Best Before is certainly one of the most successful works of the last theatre season. After its debut at the Push Festival in Vancouver, during the Cultural Olympics, it has been performed and applauded at the most important international theatre reviews, from the Theatertreffen in Berlin to the Luminato in Toronto. This time the German company, which is well known for its productions that are halfway between entertainment and social investigation, tries its hand with multi-player videogames, bringing real life onto the stage in ways that have never been tried before, putting the spectator and his choices at centre stage. Holding a “game controller”, the audience will move an anonymous avatar – called “actor” – around the Bestland videogame, interacting with a group of experts on the stage: an electronic artist, a game tester and a politician, who will comment on the evolution or regression of the scene on the basis of the personal, social and political decisions taken by the population that takes part in the game.
created by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)/ dramatised by Tim Carlson
with Duff Armour, Arjan Dhupia, James Foy, Ellen Schultz, Ron Samworth
game design Brady Marks / video design Candelario Andrade / set design Andreas Kahre
sound Stefan Smulovitz/ lighting John Webber / character animation Carl Emil Carlsen, John Warner / game programming Dan Coburn / gaming project coordination and sound operation Sean Arden
Rimini Protokoll (Canada – Germany)
commissioned by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
a Goethe-Institut/Brighton Festival/Hebbel – Theater Berlin GmbH/Luminato – Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity/PuSh International Performing Arts Festival/Rimini Apparat/The Cultch/La Bâtie – Festival de Genève co-production with the support of Arts Partners in Creative Development and the Federal Republic of Germany
