Experimental reality show at the Citadel reveals our true selves – and it’s not pretty
It’s Fight Night – and we’ve been conditioned to expect what comes next. It’s a boxing match. There’s a ring. A pool of light. A mic drops down from the darkness and a droll soft-spoken dude in a suit and bow tie announces the battle to come.
What follows seems to be a random series of questions. Each audience member has already been given a small computer-like device that can register comments. The results are shown on two big screens over the ring. We can vote safely in the anonymity of darkness and no one knows who’s commenting. The questions are provocative: about race, age, identity, perception, gender. What they’re really doing is cleverly building a demographic portrait. On opening night, we learn that there are 229 of us, some make less than $1,000 a month, and there are more females than males in the audience.
We are asked if we consider ourselves:
1. A little bit racist
2. A little bit sexist
3. A little bit violent
4. None of the above
The audience gasped at the surprising outcome.
Playing at the Citadel Theatre until Oct. 27, Fight Night is the ultimate audience participation theatre, and it remains a collective process in the dark.
After the survey, the next 85 minutes are painfully revealing. I suspect that everyone in that audience on opening night learned something about their own prejudices.
The highly entertaining and enlightening production comes from the small Belgian experimental company called “Ontroerend Goed.” The cast includes Julia Ghysels, Aaron Gordon, Aurélie Lannoy, Angelo Tijssens (who plays the ring announcer), Bastiaan Vandendriessche and Max Wind, under director Alexander Devriendt. Fight Night has played to great success literally all over the world.
It begins with a group of characters walking on stage in hoodies. When they remove them we see a collection of people. Candidates? Actors? Late night shoppers? There are a couple of white men, two women (one white, one black) and one black man. They are in their 20s and 30s.
We are given little information about the “combatants,” no guidance, criteria, ideology or policy. If we don’t like them, for whatever reason, they are simply voted off the stage and disappear. They do get the chance to interact with the audience but their comments are mostly boilerplate. They battle for our attention with dribbles of information, asking for our sympathy or approval. One nondescript fellow with a woolly haircut is voted off stage almost immediately. He pleads with us to stay, suggesting, “I will be your underdog!”
Another, in an obvious attempt to sway us, yells, “Go Oilers!”
Are we being manipulated? Will the votes go to the most physically attractive performers? As the results appear on the big screen, we learn as much about ourselves as the contenders. In what appears to be a microcosm of the real world outside the theatre, how much real control do we have? As we know, voters are quite capable of compartmentalizing their beliefs and voting against their own interests based on “I just like them!” The cult of celebrity is pervasive. How much does our natural inclination toward “beautiful people” affect our voting patterns?
You will probably begin the evening voting for one of the contestants but I’ll bet that as it goes on you’ll change your mind – possibly several times.
As the contest continues, the questions become more complex. The technical aspect of the evening removes us from the element of our own control. Thunders one contestant, “The system does not reflect what you believe!”
Every night of this ingenious production is different – depending on the make-up of the audience. There are five voting rounds. At the end of each round a candidate is eliminated until a final winner is declared. But will they have any integrity left?
All this is very enjoyable, very funny, and more than a little discomforting as we learn that despite our conception of ourselves the computer keeps tabulating how we really feel. Are many of our most cherished beliefs questionable? Maybe we’re better off just to destroy the system completely.
Photos by
