What is Fight Night?
Five contenders. Five rounds. Your vote. Only one will survive. Fight Night puts five actors into the position of “candidates” struggling to get the audience’s sympathy and, ultimately, their vote. Only one of them will survive the relentless series of eliminations and they apply all possible tactics and strategies to assure their victory.
Set on a platform reminiscent of a boxing ring, the competition is fought not with fists but with words and looks. The audience, armed with a voting keypad, decides who stays and who goes, but gets entangled in an increasingly complex and puzzling system of rules and manipulations. As in mediatized political campaigns, polls and predictions, debates and charm offensives challenge the voters’ loyalty and common sense, in the end toppling their notion of free choice.
Fight Night is thoroughly political, but never explicitly so. The candidates don’t voice a particular ideology, nor do they comment on social issues or economic realities. By stripping their discourse of identifiable political messages, the show draws attention to the very reasons and motivations that compel voters to vote. What is at stake, is the way the concept of “rule of the people” is put into practice in contemporary democratic societies. Fight Night illustrates how content and ideas are only relevant if they make a difference in statistics and increase the chance to gain power through numbers.
Ten years after the premiere of Fight Night, the world has changed. Back then, distrust in the system was a rather marginal phenomenon. Today, more than ever, trust in democracy is faltering. It has permeated the broadest segments of the population - and political parties.
During this event, the world will remain outside. No political statements, only a sharp analysis of how democracy works.
About the Company: Ontroerend Goed
Theater performance group Ontroerend Goed (a punning name, roughly translated as “Feel Estate”) produces self-devised work grounded in the here and now, inviting their audiences to participate as well as observe. They first emerged on the international scene in 2007, with The Smile Off Your Face, a one-on-one show in which the audience is tied to a wheelchair and then blindfolded. Their hit show Once and For All was an uncompromising celebration of raw teenage energy on stage. With every new piece of work, Ontroerend Goed provides an intense experience constructed in reality; life goes on during the performance. The company has won numerous prizes across Europe and has hit New York, Sydney and London to critical acclaim. Their work is currently being performed in countries around the world.
Ontroerend Goed functions as a collective guided by the artistic director Alexander Devriendt. Convinced that every idea deserves its own brand of artistic expression, the company cherishes a sense of ownership for every single contributor to their work, from actors to light designers, scenographers to conceptual thinkers. Ontroerend Goed fabricates possible realities that question how we as individuals position ourselves in the world today. Covering a history of the universe in one evening, turning spectators into voters who eliminate actors, guiding strangers through a labyrinth of mirrors and avatars to meet themselves, the company has made it its trademark to be unpredictable in content and form.
Ontroerend Goed is Alexander Devriendt, Charlotte De Bruyne, Karolien De Bleser, Angelo Tijssens, Aurélie Lannoy, Leonore Spee, Samir Veen, Julia Ghysels, Remi Cosijn, Wim Smet, Beth Thyrion, Jitske Vandenbussche, Hannes Pieters, Luna Boone and Justine Boutens.