Once upon the time in the Theatre

Rimini Protokoll gave the Neues Cinema in Hamburg its last Farewell

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Till Briegleb, 26.04.2003, 6924 Chars

If you are to die in Hamburg you should make sure that your funeral service takes place in Chapel 8 on the Ohlsdorf cemetery. The acoustics are the best here explains the experienced funeral musician. However, you should only go through so much trouble if you’re sure your funeral guests will appreciate it. Because if your relatives are of that sort who can only wept at “Time to say Goodbye” or “Once upon a time in America” the acoustics don’t really count.

Hans-Dieter Ilgner, on the other hand is one of the stubborn ones. He wishes to receive his last blessing with Dixieland music. This theatre evening entitled deadline deals sincerely with death, but still it likes to pull its leg too. So, at this moment you hear Dixieland as to be heard through the walls of a pine coffin – stage death without oohs and aahhhs.


The project by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel draw a caricature of the classical stage death with means of researched information. Under diverse team-names such as Rimini Protokoll they put into scene themes developed from research in skyscrapers, the former Bonner Parliament or Argentenian slums. Still, how do you entertain your audience with the knowledge that 55 million people die per year, almost everyone calls for their mum right before dying, and that the average stay in a death-clinic is two to three weeks?

Huag, Kaegi and Wetzel looked for stage-ready professionals of dying-business who manage doing the delicate splits between piety and gallows humour. There is the anonymous funeral musician and the former mayor and now funeral-innovator Ilgner, followed by the morphile student Alida Schmidt, the stone-sculptor Hilmar Gesse, and the hobby presenter of funeral speeches, Olav Meyer-Sievers.

The group develops an info-show around the last certainty without trying to disregard the trepidation which surrounds this theme. This works very impressively simply because they avoid philosophical depth and religious transfigurations. Thanks to the unsentimental presentation of this training in death-matters which lets the inner defence surrender to curiosity there is space to let comfort enter.

Alida Schmidt demonstrates in a soberly-absurd manner the seven pre-cuts of every anatomical examination while explains that there are always three corpses in one bowl of alcohol, and that releasing skin from the body sounds like tearing fabric. Olav Meyer-Sievers shows how professionals experience mourning as stress and hectic, and how the funeral parlours have to be re-decorated hourly. And Ilgner relates tecnical details from his ‘Flammarium’ Braubach and that bodybuilders have to burn twice as long as ordinary mortals.

The intense research around the act of dying and decay is translated without trend pop death-kitsch, but with simple theatrical and visual means. Meyer-Sievers is accompanied on an exhumation of his family grave with the use of a hydraulic stage craft, sounds, photographs and his report on who of his relatives at which layer and in which condition he encounters. The plea for ‘humane dying’ by Werner Brenzel whose fear of coming onto stage is greater than that of death is presented via video. The tongue-in-cheek re-enactment of a mayor’s funeral of city on the river Rhine while it is raining cats and dogs serves as a clever transition to information on funerals at sea.


Documentary theatre is often viewed as the little brother, the poorer edition of a television program, but deadline meets all expectations of the strengths of the indirect. Amongst the inflation of film-, stage- and news deaths which is often answered with banality by reflex, death is raised into an important category of life and directly into one’s consciousness – a modern and artful Memento Mori.

It is not due to the topic of this evening that it is accompanied by oohs and ahhs, but much more to the exit of the very stage where the performance takes place. Deadline closes the existance of the Neues Cinema as a creative playground of the Hamburger Schauspielhaus. It is the financial darkening of the theatre’s budget that switches off the lights after this production at the beginning of May. Deadline gave this stage its last farewell and goes to Hanover and Berlin; It is final for the Neues Cinema: Time to say Goodbye.


Future is put into scene for the last 14 election eras in the German Parliament with presentations, speeches and debates. 666 members of parliament represent the voters and the people. Is it possible to think of this relationship reversed? What happens if the voters represent their politicians? And what if politics should turn really theatre just once?

The complete session of the German Parliament is copied live on 27th June from 9 am til late in the evening. Following the principle of simultaneous translation voters copy the speeches of the politicians. Every “presenter” takes on the role of one delegate. The debate is prompted live via head-phones from Berlin and answered with fast changes by interpreters. 230 voters applied until the time of going to press. Wolfgang Thierse, President of the German Parliament, forbade the use of the former Hall of Debate in Bonn on 13th March because, he “saw the honour and respect of the German Parliament through this particular order of events affected”. April 14th, he reacted to a wave of wave of protest letters in explaining his concern that a copy “at the historical place would push the true significance of the actual German Parliament debate into the background”. At the end of May he also dismissed the compromise proposal of the Wasserwerk (water tower).
english by Sonja Müller




In spite of everything Deutschland 2takes place. The ‘Exile-Parliament’ meet in the Schauspielhalle (Theatre) Bonn-Beuel on June 27th. The forbidden stage-design in the former Hall of Debate is open to the public all day with guided tours and the accessible corridors , and there is a shuttle-bus service which connect it to the stage location in Beuel.


ORDER OF EVENTS JUNE 27th 2002

Date of Announcement: June 21st 2002


09.00 – 11.20 Job Market (coalition)

11.20 – 13.05 Agriculture

13.05 – 13.15 without debate (no consensus)

13.15 – 14.25 Topical Hour

14.25 – 15.35 Right of Sanctions (coalition)

15.35 – 16.25 Transatlantic Co-operation (coalition)

16.25 – 17.40 Report on Job Creation 2002

17.40 – 18.50 Health Debate

18.50 – 19.25 OSZE

19.25 – 20.00 Public Houses (SPD)

20.00 – 20.35 Antisemitism

20.35 – 21.30 Renewable Energies

21.30 – 22.05 Unreliable Enterprises

22.05 – 22.40 EU- Eastern-Expansion

22.40 – 23.15 Gene-testing (CDU/CSU)

23.15 – 00.25 Rules of Behaviour (coalition)

00.25 – 01.00 Budget 2000

01.00 – 01.35 Economy Structure (coalition)

01.35 – 02.10 Effects of Distribution

02.10 – 02.45 Sea technology (coalition)

02.45 – 03.20 Wind Power Plants

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