe (MEW) that became famous amongst the 1968
generation. It is now on ones lap; one reads (with the help of page
numbers given by experts on the stage) several striking points of
Kapital-Theorie. Some may entertain the thought that they can keep
the book as a present. But naturally one has to give it back at the end.
We live in an exchange-society; moreover, the theatre does not have
the book Kapital to give away. In any case, no one who visited that
evening could later dispute that he had at least held Karl Marxs Das
Kapital in his hand once, and even read some of it
Gradually the protagonists introduce themselves. There is Thomas Kuczynski, born in 1944, son of famous economics scholar Jrgen Kuczynski. Thomas Kuczynski is slightly bowed (probably from
the burden of books and thoughts), yet still extremely youthful. He
had to dissolve his Institute for Economic History after the German
reunification, and since 1991 he has alternated between unemployment and honorary positions. He is friendly, somehow unshaken by
the march of time, by the historical defeats, errors and even crimes
which are linked to Das Kapital. At the final curtain call he waves the
book in his hand militantly, literally holding tight to it. Then there is
Christian Spremberg, blind from birth, born in 1965, somewhat the
star of the evening with his humorous charm. After attending schools
for the blind in several cities, beginning his universityqualifications
in German language studies, then breaking it off, he became a telephone operator with the employment centre, then a radio program
editor, and has worked since 2003 in a call centre in Berlin. He
amazes the audience with his ability to find the right record in his extensive vinyl collection merely by feel. And after the performance he
plays a DJ session. There is Ulf Mailnder, who comes to his role as
co-author of the biography of the famous fraudster Jrgen Harksen.
There is Ralph Warnholz, born in 1960, who spent twelve years addicted to gambling, knows gaming machines in detail, and directs an
official self-help group for gamblers in Dsseldorf. There is Jochen
Noth, who used to belong to the communist left of the student
movement and then landed in China, where he worked between
1979 and 1988 as an editor for Radio Peking and a foreign-language
teacher. Now he is the China Consultant and Managing Director of
the Asien-Pazifik-Institut fr Management and has published several
books.
There is also the translator Franziska Zwerg, as well as Sascha

Warnecke, an idealistic young Dsseldorfer, who recounts how he
protested in front of McDonalds against the exploitation of child
labourers. And finally there is the Latvian Talivaldis Margevics, born
in Lbeck, stocky in appearance, a film maker. What he has to recount in Russian is translated by Franziska Zwerg. In one of the
evenings most powerful moments, he gives a calm and factual account of how his parents had left Riga in 1944 with the approach of
the Soviet troops (his father was a capitalist and could expect
nothing good from the new rulers). They arrived in Lbeck, where
little Talivaldis was born. Soon afterwards his mother was convinced to return to the Soviet Union, but the train journey there
was hellish. Just across border, mother and child were taken as
freight in a cattle wagon; there was almost nothing to eat. The small
child became steadily sicker. Then it happened: while stopped at a
railway station in Poland, a woman, who had seen the mother and
child through the open carriage door, called out to her, Give him
to me! and then insisted when the mother refused, Sell him to
me! She offered some food, then other kinds, then more and
more. She said that she could guarantee the now more than doubtful survival of the child. But the mother kept refusing to give up her
child, and in the end was given the entire basket of food from the
Polish woman as a gift. Talivaldis Margevics then relates that he
asked his mother one day why she only told him this story many
years later. Because she, so she answered, had at that moment in the
train station really considered selling him. Thus, Talivaldis
Margevics concludes, once in my life, I too was a commodity.
Running parallel to Margevics account at the other end of the
stage, phrases from Das Kapital regarding value, exchange value, and
value-form are delivered. In the performance script it reads this way:
M: So began a terrible journey, very long, often we waited by the side of
the tracks. Finally the train stopped, and finally the door was opened.
S (reads): We perceive straight away the insufficiency of the simple
form of value: it is an embryonic form which must undergo a series of
metamorphoses before it can ripen into the price-form.
M: My mother held me, stood at the open carriage door, and looked for
help. And one of the men jumped out and got water. A woman observed
all this [] Give him to me! Straight away my mother said, No.
163
Theory in theatre?
164
Theory in theatre?
S (reads): Nevertheless, the simple form of value automatically passes

over into a more complete form.
The book of theory, the critique of political economy, thus performs

alongside as the ninth protagonist, simultaneously object and subject of performance. The previously mentioned gambling machines
underline the presence of a sort of game-consciousness in humans, who in reality are victims of a mechanically-programmed
machinery. Over the course of the evening, this self-misunderstanding turns into the central, striking parable for our existence as
agents in the capitalist economy. The parables recounting moves
along a line, which begins in the still seemingly logical sphere of
theory, but always leads further, back and forth into the strange and
grotesque everyday madness of the money-society; into the madness of the game, and of the chance nature of credit regulations and
of the rules of the game themselves; and into the madness of fraud,
where entire empires and fortunes can be built on an appearance, on
deceit and illusion. Where the individual game of chance is in truth
only the foam on the surface of enormous, moving (money-)
streams and currents.
And in this respect the deep structure of this evenings entertainment is absolutely sound theoretically, even if it was hardly intended to be. What the scientific Marxist orthodoxy would namely like to
forget is that Marx did not really want to explain the rational logic
of capitalist economic relations. Far more important to him, as he
consistently stressed, was to analyse the logic of capitalist commodity-exchange as a literally insane and simultaneously ghostly world.
One only has to read sentences about the principle of the doctrine of
value [Wertlehre], such as the following, to become aware of this: If
I state that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen because the latter
is the universal incarnation of abstract human labour, the absurdity
of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of
coats and boots bring these commodities into a relation with linen,
or with gold or silver (and this makes no difference here), as the universal equivalent, the relation between their own private labour and
the collective labour of society appears to them in exactly this absurd
form. Abstract labour indicates a mere ghost ; the products of
labour, phantom-like object-ness, merely congealed quantities of

homogeneous human labour . Even if Rimini Protokolls evening
only refers to the gestus and style of Marxist theory through quotations, part of what constitutes its particular charm is that the theatrical (and not simply economic-theoretical) reference to commodityexchange and the rule of money emphasises above all the motifs of
absurdity the ghostly and the mad. For that is the actual (and frequently unappreciated) aim of the theory of capital, and simultaneously where its aesthetic-theatrical potential is to be found.
During the evening images and scenes are constantly called up,
that inquire into the abyss and void of exchange. Right at the start
there is a lovely moment when the seeing Kuczinsky and the blind
Spremberg each hold a volume of Das Kapital in their hands but
Kuczinsky the one in Braille, Spremberg a popular edition in normal
print. The edition has no use-value for Spremberg, explains the
economic scientist, just as the one in Braille has none for him. So
they exchange. The moment appears to illustrate commodity-exchange, but actually takes it apart. For what happens here is no
straightforward commodity-exchange, regulated according to the
quantity of value; what is shown is rather an unmediated social act,
165
Kolumnentitel
166
Theory in theatre?
within which the books (products of labour) are exchanged, but not
treated as commodities. Or rather, both men are mediating for each
other through a common human need; they behave towards one
another as though directly social. At the same time, as commentary, a passage is cited from the analysis of value-form where Marx
explains that in capitalist society, the characters who appear on the
economic stage are merely personifications of economic relations; it
is as the bearers of these economic relations that they come into
contact with each other, and as the passage continues: All commodities are non-use-values for their owners, and use-values for
their non-owners. The scene represents the denunciation of commodity-exchange as a form of social intercourse, as well as the image
of another exchange between two human beings.
The Marxist doctrine is no neutral economic theory, and Marx
did not wish for it to be simply a better description of the capitalist
society. On the contrary, what Marxist theory takes as a basis is an insight into systemic repression . Under capitalist conditions it is incessantly and systematically forgotten that every individual human
labour is always already thoroughly socially mediated, permanently
dependent on the labours of everyone else. Instead every subject appears as individual interest reflected in itself, concerned only with
private labour, which in mad fashion only pays off afterwards as
social labour: precisely through exchange. So although from the
start, and through and through, human practices are constituted socially, given the conditions of capital this human sociality materializes
only afterwards, as its products of labour are exchanged as commodities. In our labours ergo in our essentially social activities of life, we act
in appearance: in a mediated, belated, delayed way and not, as would
correspond to the factuality of human labour, directly social. Stuck
within the dry economic analysis of this critique of political economy is the anatomy of the concrete madness of a social system that
makes it possible for everything even a persons life-activities, even
ones body, even ones spirit to become a commodity-object.
If one bears in mind that Marx wanted to set out precisely the absurdity of this form of human interaction, then it becomes clear that
the scurrilous humour of the evening presented by Rimini Protokoll,
with its feel for the absurd, corresponds exactly to this impulse in
Marxs theory of capital. From a dramaturgical perspective, the performance turns ever more towards the total mania of money fraud,
in the playing of which [Spiel] wit, cunning, navet, and criminality

are barely separable. To that extent it becomes clears how acutely the
principles of gambling inhere within the exchange-society. On the
one hand, a formerly addicted gambler recounts events from his life
the gambling, the guilt, the ruin, his work in a self-help group for
gambling addicts. What Marxist theory describes, the rule of monetary value, is reflected in gambling, as Walter Benjamins analyses of
the 19th century suggest. On the other hand, towards the end of the
performance, an extensive and increasingly incredible account is
provided of the famous Hamburg credit fraudster Jrgen Harksen,
who, without having studied anything, starts off as an investment
consultant and, with an instinct for building trust, makes millions
from nothing; takes advantage of illicit funds; pays off credit with
new credit; maintains a yacht, private jet, villas, and a garage full of
luxury cars, all to create the creditworthy appearance which actually
gives him access to ever greater sums (at its peak over 100 million).
Caught only after several years, he is sentenced to just 7 years imprisonment for simple fraud . Still, gamblers and credit fraudsters
appear less like the capital and money societys typical representatives than its dissidents and extremists, in whom is personified the
madness of the social relations in which they live. Where exchange
becomes radical, whether in gambling or credit fraud, it transforms
into something other than rational calculation.
A series of quotations from Das Kapital rhythmically scan and
punctuate the evening. At no point is the labour of thinking about
the performance removed for the spectator neither through an
attitude of empathic identification in the sense of a radical social
critique, nor conversely through an explicit dissociation from Marxist theory. Rather the evening is reminiscent at many points, not accidentally, of Brecht, of the absolutely unreasonable and simultaneously regulated world of lights in Mahagonny, which the performance seems to directly allude to near the end in the sandwich
boards with words carried around by the performers. Here the circle
is complete, as far as Brecht goes. Brecht, (in the Lehrstck period),
went furthest in the attempt to reconcile the spheres of theatre and
theory; he himself tried in several pieces (St. Joan of the Stockyards)
to theatricalise the theory of capital, money, credit, exchange, the
radical world of commodities; and it is in his tracks that Rimini Protokolls labour between readymade and documentary is readily to be
seen.
167
Theory in theatre?
168
Documentary theatre in the presence of performance art
By Ehren Fordyce
While performance art of the 1950s to 1970s, with its emphasis on

the immediate presence of the performer vis--vis the audience,
tended to make theatrical rehearsal taboo, believing that rehearsal
would damage its live, spontaneous presence, there has been a slow
rapprochement between performance art and theatre since then.
The two genres no longer seem inherently antithetical. For instance,
Marina Abramovics Seven Easy Pieces from 2005 entail her re-enacting and re-interpreting major performance-art pieces by herself
and other pioneers of performance art. Meanwhile, from the side of
theatre, in the work of groups like Forced Entertainment, Goat Island and many others, techniques common to performance art,
such as real-time versus re-enacted presence, interactivity with the
audience, and non-scripted, yet structured action have also made inroads. A major exception to this rapprochement, however, has been
the genre of documentary theatre. With its emphasis on the representation of the real documentary theatre may have seemed immune to performance arts major criticism of dramatic theatre: that
it was by and large an artificial construction. At the same time, documentary theatres reliance on models taken from literary drama
narrative, character, thematic conflict, compressed dramatic time
required as much closed form and pre-meditated construction as
any through-written play. In that light, the work of Rimini Protokoll constitutes one of a few endeavours, along with artists like
Coco Fusco (Dolores from 10h to 22h) and Walid Raads Atlas Group
Archives, that try to imagine what the form of documentary theatre
might look like when it no longer consists primarily of the re-enactment of a dramatized historical past.
Two Rimini Protokoll performances from 2008, Breaking News
Ein Tagesschauspiel and 100% Berlin Eine statistische Kettenreak-
documentary theatre. The subtitle of Breaking News Ein Tages-
tion, exemplify the groups revised, post-performance-art take on
which the idea of play is used by both drama (play as literary arte-
schauspiel even seems to make light of the interconnected ways in
100% Berlin
fact) and performance art (play as game structure). The title is a pun,
meaning simultaneously something like A game with the Tagesschau or A play with the daily news (ein Tagesschau-Spiel), as
well as a days performance (ein Tages Schauspiel). Meanwhile,
the subtitle for 100% Berlin ( a statistical chain-reaction ) also hints
at its indebtedness to non-literary sources, to mathematics and
game-structures. In addition, one of the models for 100% Berlin was
a piece of performative installation art, rather than theatre: Of All the
People in All the World by British company Stans Cafe, in which 104
tons of rice are arranged in piles to represent various pieces of statistical information about the worlds population, each grain of rice
representing one person.
Both Rimini Protokoll performances have a document at their
core, but in neither case is that document a literary drama which itself documents something else. Breaking News takes the Tagesschau,
the main nightly news program on German television, as a jump-
169
170
ing-off point to examine news as a genre across the globe. 100%

Berlin uses a questionnaire based on a statistical representation of
the population of Berlin to offer a glimpse into the lived reality hidden behind statistics. Both performances, while deeply about contemporary reality, also call into question some of the veristic assumptions often associated with documentary: that facts are
facts, and not themselves dependent on perspective or open to interpretation, uncertainty, and even fantasy. Moreover, both, in the
way that they adopt techniques from performance art, make use of
structures that minimize two important elements of classical dramatic storytelling: an overarching, compressed temporality and a
primary agon, or conflict.
Created for the 100th anniversary of Berlins Hebbel Theater,
100% Berlin cast 100 Berliners to play the parts of 100 different percentiles making up a statistical cross-section of the city. While the
theme of the piece is immediately clear, describing it in traditional
terms of dramatic conflict would be a challenge. What is the conflict
of the city of Berlin? In a piece that revitalized U.S. documentary
theatre in the 90s, namely Anna Deavere Smiths Fires in the Mirror
(1992), an historical event about a city is documented how riots
occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn after the Hasidic driver of a
100% Berlin
hearse, Yosef Lifsh, ran over and killed the 7-year old African-American Gavin Cato. From that event, the piece then becomes thematically centred around the Black-Jewish dialogue, rendering New
York, and by extension the United States, almost emblematically
about racial conflict. In her subsequent work about the 1992 L.A.
Riots, Twilight: Los Angeles (1993), the city is again a character of
sorts, with the piece here turning primarily on a tripartite racial (and
economic and historical) conflict, i.e., that between African-Americans and Anglo-Americans and Korean-Americans. The strength of
Smiths work lies precisely in showing that the conflicts are multivalent, rather than simply dialectical (as Cornel West puts it in his
Foreword to Fires: we usually conduct the conversation as if the
tensions between Black and Jewish men are exactly the same as
those between Black and Jewish women. ) That said, discussions
about the merits of the two pieces sometimes devolve into suggesting, on the one hand, that Fires is aesthetically better because its
two-sided conflict is dramaturgically more focused or that Twilight
is better because its three-sided agon is more complex. The assumption that a documentation of reality could fruitfully be represented
and then discussed in the aesthetic terms of dramatic conflict goes
unstated.
171
172
The point is not that conflict is somehow unreal or a mere illusion. Cornel West is right when he warns, we often appeal to an abstract humanism and faceless universalism that refuse to confront
the concrete conflicts that divide us. But I do want to point out how
our assumptions about documentary theatre tend to take for granted that the world already contains a story and that that story is agon
(conflict, competition, a ritual fight with prizes to the winner). Conflicted real event (referent) + conflictual performance (signifier) =
documentary (signified). The assumption that the real, or its representation, necessitates agon comes in curious guises. For example,
the English usage of the German loan-word Realpolitik tendentiously sees the world as a story about conflict. Real politics, in this
sense, connotes reading the world with a certain hard-nosed
Hobbesianism leverage power because the world out there is fundamentally inimical. The idea of reality-television similarly conflates a notion of the real with a sporting competition. While suggesting that the real is inherently a conflict, both Realpolitik and reality-TV may also indicate that we are conflict-junkies in what we
take as real.
By contrast, 100% Berlin is also a sort of ritual game, but embedded in it seems to be a way of socially looking at the world as more
than zero-sum competition. The piece itself was cast through a
game-process, but not a competitive one. The directors of the piece
Helgard Haug, Stephan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel really cast only
one person for the show, the statistician Thomas Gerlach Berliner
#1. With Gerlachs help, the directors then prepared a sheet with
five criteria about the population of Berlin: gender, age, family status, place of birth, and residential district. Under each category, rows
of boxes were provided according to a further statistical breakdown,
so for instance under place of birth were seven more criteria: Germany (90 boxes), Turkey (4), Poland (1), Serbia-Montenegro (1),
Africa (1), North and South America (1), Asia (2). In a process a bit
like John Cages restrictive chance-compositions, the first person in
the chain reaction, Gerlach, then had 24 hours to choose another
person whose statistical attributes fit empty boxes remaining across
the five main criteria and to convince them to participate. He chose
his daughter Annemarie, from the residential district TreptowKpenick in the age group between 612 years old, etc. In a move
further reminiscent of an installation rather than a theatre perfor-
mance, before the start of the show each audience member received
a small book documenting the 100 participants in the piece (a version can be found in an online blog at www.hundertprozentberlin.
de.
The one-hour long performance itself began, in a manner typical
of many Rimini Protokoll shows, with an introductory parade of
everyday experts. Gerlach entered, told about his own work as a
statistician, and explained some of the concept of the performance,
a piece in which as he put it he would represent 34,000 people
during the evening, or 1% of the 3.4 million in Berlin. This wry joke,
setting the idea of statistical representation against typical stage representation (the idea of an actor mimicking 34,000 people), suggests in miniature how Rimini Protokolls work plays with documentarys ethos of referential authenticity; that is, they tend to open
the mechanism of representation up for inspection, rather than
suspending disbelief in it. As Gerlach then introduced his daughter, the main set-piece, a green revolving stage covering an area approximately 100m2, began to turn slowly behind a microphone
stand placed down front. Subsequent participants came out and introduced themselves at the microphone. But in a playful piece of
stage action, participants only had enough time to speak as it took to
revolve past the microphone stand some had to hurry up, some
were cut off by the next participant, some edged in on the time of
others, some were finished before time was up. While not a durational piece per se, the parade and its possibilities for individualization through restriction borrows elements of durational art:
setting the game of each introduction within the span of 1/100th of
a revolve.
In a larger sense, this durational element points to one of the principle ways in which Rimini Protokolls work differs from most documentary theatre and resembles performance art: it tends to take
place in a version of real-time rather than dramatic time. Whether
one thinks of the German political documentary theatre of the 1960s
(Weiss, Hochhuth, Kipphardt); major U.S. documentary performances from the 70s on (Emily Mann, Anna Deavere Smith, Moiss
Kaufman); or British work in so-called verbatim theatre from the
2000s (My Name is Rachel Corrie, Robin Soans Talking to Terrorists,
Nicholas Kents Justifying War), the signified is always primarily
elsewhere, already happened, re-enacted, referred to. Bringing
173
174
100% Berlin
everyday experts on stage (rather than actors re-performing interviews of those experts) already contributes to this quality of
presence in real-time, so that even when the everyday performers
tell a story about themselves or re-enact an event from their lives
with the help of other everyday colleagues (both things happen frequently in Rimini Protokolls work), the present time of narration
becomes as important as the past related. But then Rimini Protokoll
often further emphasizes real-time play through structural, quasigame elements: the revolve in 100% Berlin; clients being allowed to
call the onstage cell-phone of a professional madam during Wallenstein (and occasionally interrupting the performance of the other
experts); racing through the virtual world of Second Life to deliver a
virtual heart before time is up in the piece about online heartache
and heart-transplants, Blaiberg und sweetheart 19; stopping at a
truck-stop in a cargo van to try to talk to other truck drivers in the

