Rimini Protokoll

Rimini Protokoll works in the realm of theater, sound and radio plays, film and installation emerge in constellations of two or three and solo as well.

Rimini Protokoll is the label for the works of artists Helgard Haug (female, German, born 1969), Stefan Kaegi (Swiss, b. 1972) and Daniel Wetzel (German, b. 1969) in various team constellations related to theatre, live art, radio plays and installation. They are often mentioned as inventors of a new wave of documentary theatre - wikipedia

They are often described as the inventors of a new form of documentary theatre, exploring a theatre of performers who are not professional actors but experts or specialists out of 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 to convincingly and strongly present themselves in front of a national theatre crowd used to watch the perfect fake instead of the unperfect but real.

"Call Cutta", one of their recent works, was based on outsourcing: The performers or 'experts', who were employees of a call center, were located in Salt Lake, Calcutta, India, providing the audience in Berlin, Germany with individual cell phone 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, an Indian revolutionarist freedom fighter.

Recently Rimini Protkoll crossed their method of research based theatre with experts who generate their own lines in contrast to drama based theatre with great texts - as Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein (Wallenstein (play)) trilogy (2005), and Karl Marx' Das Kapital, Vol.1. (2006, recognized with the national German drama award Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis 2007).

For example, Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel have declared a Daimler Shareholder Meeting to be a piece of theater or staged 100 % Stadt (100 % City) with 100 statistically representative residents of cities like Berlin, Zurich, London, Melbourne, Copenhagen, or San Diego.

In Berlin and Dresden, they developed accessible Stasi installations/sound plays in which the observation protocols could be listened to on android telephones. In Hamburg they staged "Weltklimakonferenz - a simulation of the UN Conference on climate change. At the moment they are creating the tetralogy 'Staat 1-4' and focus on post-democratic phenomena.

In November 2007, they were awarded a special prize at the Deutscher Theaterpreis Der Faust, in April 2008 they were awarded the European Theatre Prize for the category “new realities.” In 2008, they were awarded the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden for Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band (Peymannbeschimpfung was also nominated).

Rimini Protokoll was awarded the Faust Theatre Prize in 2007, the European Prize for New Theatre Forms in 2008 and in 2011 the silver lion of the Biennale for Performing Arts in Venice. The multi-player video-installation "Situation Rooms" about the weapon-industry received the Excellence Award of the 17th Japan Media Festival. In 2014, Helgard Haug und Daniel Wetzel were awarded the "Deutscher Hörspielpreis der ARD" and received the "Deutscher Hörbuchpreis der ARD" in 2015. And in 2015 Stefan Kaegi and Rimini Protokoll got the Swiss Grand Prix of Theatre.

Rimini Protokoll is based at HAU, Berlin, since 2003.