A story is about to develop and you’ll soon realise that a call centre agent in Calcutta and you and your city are the very first protagonists of the plot.

I magine you are buying a ticket at the box office for an individual show on a specific day, but are not led to the auditorium of the theatre. Instead, you receive a key for a room and a sketch of how to get there.

It might be a room in the theatre, an office, or an apartment somewhere close by. You open the door and find a phone ringing. You pick up the phone and a person with a strange accent strikes up a conversation with you. The person seems to know the room you are sitting in, even though he is about 10 000 km away. The voice belongs to a call centre agent from Calcutta, India. He and his colleagues usually sell credit cards and insurance on the phone to people on the other side of the globe or provide navigational help in cities that they have never been to themselves. But this time you are not supposed to buy anything.

Rimini Protokoll

Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel studied at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft in Giessen and work together as Rimini Protokoll. They are recognised as among the leaders and creators of the theatre movement known as “Reality Trend” (Theater der Zeit), which has exerted a powerful influence on the alternative theatre scene in Germany. Each project begins with a concrete situation in a specific place and is then developed through an intense exploratory process. They have attracted international attention with dramatic works that take place in the grey zone between reality and fiction. Since 2000 Rimini Protokoll has brought its “theatre of experts” to the stage and into city spaces, interpreted by non-professional actors who are called “experts” for that very reason.