The reports

This short video collects the reactions of the Portuguese audience to the Lisbon premiere on February 24 at the Teatro do Bairro Alto. Representation is the dominant theme during the two and a half hours, in which the audience enters the scene to pretend to be “someone else” and thus – as Francisco Frazão, artistic director of the TBA, says – to show “the real game of theatre”.

The Academy of the Absent took place at the end of February 2022 in Teatro do Bairro Alto in Lisbon under the direction of Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll). On this occasion, people from the performing arts gathered for a workshop in which Helgard Haug explained and deepened the genesis and structure of the Conference of the Absent. The workshop was organised in the framework of the project ReMapping Memories Lisboa-Hamburg on the topics of absence, visibility, representation and resistance in the postcolonial city.

Fascinating excerpts from the conferences in Luxembourg – once in German, once in French, combined with notes by Daniel Wetzel (Rimini Protokoll) and Frank Hoffmann (Théâtre National du Luxembourg) as well as voices from the audience provide unusual insights into the Conference of the Absent, a play for YOU!

Have you ever had a round of applause? At the Conference of the Absent, the conferees are absent and the audience has to step in. Daniel Wetzel of Rimini Protokoll and Frank Hoffmann of Théâtre National du Luxembourg explain the special nature of the conference - and what's special about Luxembourg.
 

Rimini Protokoll's performance with the Goethe-Institut is based on the participation of the audience, who switch sides of the stage and play a role during the conference. For many it is their first experience with acting, others are used to being on stage but say they have never experienced anything like it. Discover the Conference of the Absent at the Biennale in the video we made to give voice to the chorus of participants.

Even if the protagonists of the play Conference of the Absent by Rimini Protokoll in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut are the absent and the audience that interprets them, behind the scenes there are many other figures fundamental to the realization. We have interviewed some of them for you to better understand the organizational and theoretical complexity of this performance at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Conference of the Absent is a theatrical performance resulting from the collaboration of different realities: the Rimini Protokoll, the Goethe-Institut, Palaexpo and the REF. Interested by this winning combination, we decided to interview influential personalities from each of these environments to better understand how and from what this encounter was born.

On November 2 2021 the national prèmiere of Rimini Protokoll's Conference of the Absent was held at the Mattatoio in Rome. The show is based on the active participation of the audience, without which the performance could not go on. At the end of the evening, we asked those who, completely by surprise, found themselves on stage for their impressions.

Was machen die jungen Theatermacher von LaJoven im Worshop Akademie der Abwesenden?

The tour premiere was held on June 1 2021 at the Dresden Staatschauspiel. Rimini Protokoll conceived the performance starting from the question: what if all speakers invited to a conference cancelled, suddenly unable to travel for COVID-19 or climate-related reasons? What if the audience were asked to take their place? After a year and a half of telepresence, new modes of representation were presented at the Dresden Staatschauspiel, with no actors on stage. So how did it go? Find out in our blogger Christian Rätsch’s interview with Daniel Wetzel of Rimini Protokoll and Staatschauspiel playwright Lüder Wilcke.
 

In this video our Dresden blogger Christian Rätsch interviews participants in the premiere of the Konferenz der Abwesenden. Lennart, Christian and Franziska, audience members like any other, suddenly found themselves onstage, guided by a prompt and caught up from the outset in a train of unexpected emotions.