Daniel Wetzel

Daniel Wetzel, born in Constance in 1969, has been part of an authors-and-directors team with Helgard Haug and Stefan Kaegi under the Rimini Protokoll label since 2000. They develop their works in the genres of theatre, audio play, film, and installation constellations of two or three people as well as solo. Wetzel studied Applied Theatre Sciences in Gießen and currently resides in Athens and Berlin.

To date, he produced the following pieces in Athens: Evros Walk Water, Parts 1&2 (Athens, Berlin 2017), Träumende Kollektive. Tastende Schafe (Staatschauspiel Dresden 2017, Part 3 in the Rimini Tetralogy Staat 1-4 initiated by Haus der Kulturen der Welt) as well as Bubble Jam (Athens 2018). The Athenian plays each transplant their audiences into immersive situations guided by complex systems (multiband playback, cloud) that they explore, actively participating in the play.

At the heart of Rimini Protokoll’s works lies the advancement and further development of the art forms, to enable unusual perspectives on our reality. Thus, Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel declared a Daimler AG shareholder meeting a theatre play, turning their spectators into temporary stockholders (“Hauptversammlung”, Berlin 2009) while they also staged “100% Stadt” with 100 statistically selected representative citizens each time in more than 25 cities around the globe to date. In Berlin and Dresden, they developed walk-in Stasi audio plays (“50 Aktenkilometer,” 2011, and “10 Aktenkilometer”, respectively, 2013). Their work with “everyday experts” since the 1990s has been described as seminal for new forms in documentary theatre in numerous academic publications.

Among their works, “Shooting Bourbaki” (2003) won the NRW Impulse Award. “Deadline” (2004), “Wallenstein – eine dokumentarische Inszenierung” (2006) and “Situation Rooms” (2013) all received invitations to the Berlin Theatertreffen. “Karl Marx: Das Kapital. Erster Band” (2007) won both the Audience Award as well as the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis, and Qualitätskontrolle won the 2014 Audience Award at the same festival.

Additional accolades for Rimini Protokoll include: German Theatre Award Der Faust (2007), European Theatre Award in the New Realities Category (2008), Silver Lion at the 41st Venice Theatre Biennal (2011), Swiss Grand Prix Theatre / Hans-Reinhardt-Ring (2015).

Helgard Haug’s and Daniel Wetzel’s audio play works have won multiple awards: “Peymannbeschimpfung” as Audio Drama of the Month (2007), “Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band” won the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden (Audio Drama Award of the War-Blind, 2008), “Qualitätskontrolle oder warum ich die Räuspertaste nicht drücke” received both the Audio Drama of the Month as well as the Hörspielpreis der ARD awards, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award 2014) as well as the Hörbuchpreis der ARD (ARD Audio Book Award, 2015).