The real and digital world s collide in BEST BEFORE, the latest interactive production from Germany’s Rimini Protokoll collective first presented as part of the Vancouver Winter Olympics cultural programme.

Part video game, part theatre performance; BEST BEFORE involves 200 members of the audience each being given a joystick and asked to take control of their own avatar projected onto a giant screen in the auditorium. Audiences are presented with a series of choices by 3 ‘everyday experts’ – non-professional performers whose lives are intricately bound up in choice and consequence.  How you and your fellow audiences members answer affects your health, relationships and ultimately your life expectancy.

BEST BEFORE looks at how collaboration and competition change in the online environment, and how honest we are in our dealings with others when we’re sitting in the same room rather than hiding behind an avatar.

“Rimini Protokoll brings real life to the stage in a way that no other theatre form has been able to. The unmistakable strength of these performances lies above all in the fact…that life could gain the upper hand, and theatre could lose control over itself.” - Frankfurter Rundschau