ABSTRACT
The concept of utilizing the city as theatre moved from an obscure corner of Manhattan to its very heart in 2003 with The Angel Project, created by British director Deborah Warner. The experience started several miles from the city center in a park at the end of Roosevelt Island, a small strip of land in New York's East River. Here audience members received instructions that sent them by public transportation to the Times Square area, the central Manhattan district where most of the other eight stops were located, stops that ranged from an abandoned pornographic theatre to the elegant upper floors of the Chrysler building. Walking, the traditional mode of urban involvement, clearly remains the dominant way of experiencing the city as theatre, as may be seen in many of the productions of Rimini Protokoll, founded in Berlin in 1999 and today one of the European groups best known for mixing theatrical material with elements of reality.
