Flirting with Service Society

The Love of Carnival Costume and Party: New pieces of work by the theatre groups Rimini Protokoll and Gob Squad at the theatre-Hebbel-at-the-Ufer (HAU), Berlin

By Florian Malzacher

05.04.2005 / Frankfurter Rundschau

Sorry, I must go now, she says, and that’s it: She’s gone. Perhaps you’re slightly annoyed that it took so long to really get into this conversation. In this moment you know all the right questions you wanted to ask. Perhaps you’re a bit sad that you will presumable never speak with her again. That someone you just got to know...did you really get to know someone?

Call Cutta, the latest production by the director trio of Rimini Protokoll was first shown in Calcutta and is now on in Berlin at the Hebbel am Ufer Theatre. Its principle is simple: You’re being given a mobile phone and told by a friendly voice what to do. An encounter, a conversation is developed through stories as you plod along through courtyards of Berlin Kreuzberg on your own. But just like the Call Centre which tries to persuade you to take a credit card with its friendly voice doesn’t come from your own county any longer, the conversation partners in Call Cutta are not located in Germany but in Calcutta.

The market of Call Centres is blooming there: They sit in shiny office towers and hover UFO-like over this run-down, forever reeking city making the client believe they’re right next to him. And that’s why Sarah’s name is not Sarah but Shuktara as she reveals later. But at this point we know each other a little better. She asks: What do think? - Can you fall in love with a voice?

Everything remains unresolved; the slightly flirtatious sub-tone may be a projection. Still: She sincerely states that she wouldn’t lie on the phone, just after you admitted to lying yourself sometimes. But isn’t a wrong first name a lie already? Well, yes. But that is business. And what about this now? For years, Rimini Protokoll has directed “real” people on stage so they presented themselves. But never before have they given control to such an extend out of their own hands as now in working with Indian Call-Centre employees. Even though there is a script again, a path, a production, each performer in Calcutta tells somehow parts of his own story – and every performer can give the project his own twist.

Immediate nature of the conversation


This time, reality is stronger than any story indeed. Call Cutta is not fascinating because of the admittedly strange story of the Indian fighter for freedom Netaji, who was in Berlin from 1941-1943 to fight together with thousands of his comrades of the “Legion Freies Indien” (Legion of a free India) and the Germans. And fascinating are not the courtyards in Kreuzberg from an era when housing blocks were thought to be the realisation of an urban utopia.

The fascination lies in the immediate nature of the conversation. Shuktara’s light but somehow matter-of-fact flirt-tone. The image of a young woman who is in a different corner of the world and has never been to Germany, but still she guides you through Berlin. An encounter under the sign of a service society.

Who knows whether Call Cutta is still theatre in its true meaning. At least there is no audience, there are only participants. This makes Call Cutta typical for the theatre, or actually the three theatres, which Matthias Lilienthal combined a year and a half ago: the Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Theatre: The feeling of having to belong together attracts people who normally wouldn’t go to the theatre any longer, after all, the performing arts don’t exactly have the reputation of being trendy at the moment. (...)

It is late at night in India. Shuktara took my mobile number. But she doesn’t call.

- English by Sonja Müller


Projects

Call Cutta