Figurations of the infra-ordinary. Play and urban imaginaries in Rimini Protokoll’s documentary theatre practice

• Main Author: Roberto Cavallini
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: professionaldreamers 2013-03-01
• Series: lo Squaderno
• Subjects: Playing the City / La città in gioco; lo Squaderno No. 27
• Online Access: http://www.losquaderno.professionaldreamers.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/losquaderno27.pdf#page=51

Early June 2008. It’s a sunny and gorgeously warm day in Berlin. With a friend, I reach the Hebbel Am Uffer Theatre twenty minutes before the beginning of Call Cutta in a box, a piece by Rimini Protokoll, a label for the documentary theatre of Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. In the brochure, we read that there are time slots for two spectators at once. We buy our tickets and move towards the theatre’s entrance. But apparently, there is no entrance. Instead, a huge guy looks at me kindly indicating the map in my hand and explaining that the show is not in the theatre but few metres away in a glass corporate building by the river.