100% Oulu Premieres on Friday, August 14

The international documentary theatre piece 100% City premieres at Oulu Theatre on Friday, August 14, as part of the Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture programme. Audiences can experience the production across just six performances over a single week.

The documentary stage production 100% Oulu builds a unique portrait of present-day Oulu. The show turns abstract numbers into living people and offers the audience a fresh perspective on the city.

The production features the internationally acclaimed 100% City concept from the award-winning Berlin contemporary theatre collective Rimini Protokoll, which the group has staged worldwide all the way to Tokyo since 2008. Rimini Protokoll directors Daniel Wetzel abd Helgard Haug have arrived at Oulu Theatre to direct the piece.

A City of Contrasts: Oulu

The Oulu performance brings a strong northern touch to the hit international concept. The German directors see Oulu as a place where geography, climate, and history create a unique tension:

– We’ve never been invited that high up North and never to a City in which water, wind and trees have been so present, the directors explain.

They see Oulu as a city striving for growth with a history full of contrasts:

– Oulu is a growing city, with a history full of contrasts. That makes it so exciting. It is also a comparably small city (by the number of the inhabitants) but huge in geographical dimension. It would be great to direct a summer and a winter version of this place – the way life is like here during the dark months must be so different from what we are experiencing now in August.

The Stage as a Human 3D Model

In this unique documentary theatre piece, one hundred ordinary residents of Oulu form a statistical cross-section of the city’s population as accurately as possible. Each participant represents one percent of Oulu’s residents.

– 100% City is in a way a game we play with the city’s residents, one that also challenges the audience to reflect on their own values and choices, Helgard Haug explains.

During the show, participants answer questions about their experiences, opinions, values, and relationship with their hometown. This turns statistics and percentages into a visible and human entity.

– This group seems so diverse on the one hand and on the other gives us the impression that they all share a deep confidence with living here, Haug explains.

Wars Shape Collective Memory

According to the directors, meaningful stories have emerged from the participants’ lives, where global history and individual fates touchingly intersect on stage:

– For instance, we’ve been impressed how much wars (and the fear of a war in the future) shape a collective memory through the experiences of individuals as much as they share their experiences and live on, Helgard Haug says.

The group includes, among others, a person who spent their first years as a so-called war child in Sweden and learned their native language only years later after returning home.

– And he will stand on stage together with people who have arrived here from Russia when the war in the Ukraine broke out., Haug explains.

Theatre as a Mirror of Society

Rimini Protokoll is known for its participatory and documentary stage pieces. In its works, the group examines social structures, statistics, and everyday experiences, turning them into theatrical events centered around ordinary people:

– TTheater is a very old tool to allow us to take multiperspectives. And in general this is what 100% Oulu is about. We will see not one but many different pictures, taken from very different angles and with many different devices.

– So we are in a way more like a tool of expression. We are filtering questions, we invite people, and then we try to make everyone shine. Giving their expertise, their experiences, their character, and their fantastic biographies a stage, Daniel Wetzel explains.

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100 % Oulu

The show runs for just over a week, and Oulu Theatre presents only six performances on the Main Stage:

Fri 14 Aug at 19:00
Sat 15 Aug at 13:00 and 18:00
Thu 20 Aug at 19:00
Fri 21 Aug at 19:00
Sat 22 Aug at 13:00

Read more about the production and buy tickets here.

Rimini Protokoll

• Berliners Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel founded the group in 2000.

• Well-known works: The 100% City concept, World Climate Conference, Situation Rooms, and Utopolis.

• Prestigious recognitions: The collective performs regularly at the Berlin Theatertreffen and has won several notable awards, including the Faust Award, the Swiss Grand Prix Theater, the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale Theatre, and the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis.

Discover more about Rimini Protokoll on their official website.