Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)

Cargo Congo-Lausanne

THÉÂTRE VIDY-LAUSANNE
Cargo truck
theatre | ~2h00 (without traffic)
Price M (except special prices)
Wednesday 14.03, 07:30 pm
Thursday 15.03, 07:30 pm
Friday 16.03, 07:30 pm
Tuesday 20.03, 07:30 pm
Wednesday 21.03, 07:30 pm
Thursday 22.03, 07:30 pm
Friday 23.03, 07:30 pm
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Rimini Protokoll has transformed a truck into a theatre. The seating installed in the trailer of a heavy goods vehicle takes 50 spectators on a journey a the city’s edges. As the drivers tell their stories of living on the road, the city begins to resemble a film set, during a road trip from Congo to Lausanne.

Rimini Protokoll has transformed a truck into a theatre. The seating installed in the trailer takes 50 spectators on a journey to the places of transit and trade at the city’s edges. Two different drivers tell their two very different stories. One of them grew up as a soldier between Rwanda and Congo before becoming a dairy driver in the narrow streets of Switzerland. Whereas the other one started driving trucks in Switzerland before finishing school in the sixties. Since then, he has owned more thant fifty trucks and now, approaching the end of his career, he keeps on wondering why the job doesn’t pay off anymore. Every night, they will embark on a two-hour journey towards Africa with an audience seated in the back of their truck.

The truck is converted in such a way that fifty people can look through a 10 meter wide window to see the landscape passing by. Where goods used to be stacked in the past is where the audience now sits to look at their city from a different perspective. Thus the truck serves as an observatory, a mobile binocular or a microsope to contemplate the familiar streets. The audience is transported during two hours along gas stations, industrial loading ramps and other hotspots of globalisation which are live-synced with a score composed for the landscape outside the window. On the road, wireless microphones will transmit the drivers’ biographies live inside the truck. Cargo Congo-Lausanne is a site-specific performance along the suburbs of West Lausanne that feels like a road movie through the flipside of a globalised economy.

More informations

Concept and direction:
Rimini Protokoll
(Stefan Kaegi)

Music:
Stéphane Vecchione

Video:
Jérôme Vernez

Images from Congo:
Yole Africa

Staging assistant :
Emilie Blaser

Technical assistant :
Olivier Charmillot

Cast:
Drivers:
Roger Sisonga
Denis Ischer
Dancers :
Rosette Mbemba
Renate Ndombe

Production:
Rimini Protokoll - Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne

Based on Cargo-Sofia X produced in 2006 by HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and the Goethe Institut Sofia.