middle of the long-distance shipping piece Cargo Sofia; and so on.
And as even this short list should suggest, Rimini Protokoll has a
knack for making these real-time game elements thoroughly entwined with the thematics of their pieces.
In 100% Berlin, the use of the revolve itself served a further role
in the thematics of the piece as a sort of living pie-chart. Using an
extremely wide fish-eye lens positioned directly over the stage, Rimini Protokoll were able to project a top view of the revolve onto a
circular screen at the rear of the stage, so that participants could visually personify different statistical relationships about Berlin. After
the parade, in a sort of updated version of the documentary film
Berlin: Die Symphonie der Grostadt, performers walk, run, type,
dance, sleep, talk, ride the subway through the space in a compressed, dramatic-time version of 24 hours of their everyday activities in the city. Subsequent sections in the piece then take the form
of mini-censuses. Moving back into real-time, questions are posed
on another screen at the top front of the stage. Initially, these questions take the form of yes-no replies, so that participants answer
them by moving stage left for yes, right for no, thus forming the living pie-charts on the back screen. Who likes statistics? Very few.
Who lies? More than half. Who moved from the former West to
the former East? Who from East to West? Noticeably, few in either case. Then, in further sections, permutations on this basic idea
about how to display quantitative information are explored. Rather
than posing pre-determined questions, a section follows where performers are given the choice to go to the microphone and ask their
own questions. Who would want to rule the world? Hardly anyone. Who is against fascism? The first and only uniform reply to a
question: all against. It is a moving moment, in its own way, and at
the same time, the overall context of questions has already established a frame for viewing the information presented as more than a
transparent representation. Is someone lying? Even if it is true, what
does it signify? Is it not illegal in Germany, at a federal-level, to answer this question in any other way? Is this resistance to fascism a
strange form of obedience itself? And then again, scepticism aside,
one can also see the audiences pleasure (applause) at re-cognizing
their own everyday values.
175
176
In a final section, performers sit on raked benches constructed at

the rear of the stage and answer questions by raising cards of different colours. Increasingly the questions become multiple-choice,
rather than binary, and so one starts to witness a strange, rapidly
shuffling play of coloured cards across the stage. In antithesis to the
authoritarian spectacle of North Korean mass-displays with cards,
carefully synchronized to move, for example, the image of a missile
through space, here one has the impression of watching democracy
in action a bit messy, unsynchronized, variable. It is even reassuring to see some performers, whether out of ineptitude or resistance,
consistently go off-program and use a fourth colour to answer a
three-colour question.
By the end of the performance, one can identify some of the performers by name and has some sense of their background, but the
overall effect of the question-and-answer sections is different. One
sees neither an overall faceless statistic, nor a series of absolute individuals. One receives an impression of particularized fields, and further that the differential flows between arrays of information are
perhaps more than one expected. The information does not break
down into simple summaries of conflicts. People do not consistently answer questions yes or no based on easily identifiable categories that would distinguish the groups within the larger group.
Liberal versus conservative. West German versus East German. Poor
versus wealthy. Men versus women. Native versus immigrant.
Young versus old. None of these is quite sufficient. Instead, as people move back and forth, one grasps a momentary sense of the complex, differential flows that happen on the streets, in voting, in travel on the U-Bahn around the city. And while conflict as an overarching structural thematic becomes minimized, giving way to an image
of sociality-in-difference, conflicts writ small remain: Who would
kill to protect their family? Most. Who would kill to protect their
city? Most not. Who has the impression that they will leave traces
behind them after they have died? Most yes, some no. And here
even the audience performs, as a round of applause spontaneously
emerges and yet a strangely tentative applause. Perhaps this reaction has to do with an ambivalent recognition about the quality of
the everyday: that it is both monumental and ephemeral.
Breaking News
Breaking News, directed by Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, also

functions primarily as a sort of theatrical differential array of information, but now across global newscasts. For most of the performance, the stage-image consists of about 25 monitors piled and spread
across the stage on work-shelves and tables, displaying mostly live
satellite broadcasts of news programs. Moving left to right across the
stage and across the globe, the broadcasts come from the Americas
(particularly left-leaning channels from Mexico and Cuba, as well as
the Venezuela-based, pro-Chvez, pan-American anti-CNN
teleSUR), Europe (mainly Iceland, Germany, and France), the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, as well as the range and diversity
of pan-Arab news channels), South-East Asia (specifically India and
Pakistan), and then finally, on the right, Russia and the United
States. As one of the participants in the performance, the Agence
France-Presse editor Andreas Osterhaus, suggested in an interview,
by seeing the broadcasts simultaneously every night in performance, and particularly as they change only gradually from night to
night, one grasps tangibly not only the homogeneity of the genre,
177
178
but also the ideological differences of particular channels. The differential array works, in effect, to make visible unarticulated assumptions about ideology that may be naturalized as the real
when one habitually watches a particular newscast in isolation. In
this sense, the concept of Breaking News returns almost to an ur-idea
of documentary theatre. Erwin Piscator is generally credited with inventing the term documentary theatre, which he conceived as devoted to ideology-critique and as a form of living newspaper. In
this case, Rimini Protokoll reinvents documentary theatre and the
living newspaper for the digital age, not re-enacting the news so
much as concentrating on its living reception by various everyday
experts and, by extension, across different regions of the world.
Like 100% Berlin with its parade and three variations on censuses (yes/no; real-time posing of questions by participants; questions
with cards), Breaking News also has a roughly four-part structure.
First comes a parade of the everyday experts, in this case nine of
them, including four simultaneous translators (Martina Englert
Russian and English; Sushila Sharma-Haque Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Punjarabi, Bengali and Sindhi; Carsten Hinz Spanish, French,
and English; and Djengizkhan Hasso dialects of Kurdish and Arabic), as well as the former ARD Africa-correspondent Hans Hbner,
the Icelandic journalist Smon Birgisson, ZDF news-cutter Molly
Mahnecke, Walter von Rossum (writer of a book about the Tagesschau broadcast), and Andreas Osterhaus. The opening section,
which introduces the participants and lays out the rules of the game,
begins promptly at 7:35 each evening, so that at 8pm the live broadcasts of the Tagesschau and other news programs can begin. Two
subsequent sections then re-examine and re-play the live broadcasts
to explore them in more depth and, finally, to look forwards to what
one might expect regarding news in the coming days.
As the special requirements of the show to start at 7:35 indicate,
time plays a central, albeit not necessarily stated role in the performance, due in part to the ambivalent nature of the new in the idea of
news. As Walter von Rossum reports early in the show, one of the
first things that surprised him in researching the production of the
Tagesschau was that the majority of broadcast topics are decided a
week in advance. Since many important dates are already set in news
calendars state visits, press conferences, parliament debates, etc.
that leaves reports about terrorists, maniacs on the rampage, acci-
dents and [initiatives] from the Axis of the Good [i.e., President
Bushs so-called Coalition of the Willing] as reportable events
from a present not already foreseen. In some respects, this all may be
pragmatic and to be expected (it takes time to prepare the news);
in other respects, it points out to what extent the news is an aesthetic genre as much as a report about reality. In the news, the world becomes condensed into a dramatic time where lead-stories lead,
human-interest stories follow, and at least in the West a potpourri composed of reports about the lottery, weather, and stockmarket tends to round things out. The reassuring generic-ness of the
broadcast can lead to a psychological perception of time that is relatively sedate, unhurried, measured even as crises and traumas are
reported. Conflict can seem worn away by the everyday temporality
of the reports; that is, today feels less like the new than like a ritual repetition. Again, von Rossum: By the way I have to admit, it
happens ever more and more for me that I let myself be lulled to
sleep [umnachten] by the ceremonies of the Tagesschau.
When the live satellite feeds begin at 8pm, and the simultaneous interpreters cued now one, now the other by editor Osterhaus
start to switch back and forth between translating the global news
reports, one is immediately confronted, in contrast to the relatively
sedate psychology of time sketched earlier, by the sheer hecticness of
the undertaking. Among other things, the dramatic condensations
of news reports are extremely challenging to translate in real-time.
What were previously everyday experts, with their own back-stories and experiences and depth-psychologies and stated preferences
about what kind of news they like to receive, suddenly turn into experts who are extensions of the apparatus, quickly trying to parse
complicated cultural short-hands into an understandable context
for the audience. Moreover, at least three different times or temporal experiences of present-ness collide. There is the presence of the
present: the onstage bodies of the translators, the images on the
screens, and the staccato, irregular vocal rhythms of interpreting the
broadcast sound, which is present yet absent in the earpieces of the
translators. Then there is the contemporaneity of the present, in at
least two senses: first, the broadcasts are emanating from geographically different areas co-temporaneously (contemporaneity as simultaneity); and second, to the extent that the news constitutes a
selection of events, it proposes certain events of the present as al-
179
Walter von Rossum
180
ready historically significant (contemporaneity as a marker of ideological selection about historicity, as what is supposedly integral to
the characterization of now). And finally there is the everydayness of
the present, its rituals, customs, and repetitions that suggest that the
present is always, as Richard Schechner put it, twice-performed behaviour (to take only one example, notable when watching news
broadcasts from across the globe a lot of people worthy of being reported on are men who wear suits). So while van Rossum notes
how the new in news is already imagined a week in advance in a
kind of future perfect tense ( it will have happened ), the hectic moment when the live feeds
begin demonstrates in another way the strangely
over-determined temporality of modern experience, where the present is suffused with absent
presences, simultaneous feeds, pre-existing ideologisations, and ritual rehearsals of the past as future and future as past (think of the logic of preemptive strikes, with its historically deterministic logic that converts a possible future into a
necessary future). As the title of a Philip K. Dick
novel puts it, Now Wait for Last Year.
Like much major documentary theatre of the
past decades, Rimini Protokolls work raises questions about the historiographic process (Is history
a chronicle of kings or an account of everyday experience? What counts as fact, and who decides?
Is history class-struggle, a useful lie, an accumulation of debris?). But Rimini Protokoll casts documentary historiography, following the tradition
of performance art, more as a project about how to
engage the present than the past. One effect of this
can be seen as a displacement of the traditional modes of dramatic
agon (conflict as happening in an historical present between characters and embodied themes) into an agon about representation (what
happens now when one sets different modes of representation
against each other). In that sense, part of the dramatic interest in
Breaking News for audience members lies in comparing, contrasting,
and deciding where to focus given the abundance of modes presented for telling the present. Similarly, one of the principle theatrical
challenges for the everyday experts a bit more pronouncedly even

than in most Rimini Protokoll shows resides in the consistent
back and forth between modes of performance, between moments
which can be anticipated within the rehearsal-script and moments
where they have to perform spontaneously, in real-time, given
the changing nature of the nightly broadcasts.
Two other recurring aspects of the performance underline Rimini Protokolls historiographic questioning of the news presentness and verisimilitude. One is the occasional use of Aeschylus
tragedy The Persians as a meta-commentary on the
idea of representing recent historical events. Second is the unannounced insertion (at least three
times in the performance) of archival news
footage into the flow of the live satellite broadcasts, insertions perceived as such only retrospectively by the audience. About an hour and a half
into the roughly two-hour performance, the two
techniques appear together.
Seated above the monitors, almost presiding as
authorial voice over the satellite feeds, is the former Africa correspondent Hans Hbner. At the
beginning of the piece, he has explained how,
prior to becoming a political correspondent, he
worked briefly as a theatre critic before becoming
demoralized by all the bad theatre he had to see.
He wishes that he could have reviewed more
major productions, such as one he remembers of
Aeschyluss The Persians. This mention of the play
then serves as the impetus for several subsequent
choral moments in Breaking News, where the experts dance or recite lines from the tragedy (the
only one in the classical Greek canon about a contemporary event
the war across the Aegean between the Greek States and the Persian
Empire rather than about a mythological subject). Later, in the
middle of the third and last round of newscasts, we see video
footage of marine battalions landing on a coast just before dawn.
There is a voice-over narrating the event, and one assumes at first
that one of the satellite feeds has cut to its next story. Then Hbner
begins to narrate live over what one now realizes is a past Hbner,
Hans Hbner
181
182
from 1992, the Africa correspondent narrating the landing of U.S.

forces in Somalia. He makes clear that a normal report would have
explained how the Americans had arrived to free the country from
hunger and misery and to introduce order and democracy. But the
reality of the event was, in effect, too surreal for Hbner to report it
that way. When the American soldiers arrived for their surprise
landing, they were visibly annoyed to be greeted by contingents of
international journalists who had been tipped, presumably from a
source within the American military, to cover the show. So, instead,
Hbner reported on the media apparatus surrounding the landing,
thereby emphasizing the extent to which the seemingly military
operation had already been manufactured as media spectacle.
Hbner then cuts out of his story back into The Persians, noting
at this point in the performance the exceptional nature of the play as
the one tragedy with a contemporary theme. He also comments that
Aeschylus himself served in the battles at Marathon and Salamis, so
that in the play, the Messengers report about the war is seemingly
founded on Aeschyluss eyewitness experience. Sushila SharmaHaque briefly recounts the Persian Queen Atossas lines of dismay
at the report, and then Hbner, as the Messenger, begins to recount
the numbers of ships on the Greek and Persian sides, concluding
that only the gods could have given victory to the outnumbered
Greeks.
On the one hand, the citations from The Persians suggest the ancientness of the news report itself, as well as the continued contemporaneity of Aeschyluss drama: Hbner as modern-day messenger
witnessing a marine landing like Aeschylus might have almost
2,500 years ago. In a sort of Regietheater version of documentary
theatre, the anachronistic jamming together of different periods
serves as an occasion to reflect on the similarities and differences between the times, on both the historical specificity and every-period-ness of such events as war. For example, how are the Somalis
like and unlike the Greeks in their beating back an invading empire?
Or is it the Americans, bearers-of-democracy, who are the Greeks?
Less explicitly examined, but perhaps consistent with the reference to The Persians, is another observation related to the question
of authenticity, or expected authenticity, in news reports. Hbners
own experience in Somalia suggests that, while his being there
does serve to authenticate what was reported, the mediatised nature
of the event itself goes against the grain of what one expects as an
authentic surprise landing. In the case of The Persians, however,
the question of authenticity is even thornier. While the play is the
first with a contemporary theme, it is also, in a sense, the first intercultural play, the first that attempts to portray another state as
though from the inside. The characters in the play are Persians, not
Greeks. And while Aeschyluss experience in battle may authenticate the Messengers report, does his experience authenticate his
imagining of the inner life of Atossa, or the dialogues between the
other Persian characters? The play is curious because it remains difficult to read how it might have been historically received and intended. Is Aeschyluss imagining and reporting of the Other a kind
of honourably sympathetic engagement with the enemy? A sign of
the rise of Athenian reason in its ability to think outside the self? Or
is it, in the perverse way that sympathy sometimes works, actually
a glorified image of the self, a mirror held up to Athenian magnanimousness? The right of the victor, as it were, to speak in the name of
the defeated? As the last words recited by Hbner for the Messenger
read, whether to the dismay of the Persians or the patriotic honour
of the Greeks, the Gods stand watch over the city of the goddess
Athena. And if the ur-drama of news reporting, The Persians, suggests that such reports have as much to do with presenting an image
of self as of the other, what are the ramifications for reading international news today? As the illusionistic insertion, followed by disillusioning reveal of Hbners archival report within a contemporary
broadcast suggests, the border between history and myth in news
reporting can be as small as the space of a jump-cut.
As Breaking News has toured over the months, the nightly stories
have gradually changed. In Russian news, the daily spotlight on
Vladimir Putin has remained, but with a slow shift towards more reports about his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. In Cuba, Castro has
stepped down. In Pakistan, Fahmida Mirza has been elected to be the
first female Speaker of Parliament. One of the set lines in the piece
remains unchanged, where Djengizkhan Hasso suggests that the
Syrian state-television Syria will probably begin its nightly report
with a piece about President Assad, since in all dictatorships something is reported first about the Head of State. During the performance, Hasso stands mid-stage and a little back throughout; his
purview is to translate news from the Middle East, which is posi-
183
184
tioned at the middle of the broadcast spectrum spread across the

space. Heiner Mller once sardonically remarked to the effect that
he liked the presence of the Berlin Wall, because it made him concretely aware of the ideological divisions that structured the world.
In that sense, it seems fitting that the map of the globe used during
Breaking News now focuses on the East-West, North-South conflicts emanating from the Middle East. And yet, like the opposition
between Capitalism and Communism (or Imperialism and AntiFascism), the so-called Clash of Civilizations between Christian
West and Islamic East seems to a large extent to be a conflict manufactured in the interests of the will to power of certain parties on
both sides; an over-simplification of the multivalency of both sides
into the easier story of opposition.
In itself, Hassos rich biography psychologist, translator, businessman, President of the Executive Committee of the Kurdish National Congress embodies a counter-example to such simplification. An emigrant to Germany from Syria at the beginning of the
80s, Hasso notes that in Syria, Kurds make up 13-15% of the state,
yet are not officially counted as part of the population; in that sense,
his biography further testifies to how oversimplification can take
the form of erasure. In one of the more bravura sections in the performance, Hasso quickly flips through a series of stations from the
Middle East, including Al Arabiya, Nile TV, ANN, Al Forat, Al Jazeera,
Al Iraquia, Alhurra, Al-Zawraa, and finally Kurdistan TV, describing
who funds the channels and who their target audiences are. Among
other points, he explains some of the ideological dimensions of the
broadcasts: how a station like Al Jazeera characterizes suicide
bombers as martyrs ; Al Arabiya, by comparison, as dead attackers. A live feed from U.S.-sponsored Alhurra is set against prerecorded footage of an American soldier being shot by a sniper to
dubbed-in religious music on the Iraqi terrorist station Al-Zawraa.
The interpreter Carsten Hinz has suggested at the beginning of the
show that in his training to be a translator, he learned that a message
is only a message when the receiver can identify it as such. By turning the documentary form of the living-newspaper into a story
about reception rather than re-enactment of fact, Rimini Protokoll in
turn must emphasize the diversity of reception, trying to contextualize what counts as fact depending upon the perspective from
which one sees the news.
Breaking News
As a further result, conflict is presented as both real and deeply

perspectival. In the penultimate moment of the show, Andreas Osterhaus speculates on what the news for tomorrow will bring, and
this gesture seems not only useful, but necessary. Traditional structures of dramatic conflict cannot fully characterize Rimini Protokolls work, and so it would be difficult to stage a conclusive resolution of conflict (death tragedy, marriage comedy) to wrap up
the show. Instead, given the legacy of performance arts emphasis
on the present tense within Rimini Protokolls real-time documentations, the conclusion must be open-ended; the present continues.
And just as part of the work of 100% Berlin consists in the pre-show
the performance-art-like game of the chain reaction part of the
work of Breaking News depends upon the post-show: how audience
members will take information that they have acquired during the
performance and use it (or not) in their subsequent viewings of the
news.
185
Eva Mezger: It is now 29th January

1956, just before 8pm. A normal
Sunday, without mishaps, without extras. I am a programme assistant for
the test run of Swiss Television and in
the evenings I am the presenter. Now
the cameraman calls, Quiet in the
studio.
Stage manager: Quiet, please, quiet!
Eva Mezger: The cameramans hand
goes down and I am on-air. If we had
broadcast the world premire of The
Visit live, then my announcement
would have been of the following
type:
Eva Mezger (Video from 1956): Dear
viewers, today we turn above all to
those of you who have rarely seen a
television broadcast
Eva Mezger (lip-synching): and
welcome you now to our first direct
broadcast from the Schauspielhaus
Zrich, where today, the world premire of Friedrich Drrenmatts tragic comedy The Visit is taking place...
I WAS THE FACE OF SWITZERLAND
AND GIEHSE WAS BIG
(Curtain up)
Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten

