Call Cutta in a Box

The Goethe-Institut New York presents Call Cutta in a Box, an intercontinental phone play by the cutting-edge German theater collective Rimini Protokoll. This trio of theater artists — Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel — have attracted international acclaim with theater works that negotiate the grey area between reality and fiction in a spirit that’s both highly playful and highly intelligent–and highly theatrical.

In Call Cutta in a Box, the audience is comprised of a single participant: you. You also comprise half the cast. The other half is a telephone operator at a call center in Calcutta, India, who chats with you, interviews you, conducts thought experiments with you — even gives you gifts! As the conversation goes on, the piece ultimately becomes about intimacy and connection, about revelation and withholding, and about human contact, which is probably the most profound theater of all.

Originally presented under the auspices of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival, this U.S. premiere has enjoyed an extremely warm welcome in the local press, and has extended its run.