Concept / Direction

Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll) 

Dramaturgy

Silke Bake 

Music

Tobias Koch 

Scenography

Dominic Huber 

Video 

Mikko Gaestel 

Light

Martin Hauk 

Costumes

Sandra Tiersch 

Repetition 

Claudia de Serpa Soares 

Dance

Sasha Waltz & Guests

With the voices of

Christina von Braun, Professor Emerita, cultural scientist, gender theorist, filmmaker

John-Dylan Haynes, Professor of Brain Research at Charité in Berlin

Sarah Karim, Sociologist and research assistant at the Institute for Rehabilitation Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin

Tim Landgraf, Professor of Artificial and Collective Intelligence

Nora Schultz, Scientific advisor to the German Ethics Council, freelance science journalist

Tania Singer, Professor of Psychology and Social Neuroscience

The dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests was founded by Sasha Waltz and Jochen Sandig in Berlin in 1993 and in 2023 celebrated its 30th anniversary. To date, numerous artists and ensembles from the fields of architecture, visual arts, choreography, film, design, literature, fashion and music from more than 60 countries have collaborated as »Guests« on over 100 productions, »Dialoge« projects and films.

Sasha Waltz & Guests works in a constantly evolving international and national network of production and guest performance partners, and since its foundation in 1993 has performed at over 300 venues and festivals in more than 50 countries and 180 cities. Today, the company is showing its current repertoire of 12 active pieces in about 80 performances each year.

In Berlin, the company cooperates with a wide range of municipal theatres, opera houses and museums and has contributed to establishing new cultural institutions, such as Sophiensæle (1996), St. Elisabeth-Kirche (2004) and Radialsystem (2006). In 2013, the company was named »European Cultural Ambassador« by the European Union. In 2014, Sasha Waltz & Guests was awarded the »Tabori Ehrenpreis« by the Fonds Darstellende Künste.

Apart from Berlin stagings, national and international guest performances and the continual work on the repertoire, Sasha Waltz & Guests has been increasingly committed to educational and social projects. In 2006, the »Kinder- und Jugendtanzcompany« (Children’s and Youth Dance Company) was founded and since 2016 the interdisciplinary and open exchange platform titled »ZUHÖREN« has served as a »third space for art and politics«. Alongside these initiatives, the company continues to propose diverse offers in the field of knowledge transfer.

With the work »In C«, based on Terry Riley’s open composition of the same name, a system with an internationally growing community has been developing since spring 2021: the choreographic material was recorded in video tutorials to enable the easy transfer of knowledge. As a result, participatory, diverse, international and sustainable »In C« projects, workshop formats and ever-new structures have emerged worldwide.

Sasha Waltz & Guests is funded by the Senate Department for Social Cohesion.

https://www.sashawaltz.de/en/compagnie

Stefan Kaegi creates documentary theatre plays, audio-interventions, curated formats and works in the urban environment in a diverse variety of collaborative partnerships. Using research, public auditions and conceptual processes, he often gives voice to ‘experts' who are not trained actors but have something to tell. Most of his works are released under the Rimini Protokoll label which he founded together with Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel at the beginning of the millennium.

Kaegi’s early projects include works like “Mnemopark,” a model railway world with 4 passionate bricoleurs in a live film (set in 1:87 scale). Or Cargo Sofia around two Bulgarian lorry drivers and a truck which was converted into a mobile audience room (“Cargo Sofia”). In 2008, he developed “Radio Muezzin” in Cairo – a project about the call to prayer in this age of technical reproduction, and in 2011, “Bodenprobe Kasachstan” about migration and oil in central Asia. 

Between 2006 and 2011, Kaegi often worked with Argentinian playwright and director Lola Arias, most recently on “Chácara Paraíso”, which featured Brazilian policemen, and on “Airport Kids”, with global nomads between 7 and 13 years of age. Together they curated “ciudades paralelas / parallel cities”, a portable festival for urban interventions.

Since 2014 Kaegi adapts the immersive Audio Walk “Remote X” into such different urban landscapes and contexts as Santiago de Chile, Shanghai or New York, and he tours the interactive installation “Nachlass” that portrays eight people who have not much time to live. In “Society under Construction” he invites up to 300 spectators to impersonate the conflicts on one of many oversized construction sites. In 2018 he created a humanoid robot to perform as a clone of the german writer Thomas Melle in “Uncanny Valley”. With Caroline Barneaud he staged „This is not an embassy (made in Taiwan)“ with diplomats from Taipei, and together they conceived and curated „Shared Landscapes“, a day in nature with performative Land-Art. 

In 2005 Kaegi won the jury-prize of the festival “Politik im Freien Theater” for Mnemopark. 2010 Kaegi was awarded the European Prize for Cultural Diversity. In 2011 the jury prize for “Radio Muezzin” in the Theatre Festival Sarajevo, and he curated the "idiom"-section of "Malta" Festival Póznan. In 2018 he won the Grand Prize of Bitef Festival Belgrade for “Nachlass”. In 2024/25 he was awarded the Rome Prize by the German Academy Villa Massimo.

Kaegi co-produces works with Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, under the label “Rimini Protokoll”. Rimini Protokoll's purpose is to pry apart the sense of reality and present all its facets from unusual perspectives. In this way, the trio of directors reproduced the full session of the German Parliament using 200 citizens from Bonn (“Deutschland 2”). In “Deadline”, they presented a piece with five experts on the central European way of dying. 

Later works include“Call Cutta in a Box”, a one-to-one telephone performance that takes place live from a call centre in India, “Hauptversammlung” (“Annual General Meeting”), a parasitic intervention at Daimler’s shareholders' meeting, the multi-player-on-stage-game “Best Before” (Vancouver 2010), the video-walk “Outdoors” (National Theatre of Wales 2011), various personalized versions of “100% City” (in Vienna, London, Melbourne and many other cities in with 100 local citizens on stage) and “Lagos Business Angels” with Nigerian business people (Berlin 2012), as well as "Weltklimakonferenz" (Hamburg 2014) - a simulation of the UN Conference on climate change. 

They also performed "Homevisit Europe" as an interactive performance game in hundreds of households across the globe and created a tetralogy „Staat 1-4“ on phenomena of post-democracy. Their „Utopolis“ for 48 portable loudspeakers opened at the Manchester International Festival. „Conference of the Absent“ is touring stages in dozens of languages. More and more they also create works for museums: The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) recently showed their eco-installation „win < > win“ as well as their immersive walkable movie „Urban Nature“. 

In 2007, Rimini Protokoll was awarded with the Faust Theatre Prize. In 2008 they received the European prize “New Realities in Theatre”, and in 2011 the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale for performing arts. The multi-player video-installation "Situation Rooms" about the weapon-industry got the Excellence award of the 17th Japan Media Festival in 2013. And in 2015 Stefan Kaegi and Rimini Protokoll got the Grand Prix Theater/Hans-Reinhart-Ring of Switzerland.

When he is not travelling Stefan Kaegi lives between Rome, Berlin and Switzerland.

https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/about-sk