digital digestion protokoll b
© Sarah Eyfferth

Once upon a time …

there was a large loosely formed group of actors, which met up every now and then in the Theaterhaus Mitte, to work together – on audition monologues, casting scenes or to train their skills and keep these alive and kickin' with improv work.

In January 2016 some of these actors felt the need to develop a »real« project, with a stage and lights and tickets and all that. And, since every newborn needs a name, we called it »Protokoll B«.

The project got a real extra boost when the cultural office in Neukölln accepted our proposal and even subsidized it with a small sum for production purposes. Eight people started to develop scenes and performative ideas in the next three months, based on the theme »Satt«, which can be loosely translated to »full« or »stuffed« or »plenty«.
This resulted in the first production of Protokoll B:

Festival 48 Stunden Neukölln
Festival 48-h-Neukölln

»Digital Digestion«

Installation, interactive performance and almost traditional theatrical scenes were melted into a several hours long analogue version of the internet. The performance dealt with the constant availability with which we confront ourselves through our digital consumer behaviour and, as a result of that, with the mental overload that goes along with it.

With gigantic transparant plastic sheets we created actual, non-virtual rooms in the offices of voice-casting agency speaker-search, where everything took place in parallel worlds, live and real: YouTube Channels like »Life on the edge - dealing with cancer« or porn with objects, tacky self-portrayals, recipes, online dating and chatrooms, (pseudo)scientific lectures, tutorials … The audience could participate, try stuff, discuss with the actors, leave comments and even hand out actual »Likes« and »Dislikes«.

Eleven guest actors joined us in the last week of rehearsals. With loads of fun and energy they stepped into the role of Helpies, Googlies, Dating-Appies and many other creatures of the internet.

At the festival weekend the performance went on continuously for 11 hours on the first and for 6 hours on the second day.
Over 400 people surfed on our internet – not bad considering the tropical temperatures and the competition of the European Soccer Championship.

© Olaf Jelinski

Credits

Concept and ideas, directors and actors:

Protokoll B • Sarah Eyfferth, Alexander Garms, Richard Gonlag, Max Howitz, Carolin Kipka, Nina Machalz, Matías Perez Weber und Dürten Thielk

Guests:

Daniel Ahl, Sandra Eilks, Mira Frehner, Astrid Köhler, Helen Kristin Krüger, Natalie Lund, Maud Mallet-Henry, Paula Schrötter, Nazli Taleghani, Anna Tilling, Kaya Zakrzewska

Dramaturgical advisors:

Olaf Jelinski, Nadine Kaufmann

Flyer:

Seija Maike Lemmermann

Sound recordings:

Speaker-Search, Edit: Richard Gonlag

Performances:

25th June 2016 • 12 am until 11 pm
26th June 2016 • 12 am until 6 pm


Projects