Conference of the Absent

How can you bring global expertise and perspectives together in one place without flying everyone over? With a video conference? No, by enabling real avatars. In Conference of the Absent, the invited experts and speakers do not appear physically on stage, but are embodied by people who only receive the script at the beginning of the evening. In this performance members of the audience take on the identity of absent speakers. Without CO₂ emissions or bad Skype and Zoom connections, but with all the performative means of the theatre, contradictory propositions about globalisation collide in the theatre space. Maybe you will manage to take on a role?

In Conference of the Absent, the Rimini Protokoll-makers simultaneously take on the role of ghostwriter, speechwriter, co-author and director, resulting in a remotely directed documentary theatre performance.

• Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel studied at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft in Giessen and work together (in various combinations) under the name Rimini Protokoll. With their documentary theatre, they have played the most important stages in the world in the past fifteen years to great success. In 2015, they were on the Kaaitheater programme with the ambitious Home Visit Europe, on location in various Brussels living rooms.