Stefan Kaegi
Stefan Kaegi (Switzerland, 1972) is one of the most influential stage creators in contemporary European theatre. A restless, multidisciplinary and committed creator, he has explored hybrid formats that combine documentary theatre, installation, technology and real audience participation. He is best known as a founding member of the Rimini Protokoll collective, alongside Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, with whom he has shared the direction of numerous projects since the 2000s.
His training in performing arts at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen (Germany) led him to move away from conventional theatrical languages to focus on reality as a dramaturgical subject. Kaegi has distinguished himself by working with people who are not professional actors, but “experts in life” —truck drivers, refugees, politicians, scientists, retirees— who take to the stage to offer their own life experience as a source of collective knowledge.
Rimini Protokoll and documentary theatre with real participation
With Rimini Protokoll, Stefan Kaegi has created some of the most relevant pieces of European documentary theatre. Works such as Cargo Sofia, Remote X, 100% City, Nachlass or Granma. Trombones from Havana have been internationally acclaimed for their ability to make the invisible visible: the mechanisms of power, historical memory, bureaucracy, technological control or global economic networks.
One of Kaegi’s distinctive features is his commitment to innovative stage devices. It can be a truck that becomes a mobile theatre, a sound tour through a city with headphones or an installation where the audience interacts with machines, objects and algorithms. His creations transform the spectator into an active witness and the stage into a space for social experimentation.
Stefan Kaegi: between technology, politics and performativity
Kaegi has presented his works in leading theatres and festivals around the world, such as the Avignon Festival, the Berliner Theatertreffen, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels or Temporada Alta and the Grec Festival in Barcelona. His work has received multiple international awards, including the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale (2011).
With a lucid and critical view of the contemporary world, Stefan Kaegi has turned theatre into a tool for analysing social structures, global contradictions and the intimate spaces we inhabit. His work is an invitation to look at the world from other perspectives, with rigour and sensitivity.
