Rimini Protokoll is a German theatre group founded in 2000 by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel. They create stage plays,

interventions ''Interventions'' is a book by Noam Chomsky, an American academic linguist and political activist. Published in May 2007, ''Interventions'' is a collection of 44 op-ed articles, post-9/11, from September 2002, through March 2007. The book's sub ...

, scenic installations, and radio plays. Many of their works are characterized by interactivity and a playful use of technology. In 2008, they were awarded the

Europe Theatre Prize The Europe Theatre Prize ''(Premio Europa per il Teatro)'' is an award of the European Commission for a personality who has "contributed to the realisation of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peo ...

Background

The three met while attending the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at

University of Giessen University of Giessen, official name Justus Liebig University Giessen (german: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), is a large public research university in Giessen, Hesse, Germany. It is named after its most famous faculty member, Justus von ...

, Hesse, Germany. They are a team of authors, directors, and designers of sound, stage, and videos, who have been working together since 1999. They have been invited four times to

Berliner Theatertreffen The Berliner Theatertreffen (''Theatertreffen'' : neologism literally meaning "theatre encounter" or "theatre meeting" ) is a two-week long theatre festival occurring yearly in May in Berlin, Germany. It is a product of the Berliner Festspiele ...

, Germany's most important festival featuring the 10 best performances of Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Since 2003, their projects also take place within the framework of big national theatres like Vienna's Burgtheater or the Schauspielhaus in Zurich, as well as international festivals.

Method

Rimini Protokoll are often described as the inventors of a new form of documentary theatre, using performers who are not professional actors but rather experts or specialists in their particular spheres of life — professionals of a theatre of the real world. So, instead of presenting actors performing characters as parts of drama texts, they present people whom they find through elaborate research and casting procedures and with whom they develop theatre performances according to their abilities and skills in order to convincingly and strongly present themselves in front of national theatre crowds. ''Call Cutta'', one of their earlier works, was based on outsourcing: The performers or 'experts', who were employees of a call center, were located in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

, Kolkata, India, providing the audience in Berlin with individual cellphone performances, with each call center agent guiding just one spectator solely through the remote maze of lanes of Kreuzberg, Berlin, narrating the story of

Subhas Chandra Bose Subhas Chandra Bose ( ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945 * * * * * * * * *) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperia ...

, an Indian revolutionarist freedom fighter.

Awards and recognition

* 2008 —

– Europe Prize Theatrical Realities,

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...

Literature

* Malzacher, Florian and Miriam Dreysse. ''Experts of the Eyeryday: The Theatre of Rimini Protokoll''. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2008.

References

External links

*
Rimini Protokoll channel on vimeo.com
{{Authority control German performance artists