Cargo Congo-Lausanne

A documentary truck ride

By Stefan Kaegi

Rimini Protokoll has transformed a truck into a theatre – the seating installed in the trailer takes 50 spectators on a journey to the places of transit and trade at the city’s edges.

Two very different truckdrivers tell their stories. One of them grew up as a soldier between Rwanda and Congo before he became a diary-driver in the narrow streets of Switzerland. The other started driving trucks in Switzerland before finishing school in the 60ies. He has owned more than 50 trucks since and towards the end of his career wonders, why it doesnt pay off anymore to drive. Now they embark on a journey towards africa together for 2 hours, with an audience - seated in the back of their truck.

The truck is converted in such a way that 50 people can look through a 10m long window to see the landscape passing by. Where goods used to be stacked in the past, now the audience is sitting and looking from a changed perspective back at their city. Thus the truck serves as an observatory, a mobile binocular trained at the city like a microscope. The audience is transported for two hours along gaz-stations, industrial loading ramps and other hotspots of globalisation, which are live synced with a score composed for the landscape outside the window. On the road cordless microphones will transmit the truck drivers biographies live into the truck. Cargo Congo-Lausanne is a site-specific performance along the suburbs of west Lausanne and feels like a road movie through the flipside of a globalised economy.

Concept / Direction: Stefan Kaegi
Music: Stéphane Vecchione
Assistant Director: Emilie Blaser
Assistant Production: Olivier Charmillot
With: Roger Sisonga, Denis Ischer
Production: Rimini Apparat, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne

Based on Cargo Sofia-X that was produced by HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and Goethe-Institut Sofia in 2006