Dame
188
Kolumnentitel
The art of memory

Fiction as seduction into reality
By Gerald Siegmund
Stefan Kaegi proclaimed in an interview with Nina Peters in Theater

der Zeit (Oct 2006) that theatre was not a sanatorium, but rather a
museum in which people and things appear lifted out of a certain
hectic causality for the purpose of contemplation . This definition
of theatre appears at first glance strange, and not only in relation to
Rimini Protokolls theatre. Why should theatre be considered a museum, a place of collection in both senses of the word? Places in
which, as a rule, lifeless objects from another time are collected and
presented, where we collect through the act of observing and are
able to go into ourselves. Although in some productions the impression may creep over one that theatre is museum-like, as a rule
the exact opposite is true. Theatre is a living interactive relationship
between people that occurs in the here and now. The theatrical situation, which is produced by the co-existence of actors and audience
and which irretrievably falls apart when they separate, allows not
only the situational production of meaning, but also an enjoyable
swapping of excitement and energy that would otherwise not be
possible.
In the context of the interview, Kaegis statement was primarily
directed against the understanding of the stage as a moral educator
that contributes to the enlightenment of the public and advances
peoples sense of responsibility. Kaegi rejects the infantilisation of
the audience. He looks far more for the personal narrative of a
novel, which would otherwise only be told through Eurocrat statistics. Similar to how a journalist or a documentary film maker searches for authentic voices: Argentinian porters, model railway makers
from Basel, Belgian speech writers, cardiologists from Zurich. Listening, recording protocols. The work is closer to that of a reader
than an author. The stories are already there. They need to be contextualised, chosen and focussed so that an audience can examine
them through its own hermeneutic microscope . In the background
to such a procedure, Rimini Protokolls work is consistently categorised as documentary theatre , in which everyday experts
enter, speak and relate their own stories. In so doing, they approach
the idea of a museum, within whose halls things presumably
speak for themselves without being commented on: performers
present themselves in a certain way with the aim of being seen and
heard by us, so that we remember them and their stories.
Museums as cultural institutions exercise an important role as
repositories of memory. They guard paintings and other artistic
treasures, they archive parts of the cultural history of a nation or of
an artistic movement in order to make them accessible to the public
in exhibitions. Originating in the time-based performance art of the
1960s, the critique of this static understanding of museums as timeless, transcendent repositories of value exposed clear on an institutional level what had always been true for the reception process of
art. It is bound to a living act of reception and to a historically, socially determined subject with a psychic economy. But how far can one
understand theatre as an act of memory when the theatre as an architectonic place does not need a cellar to store its performances because these cannot be artefacts? To what extent can Rimini Protokolls theatre be understood as a theatre of memories, specifically
located and contextualised? Here we are concerned with the overlap
of two different types of memory. As outlined in Aleida Assmanns
Mnemosyne. Formen und Funktionen der kulturellen Erinnerung
(Mnemosyne. Forms and Functions of Cultural Memory), there is the
metaphor of space, which imagines of memory as a museum-like
repository, on the one hand, and on the other is a metaphor of time,
in which memory provokes change and the new. Where memory
is made up within the field of space, the persistence and continuity
of memories stand in the foreground. Where memory is made up
within the field of time, forgetfulness, discontinuity and decline
stand in the foreground. In place of stability ensured through technical and material supplements comes the unexpectedness and
non-availability of memory .
The surrogate showing of events, the epic account of experience
is again treated differently. The experts of the Rimini productions
do not act to create a sense of alienation through distancing. Not
having taken the route of actor training, they represent only themselves. Their speech and actions are understood far more as an act of
remembering the everyday, which is being conjured, remembered
and placed in a living context by the theatre and stage context in
189
The art of memory
190
The art of memory
which the experts act. They do not replace or substitute, but rather
act in a space that was intended for actors, not for them. At the same
time the frame of the theatre also affords an undeniable distancing.
It turns the trusted into something foreign: as real as something
seems, as real as it might sound, it is here closely related to the
possibility of fiction. Everything that it touches is made unreal and
is lifted into a second type of reality. Memory and remembering in
the theatre, and in Rimini Protokolls theatre, play between these
two polarities. The fact to be remembered is here always something
made (Latin: factum) and always to be made anew.
The status of the theatre as a special place with its own rules
makes Rimini Protokolls specific memory work possible. Their
form of remembrance safeguards things that are in danger of being
forgotten because society commonly considers them unspectacular,
not effective in media terms or unworthy of being remembered.
Mere footnotes in the Eurocratic statistics . However, this does not
make the stories any less dramatic. Rather, they themselves are
woven from the theatrical processes from which they are constituted. Rimini Protokolls pieces are reminiscent of society in as far as
they show it (society is itself already theatrical) and produce it (it is
constituted through theatrical processes).
So a field of tension comes into being in which things and people on one side appear as what they are, but on the other side, within the theatrical framework, must appear different. A field of tensions that is a constituent of the theatre itself. Between the archive,
which collects and makes chronicles, and the dramatic structure,
which focuses and in doing so alters memory and imagination,
emerge the following considerations. The fundamental thesis of
these considerations is that remembrance and memory in Rimini
Protokolls theatre can only flare up by way of fiction and the imaginary. We see something as the thing that it is only in the moment
when it is not what it pretends to be. At the same time the effects of
memory come into play on the real, but only when the fictionalisation and imaginary settings backfire or are exposed. Only then does
a type of memory arise from that which still remains an anticipation of something that can still be redeemed by remembrance.
Remembering as an act of performing
According to an ancient legend, the ars memoria of antiquity was

invented as a specific art form through a catastrophe. The house of
the rich Skopas collapsed during a banquet and buried the family
and guests under the ruins. As the dead were mutilated, at first nobody could identify them. The poet Simonides was, however, able
to allocate names to the unidentifiable bodies and thus return them
to their families for burial. He had memorised the guests seating
plan and was thereby able to identify them from their places. Simonides had remembered the arrangement of their faces around
the room. He mentally paced around the rows and so recalled their
names to memory above their dead bodies. For Cicero, who recalls
this founding legend of the art of memory in his book On the Orator, the interesting point of the story important for rhetoric and
the training of speakers is that since Simonides, mnemonic technique has been a technique of mental ordering. Made aware by this
process, he is said to have found out at that time that it is above all
the ordering of things that is conducive to the illumination of
memory . Following this, the orator should plant living pictures of
particular places at specific junctures in his speech, like a house he
is walking through, in order to remember the parts and embellishments in the correct order while speaking, as an actor learns the text
of his role.
Two conclusions follow from this oft-told founding legend of
the art of memory and its transformation through rhetoric. The first
touches on the technique, technique of organising into pictures of
the places being travelled through. The second is of a more complex
nature and concerns within this context the function of the pictures
and the names that are connected to them. Both are based on the
idea of a replacement and a substitution. Memory replaces the object
or circumstance to be remembered with language, writing and pictures and transfers this replacement into a context in which it is no
longer the thing itself but rather a replacement that calls it to mind.
What is held in the memory is inevitably linked to the disappearance of the thing, the absent is held present. What is cut from
Ciceros reduced version of the story is the context within which the
artist Simonides discovered the art of memory.
The stress that Cicero places on the function of storage reduces
the experience of the destruction to the information content of
191
The art of memory
192
The art of memory
speech, which names, identifies, creates a mental context and with

that (re-)produces a final ordering. It is not hard to recognise from
this branch of the art of memory what art since, in the end, the discoverer of mnemonic technique was a poet and in our case what
the theatre, had always done until the rise of the avant-garde. It created and represented meaning as a pictorial relationship and as such
transmitted values that are significant for a particular cultural circle
or community. However, if one remembers what Cicero excluded
and forgot, then the result of remembering, the sense of what
should be mediated, is not at the centre of the observation. This instead becomes that same ritualistic context of interaction within
which the art of memory first emerged. Memory becomes important as a process of finding something again after its loss, after the
moment of disorientation that comes through the destructive (since
physicality entails destruction) and temporal process of moving
away from a place even as memory recreates it. Memory, by reopening a situation, stands, in the first instance, no longer in a semiotic context, but rather in one of performative processes. Remembrance itself underpins performative processes. It ignites itself in the
here and now with specific materials that it organises as a constellation in space to create logic through their use. Simultaneously memory marks the point at which individual loss writes itself into collective remembrance.
The French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs already concluded in
the 1920s that humans possess two forms of memory: the collective
and the individual. As such, according to Halbwachs, the individual
memory forms its viewpoint on the collective memory of a community or group, on the horizon of which it has always stood. For
Halbwachs, the individual memory can only be seen strictly in relation to the collective and, as such, cultural memory. The paths of
remembrance, even the most personal, as he writes in On Collective
Memory, always reveal themselves through the changes that come
into being through our relationships with the various collective
areas and their totality . The collective memory on which the memories of individuals throw different perspectives cannot be conceived of independently of its framework. The divided space of a
town or a district is one of the preconditions for the social relations
that turn the group into something other than a sum of individuals
living next door to one another . In other words, memory is not pri-
Deadline
marily concerned with the remembrance and passing on of individual pieces of information and data. Rather, it is concerned with
duties to others and above all to the world at large; it is concerned
with shared experiences and emotions that enable experiences as
much as hold the community together.
It is this process of mediation between collective and individual
memory that comes into play in Rimini Protokolls projects. In this
context, it is perhaps no accident that a number of Rimini Protokoll
productions are concerned with situations of existential crisis such
as old age (Crossword Pit Stop), death (Deadline), war (Wallenstein) or
unemployment (Sabenation. Go home & follow the news), which
imply far more than a simple reverence for the Aristotelian crisis
model of theatre with dramatic points of reversal. They are fundamental themes that transport socially determined ideas about value
and attitudes to ethics. They are themes that relate to our relation-
193
Kolumnentitel
194
The art of memory
ship to others and society in general. How do we live with war and
death? What is the value of the unemployed and the elderly? How
do we judge the value of life and of work? How does society manage
to deal with crises or times of transition? How does the individual
process his experience within this framework?
With the help of the apparatus of theatre, Rimini Protokoll reopen realms of experience in which the bridges between the merely
abstract recollection of factual information and the potential for a
personal engagement with the experts experiences also become my
own in each moment that I think about and share them with other
audience members. The time that is opened up by a memory understood in this way is a time that is lifted out of the mere linearity
where data are merely displayed next to each other. Experience, by
contrast, takes place in this other time, stresses Hans-Thies
Lehmann in Post-dramatic Theatre, when elements from individuals stories meet those from the collective and create a here and now
of memory, which is simultaneously an involuntary flash of memory and, inseparably, anticipation .
The transformation of the individual into the collective.

The conception of the project Call Cutta, a city tour by mobile
phone that Rimini Protokoll began in Calcutta, India in 2004 and
was implemented with performances in Berlin at the Hebbel am
Ufer Theatre (HAU) between 2 April and 26 June 2005, was already based on memory work. The participants were kitted out
with a mobile phone that connected them to a male or female call
centre agent in Indian Calcutta. The voice from far-off India led the
participants individually from Hallesches Ufer through Kreuzberg
to Potsdamer Platz. The conversation partners in India do not,
however, know the route first hand. They only have a scenario in
front of them, made up of texts, route descriptions, arrows, pictures
and supplementary historical facts, and with its help they lead each
of their partners through a Berlin unknown to them. As such they
occupy a place in which individual powers of imagination are layered with documentary memory traces to allow time and space,
memory and current experience to amalgamate during the 60minute tour.
A key element of the city tour is the story of the Indian freedom
fighter Subhas Chandra Bose (18971945). Bose struggled alongside
Mahatma Ghandi and Jawaharlal Nehru and was president of the
Congress Party between 1938 and 1939. In contrast to Ghandi and
Nehru, however, he did not follow a pacifist strategy of civil disobedience to reach his goal: the liberation of India from its colonial
British masters. Bose dreamt of India as a great power and, in pursuit
of this objective, he sought the support of his enemys enemy: Nazi
Germany. Between 1933 and 1937 Bose who, having read Mein
Kampf, also called himself Netaji (Fhrer) stayed in Austria and
Germany on several occasions before coming to Berlin via Kabul and
Moscow at the end of 1941. One year later, Hitler agreed to the creation of a 3,000 man troop of prisoners of war. In 1943 Bose travelled on a Nazi U-boat to Japan, where he built up the Indian National Army using money from Indian migrs and took the field
with Japan against India. After Japans surrender in 1945, he is
thought to have died in a plane crash in Taiwan. However, his body
was never discovered.
An Indian who built an army against India in racist Germany
with the Fhrers help. On its own that is already a strange and
thought-provoking detail of Second World War history that was
included as memory in the production. As such, it describes a type
of globalisation avant la lettre, in which an outsourced Indian army
came into being on German territory with the intention of operating in India. Rimini Protokoll draw a parallel to German firms today
that relocate their customer service divisions to India. However, the
crossover point between these two countries and stories is of more
significance here. Rimini Protokoll take the German episode from
Netajis story and project it back to where it took place: within the
city of Berlin.
Quite near the start of the city tour, we are made aware of two
fire hydrants in a back yard, next to which a picture has been left.
While we look at the picture, the voice on the phone explains the
story of the photo to us. This photo was taken right here, where
you are standing, in 1942 during the war. The man on the right is
my grandfather, Samir Muckerjee. During his whole time in Germany, he never managed to get used to coffee Now look at him,
drinking coffee. Look at his face! On our way to Potsdamer Platz,
we are led to five other photographs, which have been left at a fur-
195
The art of memory
196
The art of memory
ther four sites. In total, therefore, we see six pictures at five different sites in the urban space of Berlin. In a park that is supposed to
have been made out of the remnants of the last World War, a picture showing Ghandi and Netaji lies under the lid of a blue rubbish
bin.
The one on the left you know? That is Ghandi. We call him Papaji, father of the nation. But who is that on the right? Do you recognise him?
That is the man who was drinking coffee with my Grandfather on the
other picture. We call him Tiger. Ever since he came to Germany, he
a couple of years later, everything was different. Ghandi wanted inde-
called himself Netaji, Fhrer. On the picture, they look like partners. But
pendence from the English without force and without the help of other
countries. But Netaji said, We need an Indian army, we need help from
abroad. So he came here, to Berlin.
We find the third and the fourth photos behind a wooden barrier in
front of a bridge on the way to the remains of the Alte Philharmonie
(old Philharmonic). One of them shows Netaji allegedly in the
Burmese jungle, the other shows him shaking hands with Hitler.
The fifth photo is on the back of an information board near the Alte
Philharmonie and it shows the alleged grandfather, Samir Muckerjee, who was supposed to have been guarding the building the night
it was bombed on 29 January 1944. Shortly before the end of the
tour, the participant is directed to a picture in level D of the Daimler-Chrysler car park at Potsdamer Platz that shows Netaji in 1943
with the U-boat sailors on his trip to Japan. Why it is hanging here
becomes clear in the explanation, My grandfather, meanwhile,
stayed in Berlin. He sent liberation speeches over the radio to India
in ten different Indian languages. Together with other former forced
labourers from Daimler-Benz
Rimini Protokolls procedure in this city tour is comparable with
that of the ancient art of memory. They leave pictures in places that
are walked to in order to re-produce over the course of time the lost
and forgotten context, the memories of which are contained in the
pictures. The story between Germany and India that is being recollected is not only one of a fight for liberation from colonial oppression on the Indian side, but also that of destruction and annihilation
Call Cutta
on the German side. We remember the catastrophe, like Simonides

in the legend. But it is not only the photographs that bear memories
here. They are placed in a certain perspective by the stories that they
tell. Language there creates a second level of memory. The third and
probably most important layer comes from the meaning that the
place itself brings to the memory work. If sheds and dustbins are
harmless places in themselves, they are located, as our conversation
partner never tires of stressing, in an area that still bears the traces of
the Second World War.
This becomes particularly clear at two places in the tour: the site
of the old Anhalter train station, from which the Jews of Kreuzberg
were transported to Berlins central deportation point, and the site
of the Alte Philharmonie. These grey trees have sad eyes. Can you
see them? prompts the voice on the phone. The eyes are actually
knots on the trunks of the birch trees growing around the area here.
The trains went south from here, continues the voice to give the
participant a sense of location in the area. When you look back
from where you came and then a little more to the right, you can still
see platform 1. In the other direction is platform 8, an interchange
platform for Auschwitz , and a little later, You are standing on
platform 5. Netaji arrived in Berlin here in 1941. He flew overnight
from Calcutta. In their preparation for the project, Rimini Protokoll
checked the platform order with the relevant authority so the participants positioning corresponded to the reality. Although time
197
198
The art of memory
has changed the place, and in certain ways disguised its decay, we remember it in a specific historical moment with the help of signs (the
eyes on the tree trunks, pictures and words).
The process of making metaphor plays an essential role in the
overlaying of layers of time (yesterday/today). The eyes are still
waiting for a train, it says in the scenario in relation to the trees,
whose scars become eyes and whose trunks become human bodies
through this metaphor silent witnesses to a past time who appear
strangely locked in the act of memory. Memory can look like decoration, no? says the guide in relation to the remains of the Alte Philharmonie. But I can rescue the apparently worthless, decorative
scattered ruins like Walter Benjamins melancholic in so far as I collect them and allocate to them a new allegorical meaning. Then the
abandoned semi-circular performance structure that stands in front
of a sad block of flats suddenly looks like the helmet of grandfather
Muckerjee. They become something else through my (directed)
gaze because it allows the past to break into this actual place, here
and now in memory that is current, as if grandfathers helmet from
the war were still lying in front of me.
But why are the eyes of the trees at Anhalter train station still
waiting for the train with which they could escape their present?
Later, a comparable image is made, which like the trees, recounts the
endurance of the past. On the way to Potsdamer Platz, the participants have to cross a street. They are cautioned. When I look at the
buildings over there, says the voice on the telephone, I sometimes
think: grandfathers fight is not over; it has just changed. Then the
agent in India begins to talk about and describe his or her workplace
in Infinity Tower. A complex chronotope comes into being through
the lining up of stories and places in the form of metaphors, allegories and comparisons, in which the synchronous and diachronous lines between Berlin and Calcutta, as well as those between the
Second World War and today, coincide. A continuity between yesterday and today is at least conceivable in this way, a continuity that
lies nearby, that the chapter of colonialism, the struggle that grandfather was involved in, continues today in another de-territorialised
form. What binds the forced labourers of the Second World War,
whom we are told about in the Daimler-Chrysler car park, the migrant workers of the economic miracle, the call-centre workers and
the unemployed who have lost their jobs through the outsourcing
of customer services inland (a word that is completely irrelevant

for globalised capitalism) is the logic of capitalist profit maximisation, unbroken and historically uninterrupted even under National
Socialism.
It becomes clear relatively quickly that something is odd in Netajis

story, which we are involved in remembering. The gateway for the
fiction is the grandfather character, Samir Muckerjee, the fighter in
the Azad Hind Legion (Free Indian Legion) who was supposed to
have been in Berlin during the Second World War. Since every call
centre agent calls him his or her grandfather, the story can easily be
seen to be untrue . And yet we follow it against our better judgement; we allow ourselves to be led although we know the character
is made up. The character of Samir Muckerjee plays two roles within the framework of the Call Cutta project. The first is that he is part
of a strategy of personalisation. The fact that the call centre agents
maintain a personal relationship to the character prevents the narrative from being simply information. Netajis story is infused with
experience, which in turn should build and strengthen the trust
relationship between the call centre agents and ourselves. This
strategy of listening with trust stands in relation to further performative strategies that transform the events of recent history into
experience. The participants must say passwords loudly at three
points of the tour, as though they were inside a computer game and
needed to access the next level. Near the Tempodrome, the participants must call out ICH BIN DABEI (Im taking part) at a broken
black railing, a perfidious speech act that does not only identify us
as actors in the here and now of the city tour. Far more significantly,
the loud pronouncement brings us into the story, and more specifically into Muckerjees Nazi army about which the agent is talking
at that moment. We are, in the most truthful sense of the word,
fellow travellers. We enter therefore into a process of remembrance, which in this reception situation recurrently becomes the
theme itself. Between the instruction given in connection with the
first picture to Look at his face and the question Do you recognise him? in connection to the second, we have to activate our
ability to remember; we have to check what we have noticed or not
noticed. The circuitous search for the pictures, the lack of certainty
about where we are going and what we should find, the unknown
199
The art of memory
200
The art of memory
outcome of the story that we are not able to survey suggest that we
are inside it , that we are discovering the story we hear and within which we are at the same time moving, literally going along with
it ourselves.
Once again the art of memory comes to the fore. Because, with
regard to the pictures left at the various sites, their significance has
nothing to do with the pictures themselves. Instead they function
far more as memory joggers for that which figures in the consciousness of everyone who remembers. In Call Cutta, the acoustic and
urban spaces are separated in order to make room for a process of
transformation between picture, language and actual place, which
sets the individual memory of the participant in motion. This also
means that the things that I take for true are brought forward, altered
by this performative act of remembrance in the here and now. They
lift themselves above the factual and tell a story.
The diversification of the collective into the individual

