Press File - Kunstenfestivaldesarts

Every evening, for a period of five minutes, we will be taking stock. As if TV were real life. In
each three-dimensional news programme, someone from Brussels who we came across during
the day will get a chance to speak – 25 times.
Whether a manager, kebab seller, civil servant from the registry office, shoe model,
biochemistry student, anyone can be a newsreader. They are selected on the basis of our own
interest in them, the job they do in the city, their particular view on what we’re doing, their
experiences and predictions, their strategy for making the city their own.
News from home and abroad, business, culture, sports, the weather. Sticking to the rules of the
game – through a whole list of questions – the daily protagonist will give his or her view on
things, headlining his or her own particular area.
Catastrophes, events and scandals occur that are not adapted for camera. On the other hand,
theatre can give the news in an immediate way, something the small screen cannot.
The 25 mini dramas will describe a city of many voices. They could just as well be about
linguistic boundaries and divides in districts as about the arrival of the eurocrats and burgeoning
of multicultural oases. Yet this commentary on city life will be making some forays into fiction.
Which roles would the front-man or woman like to play in the city? What is their own burning
issue? Their next summit meeting?
To be kings and queens just for one day
Field research forms both formula and method for all projects by HAUG / KAEGI / WETZEL:
If Disneyland is there to make the rest of the world seem more real, then the real world is there
to be put on stage – this is (according to Jean Baudrillard) how the credo of Rimini Protokoll
could be described. Rimini Protokoll is the cover name for three or four urban guerrilleros who
want to change the world, at least for a while and preferably in secret. They smuggle art, not
bombs, into reality and observe the audience observing the explosion. It succeeds if you can no
longer see the fine line between the real and the manipulated. (Renate Klett, Die Zeit).
Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel don’t work with professional actors, but ‘ready-made’ ones. This is part of
the concept. They describe their actors as specialists. They put ordinary people into a space on
stage. The result is a game permanently bordering reality and fiction, document and story. What
is depicted on stage can become authentic and vice versa. (Journal Frankfurt)
Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel studied at the Institute for Applied
Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany. They stage real situations in such a way that they tip
over into fiction. The basis for their work is field research that they usually end up interpreting
incorrectly. In 2000 they directed Kreuzworträtsel Boxenstopp (Künstlerhaus Mousonturm). In
the play, four 80-year-old women speak about their past as Formula 1 drivers and in the spring
of 2001 it formed the basis of the radio play Sitzgymnastik Boxenstopp. A pirated copy of it then
followed at the Prater (open air stage) of the Volksbühne in Berlin. After that,
Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel looked for five young people aged between 12 and 15 in Lucerne and
began research with them on personal attack and defence strategies, which resulted in
Shooting Bourbaki. Developed in early 2002 at the Luzernertheater, the project has been
performed at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, the Neuer Cinema Hamburg, the Sophiensaele in
Berlin, at Expo.02 (Switzerland) and in Trondheim and Bergen (Norway). Lastly, they won first
prize at North Rhine-Westphalia’s impulse festival.
In 2002, the trio created Sonde Hannover, a play of observations about the city (Theaterformen
2002). Under the name Rimini Protokoll, together with Bernd Ernst, they produced the
Bundestag project Deutschland 2 as part of Theater der Welt 2002 (World Theatre 2002).
With others they have also created several radio plays for Swiss and German radio stations.
The première of their very latest play, Deadline, is scheduled for April 2003 at the Neuer
Cinema, Dt. Schauspielhaus HH.
Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel are currently working on, amongst other things, the ‘tourist’
play Hot Spots (Goethe Institute, Athens) and have just staged Apparat Berlin at the Prater at
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