Best BeforeRimini Protokoll

The “Reality Trend” performances of Germany’s influential avant-garde group Rimini Protokoll redefine the nature of theatre. Using non-actors – “experts in daily life” – as protagonists, they dissolve the boundaries between imagination and reality.

Direct from Vancouver’s PuSh Festival and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, Best Before explores that changing city’s past, present, and future identity in a unique interactive experience that unfolds in the virtual world of multi-player gaming.

Real-life gamers and game designers are among the expert protagonists, while every audience member, equipped with a game controller, is represented by an avatar. From their interaction emerges a simulated city – whose fate you, as one of the players, will help determine in a drama as spontaneous and unpredictable as life itself.

“Video games meet live theatre in a compelling collision of genres.., a thought-provoking exercise in social democracy.”
- The Vancouver Sun

Commissioned by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Co-producers: Luminato Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity, Goethe-Institut, Brighton Festival, Hebbel-Theater Berlin GmBH, Luminato Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Rimini Apparat, Vancouver East Cultural Centre "The Cultch", La Bâtie-Festival de Genève. Supported by Arts Partners in Creative Development and the Federal Republic of Germany.