As a tour through the urban space of Berlin, Call Cutta can be categorised as a site-specific work, as a work that in this form is bound
to the actual physical place of Berlin. A recent Rimini Protokoll project, Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten Dame (World Premire: The
Visit) that premired on 21 June 2007, takes as its theme remembrance and memory in the theatre itself. But Premire can be categorised as a site-specific theatre work as well. It is about the world
premire of Friedrich Drrenmatts The Visit in Oskar Wlterlins
production in the Zurich Playhouse on 29 January 1956. Rimini
Protokoll attempted to recall the pieces world premire in the place
where it had happened, the Pfauen Stage, and tried to reconstruct
the events of 1956 there in a kind of place study. Looking back at the
question of the connection between the individual and collective
memory, it may be concluded in comparing both productions that
the relationship is reversed. Call Cutta takes place in what is accepted as our authentic reality, in which the fictionalisation of both the
reconstructed events and the participants themselves lead to a connection of individual and collective memory. By contrast, Premire
takes place at the site of the fiction, of the theatre with its make-believe reality, in which authentic reality enters in the form of contemporary witnesses. It suspends the fiction in order to enable an
interchange of collective and individual memory. On the one hand,

the individual is generalised into the collective. On the other, the
collective is broken up into the individual. In both cases however
the element of fiction to which we have to submit plays a central
role. The overlaps between the living world and the world of fiction
may be designed differently in the two pieces, but in Call Cutta, as in
Premire, we leave the context of everyday life and enter an imaginary theatrical space in which time and space, past, present and future, here and there are mixed up.
The immersion into the past in Premire happens in stages. At the

beginning of the performance the stage space is closed off by the
safety curtain; access to the past is literally barred, as if by censorship. The first step into the back then is made by Bibi Gessner, the
ex-secretary to the theatre management, who in 1956 often had to
type up Drrenmatts textual alterations from the rehearsals very
quickly. She crosses the narrow catwalk between the rake and the
safety curtain from the auditorium. She hovers on the threshold of
reality and fiction, not as an actress which has never been her profession but as an expert. At the same time, she is another audience
member who, like the rest of the audience, maintains the connection between stalls and stage, between yesterday and today and between the individual audience member as part of a social network.
Next the safety curtain opens, only to reveal a view of a further curtain. In front of the red velvet curtain the typical theatre curtain
appears Hans Stdeli, stage technician and puppet maker, who talks
about constructing the set on the day of the premire. But even lifting the red curtain does not reveal a view of the stage. Behind it, a
blue-grey backcloth is revealed, in front of which Eva Mezger, the
first female Swiss Television presenter, talks about the course of her
work in the television studio on the day of the premire. How she
had put on her make-up and dressed her hair, how she always
thought that she would forget her text from stage fright, how her
feet got smaller from her nervousness. Here an extra filter is put over
what is taking place, presenting what follows as a television broadcast from the evening of the premire a broadcast that never actually happened. The television studio screen disappears, the stage is
finally revealed. But at first there is nothing on it to see. Wlterlins
assistant director Richard Merz confirms the running order, en-
201
The art of memory
202
trances and positions with his old production book in his hand and
already here stumbles upon inaccuracies. What happens when the
photographs from the world premire do not correspond to his
notes in the production book, when eye witnesses, critics or participants in the production report to the contrary, when holes in the
source material do not allow clear conclusions about the actors gestures or intonations? Premire: The Visit is also applied research in
the subject of theatre history. It tries to reconstruct a historical
course of events out of a variety of source material without being
able to come to conclusive truths. Instead, the elements are played
out against one another and gain a new
dynamic through their use in the here
and now, which demonstrates the inconclusiveness of remembrance and
the nature of the constructions it undertakes.
The successive lifting of the curtains does not only reveal the depth of
the (stage) space, it also lifts the
shrouds from the past one after another, without allowing it to appear as
such. The final shroud, which sustains
the suggestion of a behind , can
therefore never fall, because it supports, forms and brings to the fore the
thing that is to be remembered. At the
end, this final veil reveals itself as the
back wall of the stage, into which a
cityscape is stamped as a pattern of
holes. This becomes visible at the moTherese Giehse in Der Besuch der alten Dame, 1956
ment in which light shines through
the holes from behind each room that
remains inaccessible and allows the contours of the illuminated
town to come into being. This makes the stage space into an intermediary space of negotiation between an inaccessible space behind and the current situation that, if it can still be shown, manifests a past future. Space and time, as in Call Cutta, come into a close
relationship. The time becomes space, the chronotope of the initially empty stage, which gradually fills up with memories. The theatre
Kolumnentitel
In this context, four different processes can be distinguished as

having to do with the irretrievability of the past in the here and now
of the performance. Two refer to the play of the performers, two to
203
of memory that Rimini Protokoll stage in Premire works like that

final shroud, which does not show the thing, the event of the world
premire in 1956 in this same place, but rather distorts and repeats
it so that it, in this distortion, is simultaneously sketched and made
recognisable.
The dramaturgy of the evening follows the schedule of the
evening of the world premire on 29 January 1956 on the Pfauen
Stage of the Zurich theatre. The theme of Premire is therefore not in
the first instance Drenmatts piece, but rather its first brush with its
contemporary public, its integration with and embedding in this
period and the social situation. So Rimini Protokolls production begins
not with the beginning of the piece,
but rather with the stage managers
first call at 7.30 pm to remind all participants that the performance will begin
in half an hour. The audience therefore
experiences three levels of time
pushed against each other in Rimini
Protokolls theatre space: the run of
Rimini Protokolls performance in
2007, which starts at 8.00; the run of
the piece, which itself is about memory, an assertion of guilt and the return
of the repressed; and the run of the
1956 world premire, which is identical neither to the run of the fictional
level of the piece nor to timings of the
current performance. While all three
layers are maintained in their own
Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten Dame
temporal linearity, the levels of time
blur over each other during the performance itself. Out of the succession of events and schedules
comes the simultaneous co-presence of different times and memories.
Kolumnentitel
204
Kolumnentitel
stage elements. The latter consist of life-size black and white photographs, mounted on cardboard. These are youthful pictures of male
and female performers (Bibi Gessner, Eva Mezger, Richard Merz)
with scenic photos from the world premire (Therese Giehse on the
sedan, Alfred Ills store) as well as photos of the individual performers at the world premire above all Therese Giehse as Claire Zachanassian and Gustav Knuth as Alfred Ill. These cardboard colleagues
are pushed like counters here and there on the stage on small moveable trucks. They are placed according to what was supposed to have
happened originally in order to recall the world premire. As such,
they replace the events and at the same time they mark the memorys distance from them. The pictures placed on stage fulfil their
memory function of re-creation analogously to the rhetoric of
memory as figurativeness. The traumatic absence, in which the destruction, insecurity and unknown are continual threats, should be
overcome in a logical comprehensible context which, translated
into signs, endures the test of time.
At the start of the performance the attempt to make the absent
forget itself, and therefore to exist in an unbroken presence which
appears not to be aware of loss, is radicalised. A picture of a child
stands in front of the safety curtain, with a cut-out colour photo of a
man, probably his father, in military uniform placed on the swing
next to him. As the managers secretary reveals, children whose parents are serving for the US army in Iraq can order such flat daddies
and mommies on the internet, and place their effigies at home. As in
the pictorial anthropology of the middle ages, the life of the dead
king passes into his portrait, which then is king until the new king is
enthroned. Here, as then, the picture hides the reality of possible or
actual physical death. In a recording for Swiss radio made by Therese
Giehse and Gustv Knuth one day after the premire in a studio in
Basel, Giehse talks about how she had to kill Ill so that his picture
could exist, freed from guilt as a pure picture. The monologue does
not appear in the published piece, she must have spoken it at the
end of the piece at Ills coffin. The production of Premire followed
this flat daddy principle, in which the photographs stood in for the
absent reality, and it is made clear through making its memory
sources dynamic that the absence of the original remains a fundamental and irretrievable experience.
The world premire is not just represented by the cardboard figures of the actors from times past. Other parts of the dcor show the
contours of, for example, the general assembly in act three or the
balcony of Claire Zachanassians hotel room in act two. The experts
on the world premire now physically enter into these markings.
Dialogues are spoken between clearly allocated characters, without
disguising the difficulties in reconstructing the authentic stresses or
intonations. They put themselves in the picture, re-create the photographs and so repeat the past in which they took part in one form
or another, but which is not identical with their own biographies, in
the narrow sense of performing a story. Fiction acts far more as a hub
from which many individual stories radiate and lead away from the
theatre into the history of the period. Rimini Protokoll and the experts see the piece as a cultural screen memory, under which many
205
The art of memory
206
The art of memory
individual memories lie buried and which it serves to hide. They release the piece into individual memories without losing sight of it
as a social and cultural crystallisation point. Beyond recreating and
re-performing scenes from the piece, the performers let themselves
digress. They take the content of individual scenes as a starting
point for relating them to themselves. As Ill, plagued by premonitions of his death, wanted to leave the village of Gllen, performers
like Ursula Ghwiler and Hansueli Graf both members of the childrens chorus along with Christine Vetter in the 1956 performances give accounts of their own travels in Canada and New York
during the late 1960s. Recordings of messages sent from the Hungarian uprising or the opening of the Olympic games are interspersed alongside Ills nightmare from the beginning of the third
act, creating a picture of the period of economic growth after the
Second World War.
The performative practice of attitudes and characters, the bringing
forth of a future through memory, is intensified after the interval
that takes place between the second and third acts, as it did in the
world premire in 1956. Suddenly, children enter and play the
adult characters. The flight of the Ill family in their car is performed,
as is Claire and Alfreds encounter in the forest in which she recalls
their love and his betrayal of both her and their child. In this context, perform means actually to play, and the childrens scenes are
the only ones, in contrast to those scenes before the interval, in
which the text to be spoken is not mediated, explained or prompted via the production book. In these scenes, the children are concerned with experiences that lie outside of their own horizons
because they are still too young. They play a/their future, which is
a reconstructed future because it is still in the past, the repetition of
an old story, one that is always in turn a past event. The time of the
future Ill here becomes the time of the theatre performance itself
and, in connection, the time that can be remembered, which is
reproduced by performance and thus shows what is both present
and lost forever.
Later during the scene in the inn, the adults stand behind a gauze
with the hazy contours of the characters on it and observe the children discussing whether they should go along with Claire
Zachanassians offer, whether they should kill Alfred Ill so that the
promised billions will restore their ailing finances. The adults observe their past that in the context of the piece was at the same time
their future. They see themselves in the form of the past that is also
the future, in the present of the performance. The linear time of the
narrative is dissolved by this type of overlaying and it is transformed
into another time: the time of memory.
Fiction as seduction into reality.
In Bernd Ernst and Stefan Kaegis three audio tours, Verweis Kirchner (Giessen 2000), System Kirchner (Frankfurt 2000) and Kanal
Kirchner (Munich 2001), the individual participants proceeded
through the city kitted out with a Walkman, looking for the missing
(fictional) librarian Bruno Kirchner. In connection with this city
tour, it was continually remarked how an in-between space of uncertainty came into being via the overlaying of reality with a second
space mediated through listening, which had as its focus the perception and physical body of the participating actor. In Call Cutta, our
bodies are chronotopes between yesterday and today, here and
there, memory and present. Thus, we are challenged to climb up on
a pedestal in a backyard, to put the left foot a little forwards and to
207
Kolumnentitel
208
The art of memory
point to the left with the left arm towards India, to become a sculpture of Netaji . We take on a role in the story through this physical
posture. We take the pose of another, whom we embody for a brief
moment, and perform like an actor. The other audience members
practice similar actions in Premire, retrospectively writing themselves into Drrenmatts story.
However, something else is taking place in this in-between
space other than the radical subjectivisation of perception reflected
back onto itself. It is worth emphasising this second point, which is
tied in to the fiction. The participants obtain access to a general social moment through the eye of the needle represented by the figure
of the fictional grandfather in Call Cutta or by Drrenmatts dramatic text in Premire and the variety of linked ways that have been described in which information is transformed into experience. For in
the end the grandfather is an impossibility that can never be categorically described, even though he is given a personality in the story,
and whose alleged experiences are never accessible to me. Because
he is the creation of each call centre agent, he operates as a kind of
placeholder or blank space in which my individual memory, which
is consistently called upon, transforms into the collective. The other
participants also take their places in the story, which has never existed in this way. Samir Muckerjee and his story present a general
matrix that I can never entirely enter with my individual experience.
It is always too big for me. A shared space, in which my individual
memory touches on the collective, opens precisely because nobody
has gone through his experiences (which, since he is a fictitious
character, never actually occurred) and because we are involved in
this via the performative act of remembrance that we exercise at historical points within the city of Berlin. It is just this possibility of an
impossibility which in the end characterises fiction that unlocks
spaces of experience and places of memory for me where I must
grapple with the past as something remembered.
In The Fictive and the Imaginary, Wolfgang Iser describes the relationship between fiction and imagination as one of editing. Thus
he begins with a diffused, amorphous imagination that can be
everything and can take on any form. Through the acts of fictionalisation, which are identical to the fundamental structuralist principles of selecting elements of reality and then combining them into
a new syntagma, the work of art, the imaginary takes on a specific
shape. It takes on an alternative reality status in the form of the artwork via these acts of fictionalising. Accordingly, the goal of fiction
is that human beings can individually experience unavailable experiences as possibilities. By means of fiction human beings may see
themselves as possible others. These, for Iser, are the two existential experiences of birth and death that cannot be lived, and as such
set in motion acts of simulation in order to assimilate the unavailable. Fiction sets borders on the imagination and thus allows it to be
experienced as something specific. Fiction as midwife and shaper of
the imaginary but with reference to my deliberations one can and
must think of fiction in another way, as the midwife of our socalled reality itself. Elements from reality are no longer just
suspended via the decontextualisation that they undergo within
the frame of an artwork in order to appear new and different.
Fiction also has the function of establishing reality itself (and not
the imaginary), in as far as there is a gap, a distance, maintained between fiction and accepted reality. The acts of fictionalisation create
a fabric that serves to protect our enjoyment by measuring and regulating affects. Fiction allows us to effectively make ourselves into
metaphors of others, even though we all know that we are not others. This is the common ground of our social life and shared notions
of reality. Because there is this gap, we have access to that which is
general. We can integrate our individual experiences into the social
reality we create by performing it. The acts of simulation therefore
edit reality in the sense that they assign an important fictive status
to its own structure, which we accept like a tour given by a callcentre worker in Calcutta. Reality is established by its disruption
because it is only via the break that it becomes a (subjective) experience.
Rimini Protokoll radicalise the concept of the enactment of the
imaginary in that they use the supplementary character of the imaginary for the creation of reality. Although they play with fictive elements, they do not present an exclusively imaginary image representing the world as a possible other. Iser insists on the representational function of fiction, which may be due to the object of his
research: literature. However, theatre in general, and Rimini
Protokolls projects in particular, enables an interpenetration of
world and fiction that effectively dissolves the barriers. Instead, the
recipient enters into a process of wavering and doubting that is in-
209
The art of memory
210
The art of memory
terwoven by the memory processes between what is heard and

what is seen. An oscillation between belief and non-belief begins,
and to-ing and fro-ing between what one knows about the Second
World War and the Anhalter train station, what one sees and is told,
and that which although it might be certified like the story of Netaji generates doubt because it sounds so terribly strange. This to
and fro is like an act of seduction, which no doubt constitutes a large
part of the fascination of Rimini Protokolls projects. It is a seduction triggered by the moment of fiction, which precisely because it
is fiction, enables an engagement with reality and socially relevant
content. One could term it a seduction by the symbolic. Although
Call Cutta and Premire are both in touch with reality at all times, the
projects never claim to be reality. They do not simulate reality or
take the place of reality. Rather they take the detour via the impossibility that the story has just happened as we are told in order to entangle us. It is this gap between belief and disbelief or in other
words, between reality and fiction (that may however be true at any
moment) that marks us as the storys individual subjects, a story
that we are simultaneously told and create through performing in
situ.
Fiction, therefore, is not the same as illusion. Whereas fiction is
based on an agreement to simulate, of which the theatrical framework is a feature, illusion rests on a (phantasmatic) unbroken identification with the thing itself. Fiction, like our accepted reality, is
based on the trust that although it is contingent, it may just be possible the way we see and experience it. Here lies the difference to the
televisual formats and their talk shows that the works of Rimini
Protokoll allude to. Even if the issues under discussion in the TV
studio are represented by actors, these shows maintain and thrive
on the illusion that they are real . Fiction, on the other hand, implicates me in the general and the social precisely because it maintains the distance or gap between accepted reality and my experience of it. It is this gap which is my place as the subject.
Memory of the forgotten

The memory function of the theatre is always activated when a rupture is opened between signifier and signified, when the link between both sides of the (phantasmatic) connection relaxes and
opens. Through this, the function of meaning is suspended and the
materiality of the signifiers (body, voice, atmosphere, sound, colour,

lighting quality, materials of applied objects etc.) comes to the fore
with its possibility of binding desires and triggering subjective
memory processes beyond the sensuousness of the materials. Exactly this happens in Call Cutta and in Premire. An alternative reality
that could be placed next to the living reality of our world cannot
function here, because the closing of an imaginary scene is prevented. Our seeing and hearing continually slides from the story being
related to the real city space or the stalls of the Zurich Playhouse and
as such disrupts both the continuity of our present and the historical
reality. In order for historical reality to become an experience
again, it must take place via the uncertainties of fiction. The seduction to the symbolic through fiction establishes a community
through the suspension of the imaginary, through its disruption in
the moment in which it is established. The conjunction of both
forms of memory in the disruption implies a duty towards the past,
in whose field of vision I am always standing and into which I, in the
here and now of the city tour, enter again through memory.
This means for the memory function of the theatre that the idea
of the unity of time, which was actually not formulated by Aristotle, but which plays a central role in the reception history of his poetics, is blown open. In the dramatic theatre, leaps of time between
acts are minimised in order to avoid possible gaps in the perception
of time between the performance time in the theatre and narrative
time. Interior continuity, exterior seclusion is Hans-Thies
Lehmanns conclusion about the function of time in drama. The
goal of this illusion of continuity in the audiences perception is to
avoid digressions into individual dreams and fantasies that are not
supported by the meaning of the story being related. It is obvious
that neither an internal continuity nor an external seclusion can be
established in a city tour like Call Cutta. It is equally clear that World
Premire: The Visit breaks through the closed-off stage world with its
very first step onto the stage. In its place, the productions establish
chronotopes in which a great variety of times and places overlay and
intermix into another time.
211
The art of memory
212
Kolumnentitel

The development of Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten Dame
By Tobi Mller
The Riminis had actually wanted to do everything differently this

time for their work in the plush baroque Pfauen theatre. They had
planned a reconstruction of one of the most mythical premires ever
to take place on the time-honoured stage of the Zurich playhouse:
Friedrich Drrenmatts The Visit on 29 January 1956. There would be
a lot of history, a lot of myth-making and, as always, a lot of subsequently fabricated memories to deal with. One would not only have
had to take on the super-aura of Drrenmatt, but also that of Giehse.
Giehse, Therese: German, Jewish and socialist actress who lived
in Swiss exile from 1938, first establishing the political cabaret Die
Pfeffermhle (The Pepper Mill) in Zurich with the children of Thomas
Mann, and then participating in the playhouse as part of the migr
Ensemble. She returned there again and again as a celebrated guest
after the war as well. In the local art scene, Giehse stood as a kind of
proof that Switzerland had truly taken on its humanitarian duty in
fascist Europe. We have since learned that it was much more complicated and that in fact the Pfauen theatre, which was reviled in the late
nineteen-thirties as the Jewish and Communist theatre , practised
for the most part intellectual national defence during the war, and
that the migrs had to stand in the second tier. But on January 29
1956, Giehse portrayed Claire Zachanassian, the old lady tycoon
who, having long ago emigrated, returns to her home town. In exchange for a billion, she convinces the ailing community to murder
the love of her youth, Albert Ill, who deceived and betrayed her
decades ago. This school text, which is more than just required reading, is what the Riminis now wanted to re-enact. And heres how:
without experts only with life-size, cardboard figures of the actors
from 1956. The authenticity might have been exposed as authenticism; the auratically-loaded memories as fetishes. The Riminis without experts: that would be something as astounding as, say, Botho
Strauss without myth and a critique of civilisation.
Then they backed away from this. They wanted to do everything
differently at all costs. Three days before the premire, they said, It
was about questioning our own methods and not repeating ourselves. Because we thought that little was produced through the
memories in the people whom we had met up until then. People
dont deliver trustworthy material for that. For them, that is nothing
new in their productions, it is repeatedly shown how much memory is a process of recollection, and how much it arises collectively and
at a certain moment and seldom refers back to a definite moment in
the past. Yet the starting point in Zurich was in fact different from
that of the works up until then (and was supposed to remain so).
After having briefly spoken with professional actors in order to do
a semi-professional reconstruction of the acting techniques of 1956,
and having again decided not to do that, they worked with all sorts of
people whose individual expertise had nothing to do with the characters in Drrenmatts play, but rather with the witnessing of its premire. No Zachanassian, no trifling, indebted Ill was sought in real
life (as one might have expected after Wallenstein). The common
denominator was a public evening some fifty years ago. A roundabout way for Rimini Protokoll and their expert theatre just to arrive
back again albeit differently at the tried and true. In the beginning,
ironically, the rule was still, The first one to speak with an expert is a
traitor .
213
Kolumnentitel
214
And then the experts are sitting there ... Where exactly are they
sitting? They are sitting in a casting call, or is it already a rehearsal?
Thats not really clear yet. Certainly they are authentic. They were all
there fifty-one years ago: on, behind, or in front of the stage. A stagehand, three members of the childrens choir from that time, an audience member. There is not at all the usual nervous atmosphere of a
try-out. Most of them dont really know how to judge the significance of an initial meeting, the Riminis say afterwards in a conversation. You just speak with them. The build-up is really too minor to
call it a casting call . That also makes having a conversation with some
of the experts easier, without being forced into a work relationship.
As there is a certain residue of nerves detectable at the what
should we call it rehearsal, the Riminis gently joke with the naturally elderly experts (the Swiss critic Gnther Fssler later calculates
the average age to be 69.9 years old): Youre in! The joke over the
casting format is barely understood, because of the age group. We
guarantee a pleasant experience! comes over better.
Despite this guarantee of a pleasant experience, some of the experts rejoin: Are there really not going to be any actors on stage? The
Riminis are prepared for this: No, youve been rehearsing your entire lifes! That works. In a seminar, that would be the shorthand for
the theatricality of the everyday or for the performativity of becoming a subject. Here in Zurich, at the rehearsal, there is laughter.
True, you are not an actor, but a reconstructor! One person wants
to know why they use the term reconstruction. There has to be an
Experts of Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten Dame
idea behind it. What is the idea? One of the Riminis answers just as
cleverly with an emphasis on the con in reconstruction. They want
to produce a memory together. With that, the lynch pin, the turning
point of the endeavour is pronounced. It is about an event that has
slipped away, an event of which barely any sound or film recordings
exist. It is about an absence, but precisely this process is to be moved
from the margins into the centre of the events. Will one always be
able to clearly differentiate between these levels the event and the
treatment of its lack? Is that at all desirable?
The Riminis aim less at the personal saturation of the experts
with the supposed primary material than they have in the past. The
actual primary material is the premire as event and not the text.
However, the three say from the start, Quite a lot of original text
will remain in the end . The experts in Zurich could already form a
picture of the Riminis from Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band Eins (Karl
Marx: Capital, Volume One), which was on view in Zurich shortly
before the rehearsals. In Kapital, the primary material is more clearly isolated, and the experts engage with it in a more biographical
way. That makes explaining the new starting point more difficult,
because the Riminis do not necessarily let the experts in Premire
speak from positions related to their professional capabilities, but
rather as witnesses. On the other hand, viewing Kapital facilitates
trust in the makers and their style of working. The experts could see,
according to the Riminis, that it kind of begins strangely, but then
finds a form and comes across .
215
Kolumnentitel
216
Kolumnentitel
Even at the first rehearsal, during which the Riminis asked the experts a series of four questions, the parallel aims of the piece became
clear. The questions involved both the experts personal biographies
and the source material, aiming to make connections between them.
The questions were fairly personal, and were also successful in that
many of the answers showed up in the piece on the premire on June
21, 2007. The questions: 1) What was the first large investment of
your life measured according to your means? 2) Where did your first
travels lead you? 3) What was the first political mass event you attended? 4) Where and how did you leave behind traces in your youth?
Each of these four questions takes on a theme or even a scene from
Drrenmatts play, and, by way of personal experience, tries to get at
the original text and not at the event of the premire. One recognizes
how personal and in depth these answers and sometimes confessions may become, when two siblings, who were formerly in the
childrens choir, tell things they did not know about one another. It
really is pleasant. And one of them immediately says, Well, what experiences those are! Whether he means 1956 or 2007 is perhaps just
the first of many uncertainties that this work will produce.
Later, during another rehearsal, a different expert tells about how
unforgettable an experience was but then reads the text from a card.
Laughter. Because it is not a classical directors idea, but just an everyday interference. Sometimes moments like these are fabricated. Or
are rehearsal accidents that are simply kept. Because three of the experts expertise is also in theatre itself. The directors assistant from
the premire in 1956 slips once again into his role from back then,
with a somewhat ironic devotion. What can be found in his script
and what the people remember or dont remember may conflict. A
television presenter, the first one in Switzerland, stands next to a
freeze-frame image of her younger televised self and eloquently tells
about that day, when she had the evening shift in the studio. And an
audience member from back then, who later became a physicist, an
economist and the head of a small theatre, reminisces about all the
details of the moral turning point of the play. Not everything remains
sketchy; some things prove coherent. The piece generally asserted
its rights, say the Riminis. Everything is different this time: Weve
never had a book of text this early safety ropes, which we normally
dont have in this form at this point.
To a certain extent, the desire for security may be to do with the
advanced age of the experts, or else with the insecurity of the reconstructed events being dealt with. When you make theatre about theatre, it always abounds with such reflections. Rimini Protokoll appear amazed when discussing how much the experts expected to be
led and directed. There was only ever something like resistance
when the experts set texts did not conform exactly to their own
words . Mostly, they did not want to sit at a table and discuss for
long periods, but rather wanted to told what was to be done. Memory is what the others say. This is also a point of the rehearsal
process that has a lot to do with the initial theoretical question.
After the intermission, children replay the text of the drama.
This de-mystifies, and cracks open a window onto the question of
how this production will be remembered in the future. One boy
sticks out. He plays the teacher, who, lapsing from humanism into
bigotry, makes the murderous deal palatable for the communal
assembly. Hauntingly good, very un-childlike. His expertise is also
the theatre, and he fought for it: why should his contract be for an
extra ? For legal reasons, because he is a child, it would be difficult
to hire him. But I have text, go on stage and act. Im an actor! The
Riminis wish is granted: here, everything is different.
217
Alida Schmidt: Before I make the first

