By Jens Roselt
03.04.2005 / Goethe-Institut, Online-Redaktion
On April 3, 2005, Jens Roselt launched the "Call Cutta" Cell Phone Theatre Tour in Berlin-Kreuzberg and reports here about a rather unusual theatre-experience...
She has a lovely voice. I should call her Honey. She already knows my name even though I haven’t introduced myself. It’s clear from the start that she’s the one who knows the way and that I have to trust her on the journey through my city, a city she’s never been to. Despite the fact that there are 15,000 kilometres separating us, we’ll try to get to know one another a little in the next hour and a half.
We exchange courtesies first of all: The weather in Berlin is lovely. It’s the middle of the night in Calcutta. I can hear a babble of multinational voices and penetrating beeping in the background – rush hour in the call centre. Honey is surprised by how quiet it is in Berlin. She thinks I have a nice voice. That’s nice to hear even though it’s a lie. I quickly realise that Honey is a professional, she can sell you anything over the phone: tours, insurance, and the belief that you have a nice voice.
We don’t wander about aimlessly. The script of our trip is divided into five acts and takes me first of all through the Postbank building. This is where, for the first time, we have communication problems. The porter finds my baffled look amusing and then casually shows me the way. I’m led over car parks and through parks. Honey says that she has come to trust me. She wants to tell me her real name: Madusshree. I don’t know if I can believe her. Then she introduces me to her grandfather: his picture is hanging in an office window. He was a soldier in the Second World War, and as a soldier he was also in Berlin. I don’t know if I can believe her. Madusshree takes very good care of me. She tells me to watch out every time I cross a road. On longer stretches, she sings me a song. She leads me into a piece of woodland on the site of the former Anhalter railway station and points out the old overgrown platforms to me. The trains for Auschwitz left from here. Should I believe her?
Things get embarrassing for me around the next corner. I enter the courtyard of a block of flats where some children are hanging around. They seem to have been expecting me and know that, guided by a strange voice, I’m going to walk into the sandpit, onto a platform, and imitate first an Indian statue and then a tiger. The Turkish kids seem to find it particularly amusing when every now and then I shout, “I’m doing it!”. I’ve become an actor and am trying to make a good impression.
Madusshree has a romantic side to her. She sits me down on a park bench and asks whether I could fall in love with someone that I only knew from the telephone. I admit that I don’t like phoning people, and at the moment I’m too excited to talk about love. She calms me down and asks why I’m excited. I confess that I find it awkward not knowing what’s going to happen next, and especially with children watching me as they play. Madusshree says that it’s just the same in real life: you don’t know how things will go. I tell her that the reason why I like going to the theatre so much is because it’s generally different there.
Madusshree then puts me on a bridge above the underground railway line where I have to wait for the next train. I’ve become a little more confident and try to take the initiative by asking Madusshree (who’s singing again) whether I should jump in front of the next train. That would be romantic, after all. She talks me out of it and leads me over a fire escape and through a multi-storey car park to the shopping centre at Potsdamer Platz. That’s where I find a shop window with a computer monitor showing a smiling woman in a blue sari. She waves to me. It’s Madusshree, giving me her final instructions. I have to take a photo of myself with my mobile so that she can see me too. Then she tells me that it’s time to say goodbye – for ever: Bye-bye, Madusshree. Goodbye, Calcutta.
Walking home, I already see the next candidate Madusshree will be sending to the sandpit. Nevertheless, I feel that “our” walk through the city was a special one, an event that only the two of us could create: unique and unrepeatable – good theatre after all.
Jens Roselt,
Dramatist and Theatrical Scholar at the Free University of Berlin.
Translation: Mary Boyd
Copyright: Goethe-Institut, Online-Redaktion
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April 2005