Edited by Miriam Dreysse and Florian Malzacher

240 pages | 296 full colour images | ISBN 978-3-89581-187-6 | 19.90 Euro | Alexander Verlag Berlin

Available at: www.alexander-verlag.com.

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 Protokoll’s 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, Annemie Matzke, Tobi Müller, Priyanka Nandy, Matthias Pees, Rimin Protokoll, Kathrin Röggla, Jens Roselt und Gerald Siegmund.

Co-produced by Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft (Universität Gießen), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), National Theatre School  Continuing Education (Copenhagen), Project Arts Centre (Dublin), PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver)

Rimini Protokoll

Helgard Kim Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel form a team of author-directors since 2000. Their works in the realm of theater, sound and radio plays, film and installation emerge in constellations of two or three and solo as well. Since 2002, all their works have been written collectively under the label Rimini Protokoll. At the focus of their work is the continuous development of the tools of the theater to allow unusual perspectives on our reality.

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.

They have been awarded the NRW Impulse Preis for Shooting Bourbaki (2003); Deadline (2004), Wallenstein – eine dokumentarische Inszenierung (2006) and Situation Rooms (2014) were invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen. Schwarzenbergplatz was nominated for the Austrian theater prize Nestroy in 2005. Mnemopark was awarded the Jury Prize at the festival “Politik im freien Theater” in Berlin in 2005, and in 2007 Karl Marx: Das Kapital. Erster Band (Haug / Wetzel) won both the audience prize at Festival Stücke 2007 and the Mülheimer Dramatiker Preis that same year.

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.