Call Cutta at Home

By Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

Who is there on the other end of the service-line? How do invisible workers look? What does outsourcing mean in the times of Corona? Can an Indian home be turned into a call centre?

Rimini Protokoll invites you to an intercontinental video conference play about outsourcing and tele-marketing.

More than 12 years ago Rimini Protokoll staged a 1:1 performative meeting between an Indian call center employee and an European theater visitor via telephone and video call. It started as a business talk and grew more and more private and intimate. “Call Cutta in a Box is arguably the most delightful, charming, engaging 50 minutes I have ever spent with a complete stranger.” wrote the The NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory.

2020 this project becomes a source of inspiration for a special adaptation for an international audience. Instead of a 1:1 conversation, the piece unfolds a temporary intranet of 30 people at their places. The hosting performers are at their home places in Calcutta, India, and Tallinn, Estonia.

During the 70-minutes-performance they show their homes, talk about the economical and personal implications of their work in the Call Centres, the limitations of everyday life due to Covid-19 and gradually involve the visitors - to the extend they appreciate - into this gathering: open for what they are happy to share about where they are. An intercontinental cup of tea - and round of dance, and round of thoughts that also looks into our individual futures.

Social distancing as a chance for new and playful encounters with people far away from one’s own reality.

Call Cutta - Mobile Phone Theatre

Call Cutta in a Box - an intercontinental phone play

Idea, text, direction: Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

Performers: Madhusree Mukherjee, Sunayana Roy

Technic: Ksenia Kozhevnikova

A production of Rimini Apparat, co-produced by VI International Summer Festival of Arts "The Access Point".

Call Cutta at Home St. Petersburg was supported by „Pro Helvetia“.

Based on idea of „Call Cutta“ – produced in 2005 by Goethe Institut Kolkata, HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Rimini Apparat, and „Call Cutta in a Box“ – produced in 2008 by HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.