Room Service

Interactive live film in a hotel.

Four performers spend a sleepless night alone in their hotel rooms. Watched on video monitors by the audience in a conference room, they all need each other to help them make it through the night.

Here I am in my hotel room and I can do anything I want.
I could…
– unscrew the paintings from the walls and turn them upside down and see if the cleaners notice
– deliberately bankrupt myself by ringing up room service and asking them to charge every drink bought in the bar tonight to my Visa card
– start a fire in my wastepaper basket and open the window and shout FIRE FIRE until a fireman comes and rescues me
– permanently damage my feet by wearing my complementary slippers on the wrong feet and then sue the hotel for a fortune
– save up all the free packets of shower gel and resell them on the internet from my laptop
– change the “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door to read “Please do disturb every hour with violent beatings” and then complain to the manager if they don’t fulfill my wishes

“But if my life is for rent and I don´t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine”
– Dido

In the blue, dead hours of night, four people return to their hotel rooms. None of them can sleep, instead they kill time in cold baths or by finding comfort in the solace of the hotel mini bar. Each is being watched by a surveillance camera, sharing their moments of fear and boredom as they sit out a long and sleepless night.

Where: A hotel (a conference room for the audience, 4 identical hotel rooms for the performers)

Who: 2 women, 2 men alone in their hotel rooms (trying to be themselves, a friend, a relative, a star, an animal or just to make it through the night)

How long: a sleepless night

Room Service is a live interactive film. In the conference room of the hotel the audience watch four performers on a four huge TV monitors set side by side. Each performer is in a seperate hotel room, unable to see and hear the audience or each other. Its late at night, and none of them are sleeping, instead they kill time, sharing moments of hope, fear and boredom. Their only contact to the outside world is a phone line that puts them directly in contact with the audience. As the night progresses they call their voyeurs with increasingly absurd and desperate demands, in a plea to remain with them and help them make it through the night.

First Performance: January 24th 2003 (InterCity Hotel Hamburg in cooperation with Kampnagel, Hamburg)

Room Service has been performed over 50 times in 20 different hotels in 11 countries, from a Beach Hotel at the Black Sea in Bulgaria to a 5 star Hotel in London, UK.