PERFORATING HISTORY. PRESENCE, STORYTELLING, TESTIMONY AND THEATRE IN “KAZAKHSTAN BODENPROBE” BY RIMINI PROTOKOLL

The article analyses performance by Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll) Bodenprobe Kasachstan. By putting ordinary people on stage, not professional actors (so-called “experts”), the Rimini Protokoll art collective creates performances in which reality invades the theatre and narrative structured as monologues takes precedence over dialogue. Stefan Kaegi’s Bodenprobe Kasachstan (2011) explores the theme of the migrations of people (and the parallel migration of oil through the Kazakh steppe) during the twenthieth century: five experts on stage recount fragments of their personal history, their narrative monologues being accompanied by projections of videos, photographs and other iconographic documents. Politics, the economy, and war have shaped the experts’ lives. The creative process is collective and collaborative: the experts have an active role and discuss with the dramaturg and the director. So in this type of performance, the notion of the author is complicated and open. The customary mechanism of representation and interpretation give way to the performative dynamic of presence. The audience is personally involved in grasping the meaning of the difficult balance between authenticity and representation.