cut, I cover the corpse.
(She covers Olavs body)
Hans-Dieter Ilgner: I call Head of Props

Michael Buro.
(Head of Props Office on Video:) Death
often happens. With poison, with
weapons, with firearms, stabbing
weapons. I have a fake dagger here one
way of dying is to slash ones wrists.
And in the dagger is a channel, and running underneath is a capillary hole. Behind
it inside is a tube filled with blood and the
whole thing looks like this on stage.
Alida Schmidt: (cuts open Olavs underarm with the prop knife)
Of course the corpse does not bleed, it
has been prepared over the course of a
whole year in a mixture of formalin and
alcohol. The skin of the corpse is stained
yellow, there are recognizable liver spots,
the entire body of the corpse has been
shaved. I start now with the first incisions:
1. A cut from shoulder to shoulder, just
about a centimetre under the clavicle
2. From the manubrium sterni a cut above
the roof of the stomach, at which point
one cuts to the left of the navel. The navel
remains intact through the entire preparation.
3. A shirt sleeve cut across the whole
upper arm.
Deadline
220
Catalogue of Works
1995 1997
Ungunstraum. Alles zu seiner Zeit
(Unfavourable Space. Everything in
its Time)
(Helgard Haug/Marcus Dro/Daniel
Wetzel)
A range of performances, each prepared as new site-specific Etappen (Stages). The performance is the only rehearsal, the stage is an operating system made of equipment that
must be individually operated. New content and themes are
introduced in each Etappe which alter its structure.
I. Etappe (Journey from Giessen to a part of the Great Wall
of China and back)
21.1.1995, Stage of the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies,
Giessen.
II. Etappe (Trip around the World from London to London)
Guests: Two firemen on duty.
14.5.1995, Theatermaschine/Theater im Lbershof,
Giessen.
III. Etappe (Deep Sea Journey into Mythology)
24.6.1995, 3me festival de thtre universitaire /Thtre
des Amandiers, Nanterre.
IV. Etappe (Journey in ones own Model)
15./16.9.1995, darK-Halle, Mainz.
V. Etappe: do you copy (Journey into Analog Movements
the Heights and Depths)
Guest: Li Tetzner.
13.1.1996, Incidences/Thtre de Grammont, Montpellier.
Etappe: Piraten: Piraten (Journey through a Minefield)
13.3.1996, Czech-German Theatre Festival, Cologne.
Etappe: Living in a Cargo-Box
Haug/Dro on stage in Lyon, Wetzel and Katja Sonnemann
(Translator) on the telephone from Giessen.
3.4.1996, Les 7mes Rencontres Thtrales de Lyon, Lyon.
Etappe: Die Katze im Sack (The Cat in the Sack)
27.4.1996, On the walls of the Wesertalsperre, WASSERWRTS II, Eupen (Belgium).
Etappe: Now we go Step by Step
16.5.1996, UniversiteitsTheaterfestival, Amsterdam.
Etappe: [tet]
26.6.1996, 4me festival du thtre/Thtre des
Amandiers, Nanterre.
Etappe: Zu schn, um wahr zu sein (Too good to be true)
27.30.6.; 5.7.7.1996, Bunter Abend/TAT-Daimlerstrae,
Frankfurt/Main.
Live at Cellular Buddies

2.8.9.1996, Sonambiente, Giessen, Akademie der Knste,
Berlin.
Etappe: Alibis
The audience hear folk songs for the entire performance
and are informed by the choir leaders, through signs, about
the performance outside. This is where Haug/Dro/Wetzel
install signs with images of the original vistas of the park
that have since grown over.
With Choir 1888 of Rauischholzhausen.
31.10.1996, Schloss Rauischholzhausen.
Etappe: Rumpeldipumpel
5.-7.6.1997, Praterspektakel / Volksbhne Berlin.
Etappe: Etikettenschwindel (Fraud)
On every street corner in Marbach a sketch map, drawn by a
passer-by, is mounted showing the way to the Schillerhhe.
At Schillerhhe, these maps are mounted on stands and
arranged to give a scale map of the towns crossroads.
15.6.1997, Symposion Tanz und Literatur/Literaturarchiv
Marbach am Neckar.
Etappe: Fernsehreif (Ripe for Television)
5.7.1997, 12 Hours. Giessen in Raum und Klang (Giessen in
Space and Sound), Giessen.
Nach.Richten.Tier. 360 Theater auf 5
Rdern (New.S.Animal. 360 Theatre
on 5 Wheels)
(Stefan Kaegi)
Site specific piece about the language of
the news. The performers play in the back garden and in the
street in front of a brothel. 50 audience members sit on
office swivel chairs in the ground floor of an office building
and observe performers and passers-by through the window.
With: Ariane Andereggen, Ren Stbler, Bakunin the rat . M:
Marcel Hollenstein.
WP: 14.8.1996, Zrich.
Jger und Sammler (Hunter and Collector)
(Kaegi/Regula J. Kopp)
Installation / Performance / Remix, 18
weeks long with over 120 Swiss artists
and collectors in a local shop window. Every week there was
a private view and an event. There was a closing ritual with a
group of hunting-horn players.

0406/1997, Bahnhof Selnau, Zrich.
ber das HDW-Verfahren (sich Gedanken machen ber die Schwierigkeiten des Personen- und Gterverkehrs in einem Land mit extremen
Ungunstrumen) (On water pressure
thinking about difficulties in transporting people and
goods in a land with extremely unfavourable space)
(Haug/Dro/Wetzel)
Memory game using the props of the previous performances of Ungunstraum as motives. Presentation of the list, gambling with the audience.
2.11.1997, Identa/Gasteig, Mnchen.
1998
Kugler Der Fall (Kugler The Case)

(Kaegi)
Radio play. Kugler arrives in Europe. In
front of him is a paper world: New York,
Zrich, Topelobampo Kugler follows the
latitudes with his index finger. In five hours Kugler goes
round the world with his finger and under the tectonic plates
in his head.
Speakers: Ren Stbler, Albert Liebl-Ellend, Grandmother
Kaegi, Kerstin Rullik, Sassa Rhrer et al.
AP. Edition Howeg. OB: 1998, Deutschlandfunk (54).
Bei wieviel Lux schalten Wurstund

Kraus das Licht ein? Marke: Ungunstraum (At what lux do Wurst and Kraus
switch the lights on? Label: Ungunstraum)
(Haug/Dro/Wetzel)
Theatre project. Journey by bus from the theatre to the control centre for the city of Frankfurts electrical supply. A
jovial evening of information through different channels
together with the retirement of an engineer and the return
by taxi.
With: Switch Master Erhard Kraus (Haug), Engineer Helmut
Fischer (Dro), Engineer Helmut Wurst (Wetzel) and depending on work schedules the Engineers / Switch Masters
Schuhmacher (Kraus), Branse (Wurst), Leisner (Branse),
Mahr (Mlter), Pahl (Pahl), 24 taxi drivers, Christine Peters
(prologue).
P: Knstlerhaus Mousonturm, Stadtwerke Frankfurt am Main
GmbH.
WP: 15.5.1998, 16./17.5.: Bei wieviel Lux schalten Branse
und Pohl das Licht ein? and Bei wieviel Lux schalten Mlter
und Kraus das Licht ein? respectively.
156 60 18 (1.49,-/Min.).
Ein szenischer Lauschangriff
(A scenic sound attack)
(Kaegi)
Scenic installation based on the telephone
as a confessional box, medium for flirtation and imaginative
space. The piece can be viewed in a room or heard via the
telephone number in the title.
With: Franz Dubois, Albert Liebl-Ellend, Mona* (Telephone
Sex Worker), Roland Reichen (Secretarys Office, Department
of Internal Affairs), Markus Hensler, Stefan Kaegi. M: Das
ERDWERK; V: Mo Diener; Installation of 20 telephone chairs
from the theatre neighbourhood and answer phones: Michael
Blttler.
WP: 21.5.1998, Hope + Glory / Theater am Neumarkt, Zrich.
Etappe Bekanntenkreis.
Marke: Ungunstraum
(Circle of Acquaintances.
Label: Ungunstraum)
(Haug/Dro/Wetzel)
Performance and Installation. Performance: Haug/Dro/
Wetzel allow themselves to be recommended 39 times to
the next acquaintance, who chooses a window of his home
from which a photographic slide is made.
Installation: 40 views from windows in Esslingen, edited and
presented in slide viewers on swivel arms, installed like a
Kaiserpanorama
06/1998, 4. Internationale Fototriennale, Esslingen/Neckar.
Und hier ist schon wieder woanders

(And here is already somewhere else)
(Haug)
Installation with recordings of an ex double-agent suffering from dementia.
14.8.15.9.1998 presented by observer/secret services
KAS Galerie fr Kunst und Medien, Berlin.
1999
Training 747
(Hygiene Heute: Bernd Ernst/Kaegi)
Theatre piece about two German aviation
myths: Joseph Beuys and Mathias Rust.
The dramaturgy follows the account of an
emergency landing. The set is constructed out of secondhand furniture and bed clothes, and consistently causes
mishaps, which become the format of the piece. The central
element is a writing table that has been turned into a special
effects machine. On it sits a text pilot navigating through a
screenplay for two readymade performers on cupboards.
With: Thomas Klammer (Ex-porn Actor), Melanie Wagner
221
Catalogue of Works
222
Catalogue of Works
(Ex-musical Singer), Oliver Bedorf, Sylke Spender, Jens Holst.

WP: 1999, Rehearsal Stage, University of Giessen.
Audience Prize-Winner: Cutting-Edge-Festival, Darmstadt.
Mobile Reviere II (Mobile District II)
(Haug)
Installation. The floor plan of the gallery
space is overlaid onto the most recent
Falk map of Berlin to a scale of 1:100.
The area covers 28 streets, which are taken out of the network and sewn as tracks. These mobile elements can be
rearranged in the gallery space.
3.9.9.10.1999, Sechzehn Rume/ loop raum fr aktuelle
kunst, Berlin.
2000
Warum Jodie Foster kein Wasser will
(Why Jodie Foster does not want any
water) (Kaegi)
Documentary radio play about advertising in general and specifically about
Wonne, who carries placards through the pedestrian zone
everyday about extra-terrestrials, God and Jodie Foster,
with whom he fell in love when he saw the film Contact in
the cinema.
Speakers: H.L., Sylvi Kretzschmar, Oliver Bedorf, Ren
Stbler,Stefan Kaegi, Moritz A. Berg, Akif Katakurt, a washing
machine salesman, an anti-rheumatic blanket salesman, the
grandchildren of Frau Schmidt and others. Singers: Claude
Peinzger, Kathrin Weber, Albert Liebl-Ellend, Franz Dubois.
AP. OB: 5.3.2000, DeutschlandRadio Berlin.
Kongress der Schwarzfahrer
(Fare Dodgers conference)
(Hygiene Heute: Ernst/Kaegi)
A staged and sabotaged 5 hour congress
on extending the concept of fare-dodging.
With: Georg Hrr (Pianist, Fare Dodger), Arthur Castro (Opera
director), Rolf Pagels (On-board Service Training Deutsche
Bahn), Dirk Hauer (Aktion Freier Transport fr alle), Rainer
Henschke (Safety Advisor Bahn Schutz GmbH), Yuri Englert
(Performer), Jochen Puttfarcken (Microbiologist AKH Altona),
Moritz and Florian Meyer (Students), Karl-Heinz Warenycia
(Roulette Specialist), Peter Matzig (Writer, Life Artist), Chris
Dressel (IT-Specialist, Expert Hacker), Dr. Ingrid Krber (Parasitologist), Cantemus Kinderchor, Ekkehart Opitz (Emotional
Management), Prof. Dr. Werner Diederich (Department of
Philosophy Hamburg University) amongst others Chair: Anita
Friedezki; Coaching: Harald Gebhardt (Fromm Institute of
Rhetoric and Communication); Consultation: Dr. Thomas Rau
(Town council office); Climate Fair: Carsten Locke Witt;
Woodworm Exterminator: Jrgen Rabeneck.

05/2000, Kampnagel, Hamburg.
O-Ton -Tek
(Haug/Wetzel)
Radio play about broadcast sound technology for those who have to speak during a live-broadcast but are not supposed
to be heard in the broadcast itself.
With sound engineers Raimund Becker, Rainer Bhme, Christian Fischer, Joachim Jhnert, Uwe Lauschke, Vincent Lungwitz, Detlef Rebensdorf, Michael Redlich, Jrgen Rothe, Peter
Rudert, Thomas Schtt, Robert Schurmann, Sascha Seipel
with Dietmar Wilkens (Central Control Room), Andreas
Zumach (Conference Chair ), Ulrike Pollay (Announcer).
P: Deutschlandradio Berlin. OB: 5.6.2000 (4850); Presentations: Unfriendly Takeover, Frankfurt (simultaneously with
the OB), Radio Tesla, Podewil, Berlin.
came to rest (Haug)
Solo exhibition about rest and unrest in a
small town in Swabia, the busker Caruso,
unheard starting pistols and empty cinemas.
0607/2000, Villa Merkel/Bahnwrterhaus, Esslingen.
U-deur
(Haug)
Installation. The perfumer Karl-Heinz Bork
is asked to make a scent analysis of the
U2 (underground line 2) station at Alexanderplatz. He develops a scent recipe, a formula for this site.
The scent is synthetically reproduced in a laboratory and
packaged in small flasks which can be picked up by travellers from a dispensing machine in the underground.
8.6.200031.12.2001, U2 Alexanderplatz/NGBK Berlin.
Aloa Samoa. Art can be fun but somebody has to pay for it.
(Haug/Wetzel/Winfried Tobias/Otmar
Wagner)
Performance via telephone. Under the
title ZeitenWende (time change), the town of Giessen officially swapped around night and day in July 2000 so that
midnight became midday. While the Giessen residents went
to the hairdresser or registry office in the middle of the
night, those in the pedestrian zone could go into a phone
booth and pick up the phone. They were then automatically
connected with Haug, Tobias, Wagner and Wetzel who were
in Samoa, where it was actually midday and from where they
reported on the days events on the other side of the world.
1.2.7.2000, Giessen/Samoa.
Kirchner
Three audio tours for three towns. Where
is Kirchner? What has his daughter Beate
to do with Attarax? Where are the entrances to the underground laboratories? Every 10 minutes
an audience member with a Walkman leaves the theatre for
the town. Guided by the voice of the vanished librarian
Bruno Kirchner, he/she is directed step by step through the
gardens and footpaths, which become the stage set.
Voices: Peter Heusch, Oliver Bedorf.
Verweis Kirchner (About Kirchner), 07/2000, ZeitenWende Giessen.
System Kirchner (Kirchner System), 2000/01, Knstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt.
Kanal Kirchner (Channel Kirchner), 11/2001, SPIELART,
Munich.
Keim-Kraft (Seed Power)

(Haug)
Installation. The phenomenon of the town
is dissected. Just as nature is offered for
sale in separate seed packets, each element of the town is separated and put up for sale in this form.
14.10.18.11.2000, presented during Wir wohnen gern modern (We like to live modern)/Galerie Pankow, Berlin.
Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp (Crossword Pit stop)

(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Theatre piece as a Formula-1 race for
four ladies aged around 80. Speed and
the fusion of technique and physicality are central themes
in both car racing and an old peoples home. Whether one is
in a pit stop or getting up from a table, both places implement strategies and safety procedures that protect life and
optimize presence of mind.
With: Wera Dring, Ulrike Falke (Residents in GDA Retirement
home), Martha Marbo, Christiane Zerda (Actresses), Arnold
Frhwald (Track and Stage Worker). SD/L: Mathias Wendelin;
DR: Florian Malzacher.
WP: 10.11.2000, plateaux/Knstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt.
2001
Identa 01: Life is enough: leben/

Erzhlen (Ident 01: Life is enough:
Life/Narration)
(Hygiene Heute: Ernst/Kaegi mit Hartmuth Dedert)
Weekend congress about life.
With: Prof. Dr. Fritz Jauker (Leech Specialist), Martin Nachbar

(Dancer), Fritz K.H. Stter (Graphologist), Dieter W. Grotz
(Ghost-writer), Lic. Phil. I. Hannes Veraguth (Cultural
Studies), Christian Telephone Aid Munich, Rudolph Staritz
(Ex-Soldier from the secret radio service of the Defence),
Monika Klinkenberg (Counsellar), Duro Toomato (Camel Bollocks Productions), Birgitta Arens (Author), Michael Blttler
(Performer), Class 5b Max-Josef-Gymnasium, One-off performance 17.18.2.2001, Gasteig, Munich.
De Hermeneutische Fitness Studio

(De Hermeneutic Fitness Studio)
Installation and performance
Over a period of two weeks, Hygiene
Heute develop a new machine for body and spirit each day.
The intellectual home-training machines are made out of
bungee ropes, bed feathers, wires and bands and called the
Gadamer-Loop, the Diogenes-Drum, the Spinoza-Spring,
the Descartes-Scraper. Every thought is a movement, every
movement a thought.
21.31.3.2001, presented by Tom Plischke BDC & Friends/
Beursschouwburg Brussels.
Play Dagobert (Kaegi)

