posttheater

post theater has created manual to conduct a performance titled “Fight Club: A Chorus”. post theater commissions local artists around the world to implement this manual and create the performance that is described / prescribed in this manual. The concept of the “mass-performance” prescribes 48 performers on stage out of which 42 are professionals of non-artistic professions (ideally “cubicle workers”) and 6 are professionals in the performing arts (directors / choreographers).

The goal of the performance is to connect artists with non-artists and create a process that destabilizes mutual stereotypes as well as the perception of the own workplace. There is no fighting involved. The novel / movie “Fight Club” (by Chuck Palahniuk / David Fincher) is not important for the project - the source’s idea of forming a subversive group is.

The performance premiered in Singapore under the artistic direction of Daniel Kok at the National Museum of Singapore (November 2007).
The Berlin version in October 2008 (funded the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and co-produced by the State Opera Berlin) involved he non-artistic staff of the State Opera Berlin. In this case, post theater followed its own instructions.
In December 2008 post theater premiered an “express-version” of the piece in which groups of 15 audience members transformed into performers. They performed in front of themselves as their own audience. This version had been commissioned by the Tanznacht Berlin Festival and succeeded with 40 sold out performances at the festival. More than 500 visitors found themselves as unexpected “voluntary” performers in this project.

The technical principle behind both, the “mass-performance” and the “express performance” is the same. A programmed (with the software MAX MSP) vertical video projection (floor projection) guides the participants (rehearsed, when “mass-performance”, instantly in the “express-version”) in a pre-programmed choreography. Additional texts and sounds are prompted via speakers. All is filmed from a vertical camera and projected live to a screen. Media art provides orientation, serves as the only lighting source and creates a virtual space.

“Fight Club: A Chorus” challenges the question of identity on two levels. First, as provided by the participants’ professional lives, second, as created by the theatrical situation. The “mass-performance” transforms people who are usually not on stage to performers for an audience － the “express-performance” does transforms the audience directly into performers. This switch of roles and the urge to find alternatives to the every-day life in the consumer society are the core of the source of inspiration “Fight Club".

Press response in Singapore:
“…choreographer daniel k had succeeded in creating a show that was teeming with angst. The movement and theatre piece was an experiment in the rules and limits of theatre.”
(June Cheong in The Straits Times, November 13th, 2007)

Press response in Berlin:
“…fresh short appearances!”
(Daniel Wixforth in Der Tagesspiegel, November 1st, 2008)

“The evening convinces with its formal strictness that has been prescribed by a manual in the rehearsal process. And the performance’s dialectic of liberation and re-introduced standardization is much more intelligent than the one-dimensional ideology of emancipation that the old generation of famous theater directors still tries to sell us as the newest hype.”
(Jan Brachmann in Berliner Zeitung, November 1st, 2008)