The stage as a laboratory of the self.

»Uncanny Valley« by Thomas Melle and Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)

Abstract

In the theater production Unheimliches Tal / Uncanny Valley (2018) by Thomas Melle and Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll), an animatronic double of the writer and playwright Thomas Melle, who suffers from bipolar disorder, acts on stage and gives an autobiographical lecture in his place. Melle’s experience of illness is taken as the basis for a lecture-performance, the central object of which seems to be the technically animated doll itself, which on the one hand functions as the actor of the autobiographical lecture and on the other hand is repeatedly exhibited in its objecthood. Following on from Eva Illouz’s research on the emergence and effect of a therapeutic discourse, this contribution pursues the reading of Unheimliches Tal / Uncanny Valley as a way of performing the self through therapy. This is both effectively produced and artistically sharpened, and its ambivalence is demonstrated and reflected.