Swiss-Deutsch Stefan Kaegi is a founding member of a German theatre director's collective called ‘ Rimini Protokol'. Mixing realism with fiction, the originality of his work stems also from his including so-called ‘specialists of daily life' in his shows. These may be 80-year-old women from a hospice talking about Forumla One motor-racing, teenagers interested in guns who talk about the buzz they get from of shooting, medical experts talking about their experiences of death - they may even be ants who become actors for a month as in Un Terrarium and Argentine Concierges in Torero Portero.
Using public spaces for performance, he is interested in video surveillance in urban areas, and in debates in the German parliament which is staged live in Bonn in a model of the real Bundestag in Berlin, with ‘ordinary' citizens playing the role of the deputies. One of his most recent projects, called Call Cutta, had the spectators guided through a district of Berlin,in real-time, by mobile phone from Calcutta in India. Stefan Kaegi and Rimini Protokoll's work can be described as political and human documentary which uses all the new presentational forms of available for the theatrical act.
Stefan Kaegi takes us on a strange and entertaining voyage, across that eternal Switzerland in a miniature train that travels through pretty mountain scenery, landscapes with pretty chalets and farmers breeding beautiful cows. Five retired people who are model train buffs and an actress talk about themselves by talking about their country, with lots of humour and plenty of details they are our guides on this surprising trip. They would be amazing as statisticians and can tell us how many chickens live on the Helvetic lands, but they also make a number of comparisons that are comical but strange.
They are helped in their task by miniature cameras fixed on the locomotives which enlarge the details of the delightful scenery to human scale. This looks just like a documentary film, except that it is documentary theatre.
In reality, it is an original form of 21st century political theatre giving a representation of the ‘City-State', that while fragmented is nonetheless rooted in real life, with an analysis of the social and economic balance of power. The model train fans tell us about this miniature Switzerland caught in a myth in an airy and humorous way but that does not prevent the spectator from understanding what is at stake in this changing society.
This show is staged in an inventive way with an original and fresh approach enabling us to perceive the world in brief, profoundly human adventures, full of feeling and comedy. Jean-François Perrier
Distribution
stage direction Stefan Kaegi / Rimini Protokoll
avec : Ventzislav Borisov, Kaspar Falkenroth et des experts en transport d'Avignon et sa région
vidéo et son : Jörg Karrenbauer
assistanat à Sofia : Ivan Kiuranov et Krassimir Terziev
collaboration artistique et technique : Notker Schweikhardt
collaboration technique : Andreas Kessler
directrice de production : Bettina Land
Production
Production : Institut Goethe de Sofia, Theater Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin)
en coproduction avec : Theater Basel, PACT Zollverein Essen, Le Maillon-Strasbourg, THEOREM (association soutenue par le programme Culture 2000 de l'Union européenne)
avec le soutien : du Pacte de stabilité de l'Europe du Sud-Est, de Pro Helvetia, de la Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Allemagne) et du Forum Goethe-Institut
avec le soutien de : l'Onda pour les surtitre