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How real is reality theatre?

Source: The Guardian

Oct 13, 2009

Summary

Rimini Protokoll's new show at the Dublin theatre festival is based on real-life stories and performed by non-professional actors. But whose truth are they telling?

Documentary theatre is still very much in the ascendant, with recent shows such as Stockwell, The Power of Yes, Katrine and The Girlfriend Experience all drawing on verbatim techniques. But at the Dublin theatre festival over the weekend, I saw Radio Muezzin, an astonishingly effective show from Stefan Kaegi and Rimini Protokoll.

As in the work of Manchester-based company Quarantine (which, in shows such as White Trash and Susan and Darren, has produced an extraordinary body of work that allows ordinary people to present themselves on stage as they want to be seen) or the work of the superb Junction 25 theatre, Radio Muezzin puts real people on stage, not actors. In this instance, they are all Egyptian muezzins, the men who daily call Cairo's faithful to prayer.

Because of advances in technology, we are told, the Egyptian authorities are planning to centralise the azan and broadcast it live over t

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