100% San Diego

- a statistical chainreaction

By Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

For statistical purposes, people are regularly converted into pie wedges, bars and curves – which are then used to make political arguments or to create economic cost-benefit strategies. What if these statistics were given faces? What if San Diego’s 1.307.402 population was represented on stage by 100 persons?
In a world bombarded with ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ this cross-section of the society could tell the truth of modern San Diego life in a way graphs or pie-charts never could. Spreading throughout the city over five months, 100% San Diego began with the casting of one member who had to recruit another in 24 hours, who then recruited another and so on – all according to specific criteria of age, gender, household type, geography and ethnicity mirroring the demographic make-up of America’s 8th biggest city:
11% of the population is over 65, 16% are 25 – 34 of age, only 1% of the population lives in Coronado, 31% are recorded to have a Hispanic ethnical background, 8,5 % are single and 23% live as couple with children. 6% of San Diego’s population earns 200,000 or higher, 5 % earns less than $10,000. 43.92% state they are religious: 0,71% are Moslems, 26,16% are Catholic. Only about 3 % of the population is traveling with public transport…
100% San Diego – a gathering that is a city, a group just beginning to experience itself, a choir that has never practiced, an impossible entity with many faces – assembled into ever-changing new group pictures: group pictures as replacement for family – as fleeting portraits of belonging. Who is missing? Who thinks they might give answers on stage that are different from the ones they’d give in response to a telephone survey or in the voting booth? And what have the statistics failed to record? Who lives in a completely different San Diego? Who thinks that this city is different because they are a part of it?

Concept: Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel)
Direction: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel
Stage design: Marc Jungreithmeier, Mascha Mazur
Tecnical director/ Lighting and projection design: Wolfram Sander
Research and castingteam: Tom Douglas, Marike Fitzgerald

with 100 people from San Diego

100% San Diego

- a statistical chainreaction

By Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

Dates