Radio play and acoustically designed
reading. A romance in five acts for
ensemble with proscenium stage: a female mayor has to keep reading Kleists
Kthchen von Heilbronn until her ransom has been paid otherwise the theatre will be blown into the air. The police suspect that for the director it could have something to do with
Dagobert the department store bomber.
With: Swantje Henke, Ren Stbler.
AP. OB: 8.4.2001, Schweizer Radio DRS2.
Sitzgymnastik Boxenstopp (Sitting

Exercises Pit stop)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Radio play. A memory of a theatre piece
about the memory of a race. After the
performance, Dring visits a training session at the Hockenheim-Ring and talks to a track worker. Falke and Marbo
try to refresh their memories. The fictional race promoter,
sitting-gymnastics trainer and the shady porter from the
retirement home all have their say too.
With: Wera Dring, Ulrike Falke, Martha Marbo, Meta Nicolai
(Drivers), Margund Zschische (Trainer), Klaus Hagopian
(Representative, SWR), Johannes Th. Hbner (PR AvD), Heinz
Weger (Track Crew Nrburgring), Salvator Luxenburger
(Coordination GDA). E: Katrin Zipse.
P: SWR2. OB: 17.4.2001 (3000); AP: DRS2 2001 etc. (4609).
223
Catalogue of Works
224
Catalogue of Works
Torero Portero
(Kaegi)
Theatre piece as street intervention with
sound transmission from the exterior for
the audience, who sit on a stand in a
closed room behind a glass screen and from there (the perspective of a porter) observe three Argentinian porters on
the street recounting their lives.
With the Argentinian porters Edgardo Norberto Freytes,
Tomas Kenny and Juan Domingo Spicogna and alternating
guests Street set: Alejandra Bredeston; L: Soledad Sanchez;
DR: Ariel Davila. WP: 1.6.2001, Goethe Institute Crdoba.
Site specific adaptations in Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt,
Berlin, Bogot, Rio de Janeiro, So Paulo.
Europa tanzt. 48 Stunden Meerschwein Kongress (Europe dances.
48-Hour Guinea Pig Congress)
48 hours of the Vienna congress for 72
guinea pigs on a map of Europe made out of vegetables and
sweets for the opening of the Museumsquartier in Vienna.
The audience follows the goings-on of the diplomatic dominant animals through binoculars. Through headphones a
hunting perspective commentary is heard by vets, historians and a conference call with Monika Dworan, founder of
Guinea pigs in need.
28.29.6.2001, Tanzquartier, Vienna.
Raubkopie: Boxenstopp (Bootleg: Pitstop)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Instead of a guest performance: Dring
and Falk listen to the tapes which were
recorded the week after the race (which itself was a theatre
piece) for the first time. At the same time they do crosswords, stop the tapes to talk about what they hear and open
bottles of sect one last time with the victory machine.
With: Wera Dring, Ulrike Falke. SD: Bert Neumann.
18.19.11.2001, Prater / Volksbhne, Berlin.
Apparat Berlin (Berlin Machine)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Stage work about management of the
masses, panic research and the experiment by both cities of Berlin in the winter
of 1963/64: what happens when people are allowed from
West to East after 18 months of forced separation and division of familial relations? With every performance the tourist
of the day is found and introduced. During the performance
the radio play Apparat Herz can be heard at the tram stop on
Kastanienallee next to the side wall of the theatre.
With: Josephine Fabian, Martin Kaltwasser, Sascha Willenbacher and the daily tourists; on tape: Peter Herz, Joachim
Jauer, Ruprecht Kurzrock, Listener to the RIAS-Special
broadcast interviewing those granted passage (Winter
1963/64)
SD: Bert Neumann; Costume: Janina Audick.
P: Volksbhne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, DeutschlandRadio
Berlin.
WP: 28.11.2001, Prater/Volksbhne, Berlin.
Apparat Herz. Sondersendung zu
Passierscheinfragen (Heart Machine.
Special Broadcast: Permit Questions
Phone-in)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Radio play. The first pedestrian passage between West
Berlin and the GDR allowed citizens of West Berlin to visit
their relatives in the East on several days between 1963 and
1964. Haug and Wetzel discovered an overlooked box of
tape recordings in the archive of DeutschlandRadio Berlin
with extracts of special radio broadcasts in the American
sector which primarily dealt with questions from listeners
about the process. Except for a statement by Peter Herz,
the radio play is based on the tapes.
With: Peter Herz, Joachim Jauer, Ruprecht Kurzrock, Listener
to the RIAS-Special broadcast interviewing those granted
passage (1963/64).
P: DeutschlandRadio Berlin. OB: 10.12.2001 (5405).
2002
Shooting Bourbaki. Ein Knabenschiessen (Shooting Bourbaki.
A Boys Shooting Match)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Theatre project.
Knabenschiessen, the traditional Zurich folk festival, is primarily for 13-17 year-olds. They shoot at targets with
assault rifles under the guidance of experienced marksmen
to win mopeds or plane trips. Five boys aged between 11
and 14 from Lucerne use the rehearsal process to research
types of shooting on the police firing range, in the gun
store on the corner, in computer shoot-em-ups, with a CD
player and a video recorder.
With: Valentin Erni, Thomas Hostettler, Diego Krauss, Ahmed
Mehdi, Adrian Seitz.
P: Luzerner Theater, Expo.02. CP: Knstlerhaus Mousonturm, Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, Sophiensaele
Berlin, Teaterhuset Avant Garden Trondheim, BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen.
WP: 24.1.2002, Luzerner Theater. Winner of the Impulse Prize
2002.
Glhkferkomplott (The Glow Worm

Conspiracy)
(Kaegi)
Live radio play about global advertising
campaigns, guerilla strategies, about
bombardier beetles, who release explosive secretions
when in danger, and glow worms, who attract and devour
other types of larvae by imitating strange flashing frequencies.
With: Moritz Brendel, Kirstin Petri, Dr. rer. nat. Rdiger Plarre,
Baltus Salzwedel and the radio controlled Monster Pickup of
Steffen Kast. SD: David Fitzgerald; L: Mathias Wendelin; S:
Bjrn Mehlig; DR: Robert Schoen; E: Franziska Hirsbrunner.
P: SR, DRS, DLF. WP: 22.3.2002, intermedium 2/ZKM Karlsruhe; simultaneously OB: MDR, WDR3 et al.
Sonde Hannover (Hanover Probe)

(Ernst/Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Observation piece with headphones and
binoculars in the 10th floor of a high rise
building over Hanovers Krpckeplatz.
The view from above reveals the town as a stage, passers-by
become characters, their movements appear predictable,
their business divisible into grids, tables and categories.
With: Inge Mathes, Nina Lamazza, Farsin Nassre-Esfahni,
Arne Sickenberg, Katarina Standke (on the street), Harry
Hubrig (Window Cleaner), Nils Foerster (Services); Voices of:
Prof. Dr. Heiko Geiling (Political Theorist), Flugbeobachter
Hallfeld (Police Helicopter Division Hanover), Dr. Axel
Haunschild (Economist, University of Hamburg), Martin
Klinke (Land Registry Office, Hanover), Georg-Walter Tullowitzki (Detection Division), Prof. Dr. jur. Diethart Zielinski (University of Hanover) et al.
S: Frank Bhle.
WP: 8.6.2002, Theaterformen/Kroepcke-Hochhaus,
Hanover.
Deutschland 2 (Germany 2)
(Ernst/Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Live copy of a parliamentary debate. The
original debate in Berlin is transmitted
live to 237 citizens in Bonn through headphones. These representatives of the peoples representatives repeat the Berlin debate word for word in Bonn. The
participants stand by the names of each voting member of
parliament.
27.6.2002, 9.00 am until 1am, Theater der Welt 2002/Theaterhalle Bonn-Beuel.
Deutschland 2: Kritisches Tagebuch

(Germany 2: Critical Diary)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Radio play. Three dialogues about democracy and reproduction in the context of
the theatre project Deutschland 2: in front of the parliamentary chamber, in the foyer of the parliamentary chamber
and on the telephone.
With: Christina Tupetz (Brger Bund Bonn BBB) and Egon
Dudka (Interpreter); Karl-Heinz Schmitt (Usher of the Bonn
Parliament) and Dr. Norbert Blm (Parliamentary Candidate);
Bernd Ickenroth (Voter) and Reinhard Loske (Parliamentary
Candidate).
E: Judith Heitkamp.
P: WDR3.OB: 24./25./26.6.2002 (each circa 630).
Deutschland 2
(Haug/Wetzel)
Radio play. Hundreds of Bonn residents
had signed up and chosen which parliamentary representative to represent
while the production was being controversially discussed
within parliamentary circles: what is the relationship of the
original to its copy? The radio play makes the original and
the copy audible on two channels and packages the results.
With: Egon Dudka (Interpreter), Wolfgang Skoda (Employment Office Brhl), Bernd Ickenroth (Unemployed, standing
in for Reinhard Loske), Reinhard Loske (Bndnis 90/Die Grnen), Voices of members of parliament speaking and their
voters copying this in Bonn
DR: Martina Mller-Wallraf.
P: WDR 3, Theater der Welt 2002. OB: 21.7.2002 (5253).
Undo
(Haug/Wetzel)
Documentary/fictional radio play about
the brain data control chip and the undo
side-effect in the first line of models. What
changes occur when over familiarity with software creates
the desire to press the undo button in life too?
With: Ilia Papatheodorou (Ilia), Winfried Tobias (Michael
Thomas), Prof. Detlef B. Linke (Link On), Dr. Christian Dierkes
(Dr. Christian Wesenkamp), Otmar Wagner (Wolfgang), Birgit
Paul (Speaker SFB/ORB), Brigitte Klage (Graphic Artist,
Berlin), Otto Bahlo and Norbert Fischer (Pelikan GmbH), Darren Cooper (Nortel Networks, Silicon Valley), Jan Drouwen (ZArchiv SFB), Felix Brychcy (Chess club Kreuzberg), Passers-by.
E: Manfred Mixner, Lutz Volke.
AP as a commission from SFB, ORB. OB: 5.7.2002 (5451).
225
Catalogue of Works
226
Catalogue of Works
dont cream!
(Haug/Wetzel)
Monologue by tourist guide Miranda
Skiniti about prices, rules, bacteria, criminals as tourists and tourism as theatre.
P: Goethe Institute Athens, Fournos.
WP: 27.9.2002, Fournos, Athens.
Staat. Ein Terrarium
(State. A terrarium)
Installation / Performance. Looking for
the smallest possible performers,
Hygiene Heute created a terrarium for ants that stretched
across a gallery and developed autonomously for five
weeks. A model of Mannheim and a democratic field test for
200,000 ants grew out of ducts, pipes, microphones, sugarwater streams and aphid alcoves. The development of the
state and research results were presented as the texts,
drawings and statistics of a state planner.
With: 4 colonies of a federation of Formica Polyctena (Barebacked Red Wood Ants) and Michael Blttler. Casting:
Rudolph Hermann, German Ants protection; Training:Dieter
Bretz (Publisher Ameisenschutz aktuell);
SD: Gnter Bergmann, Carlos Goma.
28.9.26.10.2002, Exit_Zeitraum, Mannheim.
Matraca Catraca. Uma viagem REM
(Kaegi)
A trip through Salvador in a town bus with
40 headsets, driven, presented, insulted
and sung to by a bus driver and his Cobrador (conductor).
With: Moacir Rocha, Diney Antonio de Araujo in the bus,
numerous dancers, unemployed Cobradors and transvestites outside. Live Music: Nana Mereilles and Lucio da Bahia;
Voices: Prof. Lessa (Psychologist), Darnilo (Bus Surfer).
Design of the bus interior: Gaio Matos; Route soundtrack: DJ
Vicente.
P: Goethe Institute Salvador, Fundao Cultural Estado da
Bahia.
WP: 30.10.2002, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.
Physik (Physics)
Stage investigation about the performance of science between the zeppelin,
gyroscope, Higgs particles, chaos pendulum and music. Science and fiction about Jan Hendrik
Schn, whose results in solid state technology were proved
false while he was still head of the Max Planck Institute.
With: Dr. Karl Bruckschwaiger, Amadeus Kronheim; Surface
physics: Roland Dreger; Research: Johannes Haux, Prof.Dr.

Rudolf Ziegelbecker, Physics Department, Frankfurt University et al.
P: Hygiene Heute, Tanzquartier Vienna. CP: Knstlerhaus
Mousonturm
Frankfurt, Productiehuis Rotterdam.
WP: 12.12.2002, Tanzquartier Wien.
Wundersame Welt der bertragung
(Wondrous World of Broadcasting)
IIII
(Haug/Wetzel)
Three broadcasts about the broadcast:
I. Sondersendung zu Passierscheinfragen (Special
Broadcast: Permit Questions Phone-in)
New work on the material of Apparat Herz. OB:
31.12.2002, SWR2.
II. Strippenzieher und Sendemannsgarn (Puppet masters and Broadcasters strings)
New work on the material of O-Ton -Tek. OB: 27.1.2003,
SWR2.
III. Berlin Backtalk A live broadcast about following the
rules of Deutschland 2. OB: 26.6.2003, SWR2.
2003
(Kaegi)
A piece about the language between
humans and animals in a theatre with a
back door opening on to Buenos Aires
zoo. On stage is the ex-bank assistant Estella Maris with her
greyhound Garotita, who she now takes to bed with her
since her divorce; Maria Cisale with her 12 rabbits, which
are named according to memories lost by Maria in an accident, Enrique Santiago, a dealer in spare car parts with his
camera-bearing tortoises Romeo and Juliet, the telephone
card hacker Martin Fernandez with his imported iguana
Lacan II, a professional dog walker with between six and
nine customers on leads.
SD: Oscar Carballo; DR: Ariel Dvila, Gerardo Naumann. As
part of Bio-drama, a performance cycle by Vivi Tellas. CP:
Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires, Goethe Institute Buenos
Aires.
WP: 22.3.2003, Teatro Sarmiento, Buenos Aires.
Deadline
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Theatre piece about how the average
European dies, the unspectacular death,
the quiet death and how it is organized
pre and post-mortem. A revision of the pictorial form of
death that is reproduced on a daily basis over and over

again in film, radio and television, which promotes the routine view of the actors death as walking into nothingness.
For 97% of people die in bed. They do not speak any last
words but lose their speech bit by bit.
With: Olaf Meyer-Sievers (Funeral Officiant), Hilmar Gesse
(Stonemason), Hans-Dieter Illgner (Retired Mayor), Alida
Schmidt (Nurse, Lab Technician), Julia Seminowa (Funeral
Musician), Alfred Ruppert (Head Usher, Burgtheater Casino);
on Video: Ensemble members of the Deutschen Schauspielhaus in Hamburg and Burgtheater; on the telephone: Sabine
Herfort (Ex-Nurse).
DR: Imanuel Schipper. P: Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.
CP: schauspielhannover, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Burgtheater
Vienna. WP: 24.4.2003, Schauspielhaus, Hamburg. Invited to
the Berliner Theatertreffen 2004.
The Midnight Special Agency

(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Portrait of a city in 23 five minute-long
monologues. Who do you represent?
What is your fiction? What is your role?
Every evening at midnight during the Kunsten Festival people from Brussels, identified on the basis of these questions
but who had nothing to do with either the festival or the
theatre as an art form, appeared on stage. They talked on
stage, just as many people do these days in the context of
the festival, and explained their role on stage, at home or at
work.
With: Klara Vanistendael (Bird Seller), Pierre Heureux (Silent
Film Accompanist), Said Batik (Young Man from the Street),
Pat Lietart (Freehand Tattoo Specialist), Lieve Biesmans
(Flemish Teacher), Jean-Pierre Dubois (Plane-Spotter), Harun
Mohammed Badr (Sandal Seller), Yves Bertino (Amateur
Fencer), Daniel Alliet (Priest), Eric Pourtoy (Estate Agent),
Manfred Grede (Chess Umpire), Christine Leonard (Speech
Writer), Patrice Epunzola (Window Cleaner), Victor Michaux
(Traffic Policeman), Luc Lion (Spokesman for Citron),
Claude Janssens (Tour Guide), Sai Qing Zou (Fortune-teller),
Maud Vandenbrande (Nurse in an Alzheimers Home),
Burkhard Doempcke (Simultaneous Translator), Nicole De
Nve (Curtain Saleswoman), Fabien Poignant
(Underground Train Driver), Sam De Bruyn und Raane Claes
(Schoolchildren), Dirk De Graeve (Pyrotechnician).
P: Kunsten Festival des Arts, with the support of Goethe-Institut Brussels. 6.24.5.2003, 23 different performances on 23
days,
KfdA-Festivalzentrum, Brussels.
Dolly Grip Graz

(Kaegi)
Motorcycle tour. Every fifteen minutes an
audience member is collected from the
Acconci Island. On the back seat of a Yamaha, Suzuki or in the side car the drivers are selected
experts on their machine. The helmets are fitted with headsets. The drivers speak, play music and accelerate. The
route of Dolly Grip Graz cuts a swathe through the forgotten
corners of Graz. A camera tour without a camera.
Drivers/DJs/Speakers: Franz Liebmann, Axel Staudinger,
Josef Weber, Regina Zurgast.
P: Kulturhauptstadt Graz 2003, Theater im Bahnhof. UA:
4.7.2003, Graz.
Markt der Mrkte (Market of Markets)

(Haug/Wetzel)
Theatre project. Every week, 40 theatre
visitors sit on the balcony of the Metropol
Cinema in Bonn and watch the weekly
market close down. Since the leading actors, (the traders)
are busy, other economic experts are brought in as recordings via headphones. The recordings are interspersed with
texts by the theatre extras who are shopping in the market,
the events written up on placards which also report from
other markets: the Frankfurt stock exchange, the co-operative market, the casino. Over the course of the piece all the
stands are taken down and the square is cleaned up.
With: Dustin Loose, Werner Niederastroph, Renate
Schnause, Sue Schulze, Wolfgang Skoda, Zoltan Stadler, Bettina Winterhoff (Extras, Theater Bonn), Uwe Freyberg and
Jakob Hillebrandt (Market Traders), Thomas Hensch and colleagues (Town cleaning Bonn), Jens Kerbel (Show duty).
M: Christopher Dell; DR: Michael Eickhoff, Stephanie Grve.
P: Theater Bonn.
WP: 24.9.2003, Metropol/Wochenmarkt Bonn.
Skrt. Krakau Files

(Kaegi)
City tour. Each audience member spends
3-5 hours alone in Krakw on the hunt for
handwritten notes under tables or behind
lanterns. On the trail of Marek, who has disappeared, the
audience member is led further and further away from the
town centre. Passwords open the doors of private homes,
hidden instructions tell him to go into shops and ask for
impossible things. In this way, a personalised novel develops, based on a journey through Krakw.
Co-operation with Anna Burzynska, Pjotr Ratajczak, Marta
Bebenek, Julia Kluzowicz, Rafal Romanski, Michal Zadara,
Kuba Szreder.
P: Goethe Institute Krakw . | WP: 18.10.2003, Krakw .
227
Catalogue of Works
228
Catalogue of Works
Lokaltermin (Local appointment)

(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Law court visit for theatre audience. They
are taken from room to room in three
groups and listen to criminal proceedings. In two breaks there are moderated discussions with
people working in the tribunals.
29.31.10.2003, Moabit Criminal Court, Berlin.
Blau, blau, blau blht der Enzian
(Blue, blue, blue blooms the gentian)
(Haug)
Sound installation based on numerical
broadcasts. The music entitled Blau blht
der Enzian was broadcast at the time of the cold war as the
signal for West German agents that the next message was
coded for them. Today numerical broadcasts are used
above all. After a short numerical pattern that identifies the
particular agent, numerical lines follow which render sentences and messages, given the right key word.
13.12.200315.2.2004, presented by world watcher/
NGBK, Kunsthaus Dresden.
2004
Zeugen! Ein Strafkammerspiel
(Witnesses! A Courtroom Drama)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Theatre piece. A meta-trial on stage
about the theatre of justice. Every day the
letter of the law is newly interpreted and presented in
Moabit a hundred times over. A real sentence is placed in
contrast to the fiction of the theatre. The theatricality of
legal language is linked inseparably with the audiences
fluctuations between voyeurism, judgement and news.
With: Brigitte Geier (Witness Chaperone), Franziska Henschel (Actress playing Konstanze Schargan, Graphic Artist),
Ilse Nauck (Juror), Brigitte Neubacher (Previously Accused),
Thomas Dahlke (Master Carpenter), Eckart Fleischmann
(Barrister), Fabian Gerhardt (Actor), Detlef Weisgerber (Visitor to Public Gallery).
SD: Steffi Wurster.
P: Schauspielhannover, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.
WP: 10.1.2004, HAU 2, Berlin.
Hot Spots hmoun ed
(Haug/Wetzel)
Theatre piece about tourism. A montage
of the most varied viewpoints on the signified place. The first two parts are played
for two groups. Each audience group sees an expert-based
piece and then, while the other group is in the theatre, fol-
lows a tour guide on a tour giving a monologue about guiding tours.

