Stefan Kaegi

write an E-mail

Stefan Kaeg (1972, Switzerland) studied visual arts in Zurich and drama/theatre/media at the University of Giessen, Germany. He worked with local performers in urban contexts from Argentina to Latvia and Cairo to Vancouver, producing motor cycle tours, chasing channels, pet ceremonies or bus trips. His Argentine piece “Torero Portero” toured Europe and South America. His mini train world "Mnemopark" was awarded the prize of the jury at "Festival Politik im freien Theater". Since 2006, his mobile audience room “Cargo Sofia” – a truck driven by two Bulgarians – has been driving through Europe. In 2008 he developed “Radio Muezzin” in Cairo – a project about the call to prayer in this age of its technical reproduction, and in 2011 “Bodenprobe Kasachstan” about migration and oil in central Asia. In 2010 he was awarded with the prize for cultural diversity by the European Cultural Foundation.

Since joining forces in Frankfurt in 2001, Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel have directed documentary pieces like "Kreuzworträtsel Boxenstopp", which confronts 80-year-old ladies with Formula 1. In Lucerne, the group created “Shooting Bourbaki”, confronting 14-year-old boys with firearms. “Deadline” was performed by a crew of masters of funeral ceremonies, graveyard musicians, medical students and gravestone makers (invited to the Theatertreffen Berlin). In Hanover, they invited the audience to watch the city as a theatre piece through binoculars. “Deutschland 2” was a live reproduction of an entire 18-hour-session of the German Bundestag, involving 200 citizens resident in Bonn, the former German capital. For "Call Cutta", they set up a call centre in Kolkata from which audiences in Berlin were remote-controlled by mobile phone. In Schauspielhaus Zürich, Rimini Protokokoll brought together specialists in heart transplants and speed dating in "Blaiberg and sweetheart19", and also reconstructed a historical premiere: “Uraufführung: Besuch der alten Dame". In Berlin, Rimini Protokoll gathered 100 Berliners on the stage of Hebbel Theatre, and turned the annual shareholders’ meeting of Daimler AG at Berlin Congress Centre into a theatrical readymade by buying shares granting 200 theatre-goers admission to the event. 

In 2007, Kaegi began collaborating with Argentine writer and theatre director Lola Arias in São Paulo, Munich and Berlin, staging Brazilian police-officers and their biographies in living museums (chacara Paraíso). “Airport Kids” followed in 2008; featuring 6- to 13-year-old global nomads based in Lausanne, the performance toured to Avignon and 12 more European cities. Together they curated Ciudades Paralelas (parallel cities) a portable festival for urban interventions.

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.

Stefan Kaegi and Rimini Protokoll are based at HAU, Berlin, since 2003.