With: Irini Daskalaki (Tour guide), Pigi Psimenou (Stewardess,
Photographer), Vassilis Chrisostomidis (Racist, Hotel Owner,
Specialist in historical battles), Thomas Drosos (Petrol Pump
Attendant, Clarinet, Paraglider), Yannis Vassos (Attendant
Dionysos-Theater, Poet), Souzanna Vrapi (Albanian Cleaning
Lady, has meanwhile got a legal, dream job: Stewardess),
Charlambos Ganotis (Broker, Performer); On tour: attendants at the Synagogue, receptionists of the Hotel Jason,
Christos (Rough Sleeper in the ruins of his house and Master
of the Cats). With the co-operation of Michael Marmarinos.
DR: Imanuel Schipper.
P: Thesseum, Athens, Goethe Institute Athens.
WP: 11.3.2004, Thesseum, Athens.
Sabenation. Go home & follow the
news
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Theatre piece with six ex-Sabena employees, two and a half years after the bankruptcy of the Belgian airline. They take their uniforms in
hand once more on stage and reconstruct the Brussels airport, the big family and its end. Sabenation is not a nostalgic look at the ruins, however, but rather a stock-taking of
the here and now. What remains of the corporate identity in
their own bodies after redundancy? Sabenation is not only a
piece about a paradigmatic economic crisis and its victims,
but also a reflection on the nation continuing with different
means.
With: Kris Depoorter (Check-in and Boarding), Medhy Godart
(Catering), Peter Kirschen (Radio and Pilot), Jean Pettiaux (Air
Traffic Control), Danny Rits (Head of Security), Myriam Reitanos (Stewardess), her adopted daughter Deborah Reitanos.
SD/L: Mathias Wendelin.
P: Kunsten Festival des Arts. CP: Theaterformen.
WP: 30.4.2004, Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg, Brussels.
Brunswick Airport. Weil der Himmel
uns braucht (Brunswick Airport.
Because the sky needs us)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Site specific installation in and around
Braunschweig airport. The visitors are taken through the
building in pairs with the aid of a photographic guidance
system, from the security locks on the aeroplane and the
wooden attic via the discarded hotel rooms and bunkers to
a garden swing with a view of the airfield. At 12 stations
they hear acoustic arrangements of the voices of the people
who are employed at the airport or in one of the numerous
neighbouring research facilities.
With the voices of Wernher Baumbach (Managing Director

Airport Company), Ulrich Frost (Customs and Borders),
Thomas Okupnik (Fire Brigade), Herrn Riechweit (DB Security
Service), Axel Thiel (State Department of Air Accident Prevention BFU), Volker Brandt und Carsten Seehof (Simtec Simulation Technology GmbH), Manfred Mller (Aerowest Flug
Center GmbH), Frank Morlang and Sven Kaltenhuser (Institute for Air Tours, German Centre for Air and Space Travel),
Prof. Dr. Georg Rppell (Ornithologist, Zoological Institute,
Braunschweig Technical University), Silvia Ohrmann and Jrn
Pfingstgrff (Students at the Institute for Air and Space Travel
Systems Braunschweig Technical University), Frau and Herr
Eickenroth (Neighbours).
DR: Haiko Pfost.
4.11.6.2004, Theaterformen/Regionalflughafen Braunschweig.
Alles muss raus! (Everything must go!)

(Haug/Wetzel)
Radio piece about the global marketplace
and cooperative competition. The decisive market movements have happened
on the Internet for some time now, the Frankfurt stock
exchange only provides the backdrop the shouting ended
long ago. At the weekday market in Bonn, on the other hand,
every workday the same scene is replayed, every Euro is
loudly touted.
With: Jens Kerbel, Wolfgang Skoda, Thomas Hensch (Street
Cleaners), Sue Schulze, Gospavar Stanic, Farmers Kster and
Sobania, Frank Henseler (Central Market Roisdorf), Coskun
Bulut (Frankfurt Stock Exchange), Gerald Mller (Commerzbank Frankfurt), Salespeople, Shoppers, Residents of
the Bonn weekday market. E: Martina Mller-Wallraf.
P: WDR. OB: 21.6.2004 (5017).
Schwarzenbergplatz
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Stage piece about the Vienna of diplomacy and representation, about that which
is said and that which is not supposed to
be said. About the anthropomorphism of emotional
exchange between countries. The field of semantics that is
created when nations come together, in the Hofburg, in the
embassy, in secret talks, on the green lines, in the flag-waving business and on the hunt for illegal immigrants.
With: Brigitte Hrbinger (Ex-general Consuls Wife), Ulrike
Zimmel (Owner. Fahnen Christl), Ying Xie (Music Student
from China), Horst Fischer (Secretary of an Honorary General Consulate), Hofrat Dr. Willfried Kovrnik (Foreign Police of
the City of Vienna), Major Thomas Mader (Ex-commander of
the Guard of Honour), Adrian Weygand (Strategy Game
Expert, Diplomats son), Martin Thelen (Foreign Office
Employee), Dr. Wolfgang Wolte (Ambassador, retired). Assistance SD: Viktoria Rautscher; DR: Andreas Beck.
WP: 4.12.2004, Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz, Burgtheater
Vienna. Nominated for the Nestroy-Preis 2005.
Zeugen! Ein Verhr (Witnesses! An

interrogation)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Radio play. 12pm Infidelity, 1pm Theft,
after lunch paragraph 310 An acoustic
copy of Moabit (the Berlin regional court) is created in the
radio studio, an attempt to remember by those who witnessed those cases that were presented in a theatre performance.
With: Brigitte Geier (Witness Chaperone), Ilse Nauck (Juror),
Konstanza Schargan (Court Artist), Thomas Dahlke (Master
Carpenter), Ekkhard Fleischmann (Barrister), Friedrich Carl
Fhrig (Judge, retired.), Eckehard Hille (Court Visitor), Detlef
Weisgerber (Court Visitor, Trombone), Fabian Gerhardt
(Speaker).
P: DeutschlandRadio Berlin.
OB: 13.12.2004 (5344).
2005
Call Cutta
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
City tour. A tour through Berlin directed
from a call centre in Calcutta. Every 10
minutes an audience member sets off
with a mobile phone. Without being able to see their audience, the call centre agents lead their conversation partners through the town for the Indians an over-populated
neighbourhood around a previously golden theatre, but
also a resistance point in the fight against British colonial
power; for Berliners, a trip tracing the steps of the resistance fighter Subhas Chandra Bose during his stay in Berlin
in the 1940s.
Live telephone voices in call centre: Shuktara Banerjee, Sonali Mehrotra, Madushree Mukherjee, Priyanka Nandy, Ranjana Pradhan, Ritwika Ray Chaudhuri, Aditi Roy, Sunayana
Roy, Sagnik Chakraborty, Kanav Chopra, Islam Mohammed,
David Xavier.
P: Goethe-Institut Calcutta, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Rimini
Protokoll.
WP Calcutta: 26.2.2005, WP Berlin: 2.4.2005.
Wurfsendung: Schnappauf im Patentamt (Mail Circular: Schnappauf in the

Patents Office)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Ten radio contributions of around 45 sec-
229
Catalogue of Works
230
Catalogue of Works
onds each about sound categories in the catalogue of the

Berlin patent office. 01. Problems of sound generation, 02.
Radio, 03. Broadcast, 04. Puppets, 05. Pistols, 06. Locomotive, 07. Bells, 08. Bells for animals, 09. Sound links, 10.
Toys that make noise.
With: Lothar Schnappauf (German Patent and Brand Office
Berlin)
E: Nathalie Singer.
OB: 03/2005, DeutschlandRadio Kultur.
Mnemopark
(Kaegi)
Stage piece as a film which is created in
front of the audience. Four model railway
makers and a farmers daughter create a
model of Switzerland using mini cameras. 37 metres of
track from the Basel model railway club became a film studio, simulating the countryside to a scale of 1:87. The rails
serve as dolly-grip tracks and the model trees as simulated
nature for Bollywood and agricultural subventions. Here the
meadows, forests and valleys are really faked, but that only
increases their fictional reality.
With the model railway builders Max Kurrus, Hermann Lhle,
Heidy Louise Ludewig, Ren Mhlethaler, the Farmers
daughter and Actress Rahel Hubacher, the Musician Niki
Neekke, one chicken and six goldfish.
SD: Lex Vgtli; V: Jeanne Rfenacht; S: Niki Neecke; DR:
Andrea Schwieter. WP: 24.5.2005, Theater Basel. Winner of
the Jury Prize, Festival Politik im freien Theater 2005.
Wallenstein. Eine dokumentarische
Inszenierung (Wallenstein. A documentary production)
(Haug/Wetzel)
People from Mannheim and Weimar
stand on stage. Their biographies relate them to Schillers
characters and they encounter them. People from two
towns who belong to the opposing ideological blocks on
each side of the iron curtain. Experts in the political power
game of strength, loyalty and obedience or even the individual in swift phases of political collapse.
With: Rita Mischereit (Owner of an Agency organizing extramarital affairs),
Esther Potter (Certified Astrologer), Wolfgang Brendel (ExHead Waiter at the Hotel Elephant, Weimar), Friedemann
Gassner (Master Electrician, Schiller Fan), Robert Helfert
(Former Civil Servant, Air Force Assistant in 1944/45), Ralf
Kirsten (Assistant Police Commissioner and City Council
Member, Weimar), Dr. Sven-Joachim Otto (Judge at the Court
of Heidelberg, City Council Member Mannheim, CDU),
Hagen Reich (Ex-Officer Training), Dave Blalock and Darnell
Stephen Summers (Vietnam Veterans, Anti-war Activists); on
Video: Carsten Sdmersen (Party Chair CDU, Mannheim),

Prof. Martin Weber (Probability Researcher, University of
Mannheim). Assistance SD: Judith Kehrle; DR: Imanuel
Schipper; DR Weimar: Dunja Funke. P: 13. Internationale
Schillertage Mannheim, Nationaltheater Mannheim. CP:
Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar.
WP: 5.6.2005, 13. Internationale Schillertage Mannheim.
invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen 2006.
v.l.n.r. Gruppen von Gruppen (LR.
Groups of Groups)
(Kaegi)
Digital lecture. What do faces say when
they are silent together? Stefan Kaegi categorises and commentates 10 group pictures from the
internet.
WP: 14.8.2005, Performing Lectures/Unfriendly Takeover,
Frankfurt.
Cameriga
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Theatre project about a meta-bureaucracy. 20 people who are connected to the
old town hall in Riga reoccupy 20 offices
in the now-empty building. The audience visits 7 offices for
five minutes in pairs. As such, each pair follows a fixed route
from appointment to appointment, from room to room.
With: Mra Alksne (Town Archive), theKing of the world and
Liene Jurgelne (Translator), Vita Timermane-Moora and the
choir of the Exterior Ministry SIA Tiriba (Cleaning Team),
Gita Umanovska (Executive Director Jewish Association Riga),
Marika Barone (Translator for the City of Riga), Gunrs Janaitis
(Photographer), Iveta Kalnia (Secretary Town Management),
Juris Perakovs (Driver Town Management), Normunds Puri
(Watchman in Tour Building), Mris Krmi (Town management), Tlivaldis Margvis (Film maker), Laima Lupie (Town
Management, Management Foreign Relations), Viesturs
(Underground Director), Gunta Muiniece (Administrator
Town Management), Aleksandrs Frdrihs Neilands (Historian),
Ingrda Nokalna (Administrator Town Management), two Russian chess players from the park, Vanda Zaria (Female Historian), Margita Zlte (Press Officer of the Ministry of Culture),
Ivo Briedis (Performer).24.-25.9.2005, Homo Novus Festival,
old Town Hall / future Foreign ministry, Riga.
2006
Mnner meldet euch! (Calling all Men!)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Video. Rita Mischereit, manager of Germanys first infidelity agency, sees herself as a social institution. She sits on the
empty stage of the Zrich Schauspielhaus and explains the

agency conditions to customers on the telephone, answers
questions about types of women and formulates her idea of
theatre in her breaks. Duration: 20 min.
Vernissage: 12.3.2006, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal;
24.3.16.4.2006, Kunsthalle Vienna.
Blaiberg und sweetheart19 (Blaiberg

and sweetheart19)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Theatre piece about the search for the
right heart, with heart transplants and a
dating agency. How do you find the perfect partner? What
stops you? The cardiology team from the University Hospital Zrich work on four screens around the arena stage and
the experts present their lives through avatars on the then
unknown on-line platform Second Life.
With: Renate Behr (Cardio-technician, operates the heart and
lung machine in Triemli Hospital), Hansueli Bertschinger
(Professor em. Vetenary Medicine, Microbiologist, Specialist
in Pig Diseases), Jeanne Epple (Lawyer, mediates dental
treatment and contacts for Russian women looking to marry), Nick Ganz (Organises singles events and speed-dating
evenings), Heidi Mettler (has lived with a new heart since
2001), Crista D. Weisshaupt (Ex-Councillor with an organ
donor card, looking for a partner on-line).
DR: Imanuel Schipper.
P: Schauspielhaus Zrich. CP: Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.
WP: 31.3.2006, Schauspielhaus Zrich.
The Police Training Opera/

The Memory Job
(Wetzel/Pigi Psimenou)
Two performances in the context of
Apartamentos Equis (X Wohnungen) in
Caracas.
The Police Training Opera: Three ex-opera singers explain
that the feelings they sing about are not the feelings that
they could have while singing. Policemen from the district
of Chacao then demonstrate fight training, in which they
should show no feelings even when in great pain.
The Memory Job: Audio tour with the voice of Rafel Castillo,
the official chronicler of the district of Chacao.
With: Rafel Castillo (Chronicler), Gisela Hollaender (Soprano), Irina Nicolescu (Soprano), Julio Daantje (Tenor), Fernando Roa (Piano), about 20 policemen of the Policia Chacao
and their trainer. P: Apartamentos Equis, Ateneo Festival
Caracas, Goethe Institute Venezuela.
WP: 12.4.2006, Caracas.
Cargo Sofia. Eine europische LastKraftWagen-Fahrt (Cargo Sofia: A

European truck journey)
(Kaegi)
50 audience members at a time sit in the
back of a truck that has one side replaced with a glass window. The mobile auditorium drives from the theatre to the
loading bays and container terminals, with live commentary
from the Bulgarian truck drivers Ventzislav Borissov, Nedjalko Nedjalkov, Svetoslav Michev and, depending on the
place of performance, meat shippers from Berlin, Polish
vegetable wholesalers, logistic workers from Basel, motorway police from Essen or Serbian dockworkers.
Co-Director: Jrg Karrenbauer; M: Nicki Neecke, Florian Fischer, Margo Aleksiev et al.; V: Wladimir Miller et al Truck
reconstruction: Notker Schweikhardt; Production manager:
Bettina Land, Anne Schulz.
P: Goethe Institute Sofia, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Theater
Basel. KP: PACT Zollverein Essen, Le-Maillon Strassburg,
Theorem, Pro Helvetia. WP: Cargo Sofia-Basel: 31.5.2006.
Site specific versions: Cargo Sofia-Berlin, Avignon, Ljubljana,
Warsaw, Zagreb, Belgrade, Riga, Frankfurt, Vienna, Strasbourg, Dublin, Madrid, Copenhagen, Paris, Hamburg,
Amman, Damascus etc.
miles and more. Rcktrittsdramaturgien in der Politik (miles and more.

Dramaturgies of Political Resignation)
(Haug/Wetzel/Heike Haug)
Radio piece about the temptations of
power, pitfalls, bailouts, plastic politicians, bad timing,
departmental breakdowns and crisis management, guilt
and atonement.
With: Jrgen Leinemann (Journalist), Tarek Al-Wazir (Parliamentary Candidate), Bernd Stegemann (Dramaturge), Bettina Rhl (Journalist), Jrn Fischer (Resignation Researcher),
Dirk Kaesler (Sociologist), Marcus Knill (Communications
Consultant), Sven-Joachim Otto (Politician), Helga Lehner
(Newsreader).
With the use of the radio play Richard II. by William Shakespeare (P: HR 1963. Mit: Hans Quest, Gnther Strack u. a.).
P: WDR, DeutschlandRadio Kultur. OB: 27.8.2006 (5353).

(Karl Marx: Capital, Volume One)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Stage piece in front of the fourth wall,
which has become a book shelf, with people who wish to stage the work Das Kapital along with their
own biographies.
With: Christian Spremberg (Call Centre Worker), Thomas
Kuczynski (Statistician, Economic Historian, Editor), Tlivald-
231
Catalogue of Works
232
Catalogue of Works
is Margvis (Historian, Film-maker, Riga), Franziska Zwerg

(Translator), Jochen Noth (Management Consultant, Lecturer), Ralph Warnholz (Electrician, Ex-gambler), Ulf Mailnder
(Author, in the role of Jrgen Harksen, Investment Consultant), Sascha Warnecke (Revolutionary, Trainee Media Salesman), alternating with Archibald Peeters (Student, Activist,
Brussels).
SD: Haug, Wetzel, Daniel T. Schultze; DR: Andrea Schwieter,
Imanuel Schipper.
P: Dsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. CP: Schauspielhaus Zrich,
schauspielfrankfurt, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin. WP: 4.11.2006,
Schauspielhaus, Dsseldorf. Winner of the Mlheimer Dramatikerpreis and the Mlheimer Publikumspreis 2007.
2007
Chcara Paraso.
Mostra de Arte Polica
(Lola Arias/Kaegi)
Installation with 18 Brazilian policemen
and their families on the 14th floor of a
high rise block on the Avenida Paulista. Alone or in small
groups, audiences visit the labyrinth of rooms with non-uniformed policemen. They recount their biographies between
duty and ethics using photo albums and simple objects.
With: Flvia (Emergency Telephone Operator), Marcel (Double Bass Player in the Military Police Music Corps), Sargento
Amorim (Police Dog Trainer) with Agatha (Retired Police
Dog), Sebastio (Retired Policeman), Cleber (Policeman dismissed for homicide), Eliana (Ex-Traffic Policewoman), Luis
Carlos (Ex-bodyguard of the Governor of So Paulo), Thiago
(Officer in a private security firm) et al.
P: Copa Cultura, Goethe-Institut So Paulo, Bundeskulturstiftung, SESC So Paulo.
WP: 2.2.2007, So Paulo.
Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der alten
Dame (Premire: The Visit)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
Reconstruction of the world premier from
1956 and the events that occurred
around the theatre before and after, in the same place, with
contemporary participants as well as 11 children, 46 lifesize black and white photos and a musician.
With: Ursula Ghwiler, Hans Graf and Christine Vetter (in the
original Childrens Chorus), Bibi Gessner (original Secretary
to the Directors), Richard Merz (original Assistant Director),
Eva Mezger (one of the first Swiss female Television Presenters), Hans Stdeli (Current Stage Technician), Kurt Weiss
and Johannes Baur (Audience at the premire) and others.
M: Markus Reschtnefki; DR: Imanuel Schipper; SD: Simeon
Meier | WP: 21.6.2007, Schauspielhaus Zrich.
Peymannbeschimpfung. Ein Training

(Insulting Peymann. A training)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Claus Peymann (former Director of
Stuttgart playhouse) reads letters that
were sent to him during the Zahnspendenaffre (when he
raised money for dental work for Baader-Meinhof Gang prisoner Gudrun Ensslin) in autumn 1977. Rolf Otto shows the
roofs of the houses that the donations came from in Google
Earth, Gabriele Vogler-Stump explains what it was like in
Stammheim Prison. Stammheim Gymnastics Club represents itself with extracts from a training programme for
individual groups and talks about the proximity of the club
and the prison.
With Claus Peymann (on video), Gabriele Vogler-Stump
(Teacher), Rolf Otto (Theatre Armourer,), Ursula Ernst (Yoga
Teacher) and the groups of ladies gymnastics, Yoga, Hip-Hop,
Couples dance, Jazz dance, Step Aerobic and Table Tennis
from Turnverein Stammheim.
WP: 22.9.2007, Festival Endstation Stammheim/Schauspiel
Stuttgart.
Peymannbeschimpfung (Insulting
Peymann)
(Haug/Wetzel)
Radio play. Extension of the Rules for
Actors from Handkes Publikumsbeschimpfung. (Offending the Audience) Acoustic prcis of the
research into the actions and statements of Claus Peymann
and others about the so-called Zahnspendenaffre (See
above) and the Stammheim Gymnastics Club.
With: Claus Peymann, Margarita Broich (Actress), Gabriele
Vogler-Stump (Stammhein Resident), Brbel Noack (Ex-secretary), Rolf Otto (Armourer), Martin Lambrecht (Table Tennis). E: Katrin Moll. Co-operation with Schauspiel Stuttgart,
Landesarchiv Baden-Wrttemberg, Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg.
P: DeutschlandRadio Kultur. OB: 1.10.2007 (54).
(Karl Marx: Capital, Volume One)
(Haug / Wetzel)
Radio piece. The back stage area of the
performance becomes a listening stage.
The participants of the performances in Brussels, Zurich
and Modena comment on the attempt to stage Marxs text.
Further voices are added the actor training to laugh, the
prostitute in a kitchen in Berlin talking to a blind DJ, the editor of a new edition of Capital, Volume One and the ex-squatter who pretends to be the high-finance fraudster whose
autobiography he wrote.
Awarded the Hrspielpreis der Kriegsblinden 2008.
With: Lolette (Prostitute), Christian Spremberg (Call Centre

Worker), Thomas Kuczynski (Statistician, Economic Historian, Editor), Talivaldis Margevic (Historian, Film-maker, Riga),
Franziska Zwerg (Translator), Jochen Noth (Ex-Maoist, Management Consultant), Ralph Warnholz (Public Services Electrician, Ex-Trade Unionist, Ex-Gambler), Ulf Mailnder
(Author in the role of Jrgen Harksen, Investment Adviser);
Announcer: Sascha Warnecke (Revolutionary, Apprentice
Media Tradesman).
P: DLF/WDR 2007
OB: 19.11.2007 WDR
SOKO So Paulo
(Arias / Kaegi)
So Paulo is one of the most dangerous
places on earth. Munich is the safest city
in Germany. In the scenic installation
SOKO So Paulo six police officers from each city meet. In
small rooms they show photos as if they were the museum
guards of their own lives. In the end they play football
against each other at the edge of irregularity, moderated by
radio-legend Gnther Koch.
With: Isabel Cristina Amaro (Emergency Telephone Operator), Pedro Amorim (Dog Handler), Bennie Baumann (Police
Photographer), Verena Kunze (Internet Investigator), Michael
Kraus (Behaviour Trainer), Marcel Lima (Police Double-Bass
Player), Klaus Rschinger (Police Officer), et al. Video: Fudo
Lang, Alberto Troia.
P: SPIELART-Factory Munich. CP: Ortstermine 2007, Goethe
Institute So Paulo
WP: 20.11.2007, SpielArt Munich.
2008
Breaking News. Ein Tagesschauspiel

(Breaking News. A News Play)
(Haug / Wetzel)
The stage shows TV news from all over
the world on the evening of the performance, live and simultaneously. Latin American, English, Icelandic, German, Arab, Syrian, Kurdish, Pakistani, Indian,
Russian, and American versions of the daily 15-minute infotainment package about the most important events of the
day. The participating translators and journalists transmit,
filter and comment on the broadcasts. Aichylos The Persians serves as an antique counterpart to the current news
coverages about war, diplomacy and catastrophes. The
events as well as the individual experience have to free
themselves from this noise of the breaking news.
With: Simon Birgisson (Icelandic Journalist), Martina Englert
(Russian and English Interpreter), Djengizkahn Hasso (Arab,
Kurdish and Turkish Interpreter ), Carsten Hinz (Spanish and
French Interpreter), Hans Hbner (former Theatre Critic and

Africa Correspondent), Marion Mahnecke (News Editor),
Walter van Rossum (News Analyser), Andreas Osterhaus
(News Broker, Agence France Presse AFP), Sushila SharmaHaque (Translator and Teacher of Hindi and Urdu). DR:
Sebastian Brnger, SD: Marc Jungreithmeier.
P: Rimini Apparat, CP: Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Dsseldorfer
Schauspielhaus, schauspielfrankfurt, Wiener Festwochen,
schauspielhannover.
WP: 05.01.2008 HAU 2 Berlin.
100 Prozent Berlin. Eine statistische

Kettenreaktion (100 percent Berlin.
A Statistical Chain Reaction)
(Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
For this jubilee revue of the 100th
anniversary of the Hebbel Theater, in October 2007 an
inhabitant of Berlin proposes the next participant from his
circle of acquaintances, who in turn proposes the next one,
until one hundred people are found who fit the pattern. For
in this casting chain reaction, the statistic values concerning age, sex, nationality, place of abode and civil status of
the city of Berlin have to be adhered to. Thus, in February
2008, one hundred people can be seen on stage representing the statistical average of the population of Berlin.
SD: Mascha Mazur. DR: Cornelius Puschke.
P: Rimini Apparat. CP: Hebbel am Ufer.
WP: 01.02.2008 HAU 1 Berlin.
WAHL KAMPF WALLENSTEIN

(Election Campaign Wallenstein)
(Haug / Wetzel)
Film. The protagonists of Wallenstein.
Eine dokumentarische Inszenierung
(2005) on stage. They are filmed as they reconstruct scenes
from the performance without playing them, while the
revolving stage is still being constructed. Robert, who
defended Mannheim as a child against American bombs at
the end of WW II; Dave, who talks about the execution of his
superior in Vietnam; Darnell, who ended up in Vietnam and
Heidelberg because of love, and Sven Otto, the Wallensteinequivalent from Mannheim, West Germany, a conservative
politician deposed by his own colleagues, who is confronted
with a Chief of Police from Weimar, East Germany.
With: Rita Mischereit (Owner of an agency organizing extramarital affairs), Esther Potter (Certified Astrologer), Wolfgang Brendel (Ex-Head Waiter at the Hotel Elephant,
Weimar), Friedemann Gassner (Master Electrician, Schiller
Enthusiast), Robert Helfert (Former City Councillor, Air Force
Assistant in 1944/45), Ralf Kirsten (Assistant Police Commissioner, City Council Member, Weimar), Dr. Sven-Joachim
Otto (Judge Court Heidelberg, City Council Member,
233
Catalogue of Works
234
Catalogue of Works
Mannheim, CDU), Hagen Reich (Ex-Officer Training), Dave

Blalock and Darnell Stephen Summers (Vietnam Veterans,
Anti-war Activists). Filmed in the Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
(2006/2007).
Camera: Martin Baer et al. Editing: Stefanie Saghri Editorial
Staff: Meike Klingenberg and Wolfgang Bergmann. P: Gebrueder Beetz Film Production commissioned by ZDFtheaterkanal / 3Sat.
OB: May 2008. WP: 13.4.2008 Thessaloniki (Premio Europa).
Call Cutta in a Box

(Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel)
After Call Cutta (2005) Rimini Protokoll
developed a new form of dialogue with
Call Cutta in a Box 2008, to whisper globalisation directly into the ear of the user:
This time the theatre visitor does not walk through the city
but finds himself as customer and/or co-worker in a call
centre.
With: Durbha Alivelu, Avisek Arora, Dicky Banerjee, Suktara
Banerjee, Avik Chakraborty, Sagnik Chakraborty, Souptic
Chakraborty, Surjodoy Chatterjee, Anusua Chatterjee,
Sarmistha Das, Arpan Goenka, Basundhara Ghoshal, Sneha
Jha, Islam Mohammed, Madhusree Mukherjee, Priyanka
Nandy, Mira Parekh, Aditi Roy, Sunayana Roy et al.
Collaboration: Sebastian Brnger, Almut Rembges, Digital
Interface Design: Florian Fischer, Physical Interface Design:
Georg Werner.
P: Rimini Apparat. CP: Baltic Circle Helsinki and Helsinki
Festival, Camp X Copenhagen, HAU Berlin, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels; Nationaltheater Mannheim,Schauspielhaus Zrich, 104 Centquatre Paris.
WP: Berlin, Mannheim, Zrich 2.4.2008.
Abbreviations: AP: Authors production; CP: Co-production; DR: Dramaturgy; E: Editor; L: Light; M: Music; OB: Original Broadcast; P: Production; S: Sound; SD: Stage Design; V: Video; WP: World Premire.
235
236
Authors
Eva Behrendt is a freelance editor for the journal Theaterheute. Additionally she writes for die
taz, Die Welt and the Zrcher Tages-Anzeiger. She was a juror for the independent Impulse theatre festival and the Berlin Senat and has been a member of the jury for the Berlin Theatertreffen since 2007. She lives in Berlin.
Miriam Dreysse holds an academic post at the Institut fr Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft

(Institute for Applied Theatre Studies) at Giessen University. She has promoted the theatre
work of Einar Schleef (Szene vor dem Palast, 1999) and worked as an assistant director and
production dramaturge on a variety of projects. Her teaching, research and publications are
primarily in the field of contemporary theatre and performance as well as gender construction
in theatre, performance and popular culture. She lives in Giessen.
Ehren Fordyce has taught at Stanford University, Freie Universitt Berlin and Columbia University. In addition to writing articles on contemporary performance and opera he works in
documentary film and with the performance group Cabula6. He currently lives in Berlin.
Heiner Goebbels is a composer, director, professor and managing director of the Institut fr
Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft at Giessen University. Since 2006 he has been president of
the Hessische Theaterakademie. He has written compositions for ensemble, orchestra, radio
pieces, scenic concerts and music theatre pieces, and has numerous CDs and prizes to his
credit. Member of the Akademie der Knste, Berlin. Lives in Frankfurt.
Hans-Thies Lehmann is Professor of Theaterwissenschaft at Frankfurt University. He was

very involved in the creation of the department of Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft at Giessen
University, he teaches theatre, film, media science and a Masters course in dramaturgy at
Frankfurt University. His publications include Postdramatisches Theater (1999), Das politische
Schreiben (2002), Heiner-Mller-Handbuch (with Patrick Primavesi, 2003). He lives in Frankfurt.
Florian Malzacher is co-programmer of the steirischer herbst festival in Graz. He writes for
newspapers and journals and is a founder member of the curators collective Unfriendly
Takeover in Frankfurt. He has curated various collections and projects. He works as a dramaturge, lecturer and jury member. He co-edited Not Even a Game Anymore. Das Theater von
Forced Entertainment (2004). He lives in Frankfurt and Graz.
Annemarie Matzke is a theatre academic, performance artist, and member of the performance group She She Pop as well as holding a post at the Institut fr Theaterwissenschaft of
the FU Berlin. She studied theatre science in Giessen and promotes self-staging in contemporary theatre (Testen, Spielen, Tricksen, Scheitern, 2005). She lives in Berlin
Tobi Mller is a newspaper and periodical writer in Switzerland and Germany. He has written
for the Tages-Anzeiger in Zrich since 2001 where he is responsible for Pop. He is the member
of the jury for Impulse-Berater Nordrhein-Westfalen, Berliner Theatertreffen 2003 - 2006, Autoren-Werkstatttage (deutscher Literaturfonds and Burgtheater, Vienna). Since January 2007
he has been the Cultural Editor of the Swiss Television DRS. He also works freelance. He lives
in Zurich.
Priyanka Nandy lives in Calcutta, where she studies English Literature at Jadavpur University.
She also runs an extensive Blog at http://myownfairystories.blogspot.com.
237
238
Authors
Matthias Pees works as a freelance journalist and theatre critic as well as being a dramaturge
for the Volksbhne, Berlin, for the schauspielhannover and for the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. Since 2004 he has been a freelance curator and producer in So Paulo, where he collaborated on the Brazilian adaptation of Torrero Portero and the production of Chcara Paraso.
He lives in So Paulo
Kathrin Rggla writes prose, radio works and theatre texts. Her most recently published
books are disaster awareness fair (2006) and wir schlafen nicht (2004) and her most recent
theatre premires were draussen tobt die dunkelziffer (2005) and junk space (2004). She lives
in Berlin.
Jens Roselt is a theatre academic, playwright and director of the Sonderforschungsbereichs
Kulturen des Performativen at the Freien Universitt Berlin. He has written numerous publications about the theory and aesthetic of the theatre (including Seelen mit Methode, 2005), his
plays include Dreier (2002) and Body Snacks (2004) as well as dramatizations for the Volksbhne Berlin. He lives in Berlin.
Gerald Siegmund studied Theatre Science, English and Literature in Frankfurt. He has written
numerous publications about contemporary dance and theatre, for example on William
Forsythe. Denken in Bewegung (2004) and Abwesenheit. Eine performative sthetik des Tanzes
(2006). He is currently Assistant Professor at the Institut fr Theaterwissenschaft, Berne University, Switzerland. He lives in Frankfurt and Berne.
Co-producers
The Institut fr Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft (Institute for Applied Theatre Studies) at the University of Giessen/Germany was founded more than 25 years ago with a
unique combination of contemporary theatre theory and practice. Since 2003 the Managing
Director has been the composer and director Prof. Heiner Goebbels. At the centre of the studies is theatrical research grounded in academic as well as practical, artistic approaches. The
practices examined range from the staging of plays to experimental forms of theatre, dance
theatre, performance, acoustic art and video installation.
www.uni-giessen.de/theater
Kunstenfestivaldesarts is a festival dedicated to new creations, intended for artists with a

personal outlook on the world and spectators willing to question their own views. Kunstenfestivaldesarts features performing arts and visual arts by Western and non-Western artists. Kunstenfestivaldesarts takes place in dozens of Brussels theatres and art houses for 3 weeks
every May.
www.kfda.be
Since 2003, the National Theatre School - Continuing Education, Copenhagen, has provided knowledge, inspiration and new skills for the professional theatre and dance environment.
The aim is to help develop artistic and craft-based skills in the performing arts in Denmark.
Continuing Education focuses particularly on bridging the gap between theory and practice. It
also creates a platform for cross-disciplinary collaborations. Managed by a small team, the
National Theatre School - Continuing Education develops and hosts courses in close collaboration with performing arts organisations and artists, as well as developing its network
with collaborators nationally and abroad.
www.teaterskolen-efteruddannelsen.dk
Project Arts Centre is an important platform for the presentation of local and international
contemporary arts practice in Ireland. Project commissions and co-produces work by independent artists in theatre, dance, music and visual arts and hosts the work of leading festivals
and production companies. The centre is regularly funded by the Arts Council/An Chomhairle
Ealaon.
www.project.ie
The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival presents ground breaking work in the live
performing arts: theatre, dance, music and various hybrid forms of performance. As one of
Vancouvers signature events each January, the PuSh Festival is much more than a cultural
feast. It is a broker of international partnerships, a meeting place for creative minds, a showcase of Canadas best and an incubator of brilliant new work.
www.pushfestival.ca
239
Werkverzeichnis
240
Werkverzeichnis
Photographers
- Archiv Deutschlandradio: S. 212 (O-Ton Tek), 224 (Apparat Herz)
- Thomas Aurin: S. 36, 108, 224 (Sonde Hannover), 228 (Zeugen! Ein Strafkammerspiel),
229 (Zeugen! Ein Verhr)
- Adriana Bernal: S. 144/145
- Thilo Beu: S. 22, 109, 111, 225
(Deutschland 2), 227 (Markt der Mrkte)
- Urska Boljkovac: S. 100/101 links und Mitte, 102
- Barbara Braun/drama-berlin.de: S. 51, 61,
67, 96, 169171, 174, 176, 177, 180, 181,
184, 185, 230 (Wallenstein), 231 (Karl Marx:
Das Kapital, Erster Band), 233 (Breaking
News), 233 (100% Berlin), 233 (WAHL
KAMPF WALLENSTEIN)
- Alejandra Bredeston: S. 143, 224 (Torero
Portero)
- Joo Caldas: S. 144, 145, 232 (Chcara
Paraso. Mostra de Arte Polica)
- Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires: S. 146,
147, 226 (Sentate! Un zoostituto)
- Arno Declair: S. 35, 194, 218/219, 226
(Deadline)
- Katalin Der: S. 30, 224 (Raubkopie: Boxenstopp), 224 (Apparat Berlin)
- Lieven de Laet: S. 232 (Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band. Radio piece)
- Silke Eberspcher: S. 233 (SOKO So Paulo)
- Christian Enger: S. 74/75, 89, 90,
228 (Sabenation. Go home & follow the
news)
- Alexander Paul Englert: S. 12/13, 29, 81,
82, 223 (Kreuzwortrtsel Boxenstopp)
- Iko Freese/drama berlin.de: S. 11
- David Graeter: S. 232 (Peymannbeschimpfung)
- Helgard Haug: S. 105, 222 (came to rest),
222 (U-deur), 223 (Wir wohnen gerne
modern/Keim-Kraft)
- Haug/Dro/Wetzel: S. 15, 19, 221 (ber
das HDW-Verfahren ), 221 (Etappe Bekanntenkreis. Marke: Ungunstraum)
- Rolf Hegi: S. 203
- Ruth Hommelsheim: S. 16, 220 (Zu schn,
um wahr zu sein)
- Sebastian Hoppe: S. 65, 92 links, 98/99,
101, 103, 113, 150/151, 230 (Mnemopark)
- Hygiene Heute: S. 14, 17, 18, 221 (Training
747), 222 (Kongress der Schwarzfahrer),
223 (De Hermeneutische Fitness Studio),
224 (Europa tanzt. 48 Stunden Meerschwein
Kongress)
- Angelika Kettl: S. 42/43 Mitte
- Hanna Lippmann: S. 222 (Mobile Reviere II)
- Mauk privat: S. 221 (Und hier ist schon wieder woanders)
- Rimini Protokoll: S. 7, 25, 42 links, 54, 57,
69, 71, 106, 112, 116/117, 120, 121, 123,
130136, 141, 197, 220 (Nach.Richten.Tier.),
220 (Jger und Sammler), 221 (156 60 18
[1.49,/Min.]), 224 (Shooting Bourbaki. Ein
Knabenschieen), 225 (Glhkferkomplott),
225 (Deutschland 2: Kritisches Tagebuch),
226 (dont cream!), 226 (Matraca Catraca.
Uma viagem REM), 226 (Wundersame Welt
der bertragung), 227 (The Midnight Special
Agency), 227 (Skrt. Krakau Files), 228 (Hot
Spots hmoun ed), 228 (Brunswick Airport.
Weil der Himmel uns braucht), 229 (Alles
muss raus!), 229 (Call Cutta), 230 (Cameriga), 230 (Mnner meldet euch!), 231 (Cargo
Sofia. Eine europische LastKraftWagenFahrt)
- Pigi Psimenou: S. 231 (The Police Training
Opera/The Memory Job)
- Dieter Rchel: S. 44/45, 53
- Konstanza Schargan: S. 228 (Lokaltermin)
- Christian Schnur: S. 73, 231 (Blaiberg und
sweetheart 19), 235
- Tanzquartier Wien: S. 226 (Physik)
- C. Weimer: S. 43 rechts
- Reinhard Werner: S. 33, 229 (Schwarzenbergplatz)
- www.raffinerie.com: S. 234 (Call Cutta in a
Box)
- Nada Zgank/Memento: S. 92 rechts, 93
- Leonard Zubler: S. 187/188, 204, 205, 208,
214217, 232 (Urauffhrung: Der Besuch der
alten Dame)
We thank all photographers for their friendly support.

Rimini Protocol

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Исходное описание:

Оригинальное название

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Rimini Protocol

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

When the theatre explosives experts Rimini Protokoll light the fuse, the

Alexander Verlag Berlin

EXPERTS OF THE EVERYDAY. THE THEATRE OF RIMINI PROTOKOLL

Miriam Dreysse / Florian Malzacher (Eds.)

Rimini Protokoll is the label of the theatre makers Helgard Haug

Miriam Dreysse / Florian Malzacher (Eds.)

EXPERTS OF THE EVERYDAY

The Theatre of Rimini Protokoll

Translated by Daniel Belasco Rogers, Ehren Fordyce, Geoffrey

Garrison, Mat Hand, Sophia New and Walter Suttcliffe

Alexander Verlag Berlin

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

With the friendly assistance of

by Alexander Verlag Berlin 2008

Miriam Dreysse & Florian Malzacher

Subject: berlin report 16 april 2005

But youve been rehearsing your entire lives!

220 Catalogue of Works

tions take place throughout Europe as well as in South America and

These old ladies, teenagers, unemployed air-traffic controllers,

that this theatricality also influenced theory in the same way as

Ulrike Falke: 30th July. German Grand

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

A man comes on stage and shows some slides of chickens. He talks

In this context Peter Heller was a quickly produced experiment, a

There are other precedents for Riminis origins

Etappe: Fernsehreif, 1997

Stage of Ungunstraum led us on an imaginary journey from Giessen

Ungunstraums works often found their dramatic structure in

At around the same time Stefan Kaegi was working

Training 747, 1999

Of ants and men

Many of the radical interventions to the theatre system that were

Ungunstraums vanishing performers required replacements that

formance theory and philosophical or artistic speculations but also

Etappe: Alibis, 1996

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

animals reflected the metaphors and language used in a discussion

Herforder Quittung (Herford Receipt)

Herforder Quittung. In the end this too was rejected as a name

Rimini operate as a team of equals, without specifically designated

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

Stefan Kaegi, Bernd Ernst, Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel

all the mutual experiences, you use catchphrases to quickly agree on

However, even within these relatively open arrangements, working

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

(Witnesses. A Criminal Court Play) in the end it was the available

So much so that when Rimini started work on Urauffhrung: Der

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

otherwise at most be audience members and mostly not even that.

Catraca word had got around in Salvador da Bahias theatre scene

Dramaturgies of care and zones of insecurity

A Rimini performance is never perfect, nor should it be. At the

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

It is the moments when reality breaks in that throw you back to

Apparat Berlin, 2001

Special Agency where, as part of the Kunsten festival in Brussels,

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

Dramaturgies of care and insecurity

second if he took aim in self-defence or just randomly at the right,