Belgians, including Angelo Tijssens, who is the referee/host of Fight Night, are a lot more fun than they look.
They were manipulating the hell out of me and I loved itIn Fight Night, which is produced by a bunch of companies led by Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed, politics becomes a literal game. Five actors vie for audience members’ votes and everybody in the crowd gets a little keypad that allows us to register our preferences in four elimination rounds.
This event plays with notions of belonging and outsider status. “Welcome to the biggest group tonight,” the winner of the first round of voting said with a warm smile. Later on, Fight Night’s exploration of inclusion and exclusion gets downright rough. Just wait.
Leaning into the idea of the players’ biases and the scandals they might provoke, Fight Nightasks us to register which of the following words we find most offensive: nigger, faggot, cunt, retard, or none of the above. It’s engaging to say the least.
The performers are as personable as all get out. I especially enjoyed Angelo Tijssens. Dapperly dressed in a grey plaid suit, speaking into a suspended microphone like those used in boxing matches, he is the witty host.
And here’s the question that I found the most intriguing: how much did our responses count? How many times were our votes real? They seemed to be real at least some of the time. On opening night, a huge portion of the audience came from Magee Secondary School, and the presence of those young folks registered in the audience’s answers to questions about age and income. But was asking those real questions a strategy for softening us up, for making fake outcomes later on feel more credible? Every time that I changed my allegiance in the voting, I could see how I had been maneuvered into doing so: a player would say something outrageous and lose my support, for instance.
The dramatic arc definitely feels scripted. But how scripted is it? Is there a different winner every night? I considered asking folks in the know what was real and what was fake, but I decided to sit with my questions because that’s more fun. I loved the sense that I was being playfully fucked with because I feel I feel like I’m being fucked with all the time—usually not so playfully. In this age of persuasion, in which information and entertainment have merged and trustworthy authority has all but disappeared, it’s a pleasure to be so skillfully reminded of my duty to stay alert.
Tonight (Wednesday, October 19) a special edition of Fight Night will incorporate the US presidential debate in a pre-show debate party in the lobby. How perfect is that?
FIGHT NIGHT Text by Alexander Devriendt, Angelo Tijssens, and the cast. Directed by Alexander Devriendt. Produced by Ontroerend Goed, Border Project Australia, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Richard Jordan Productions, and Vooruit in association with Adelaide Festival of the Arts. Presented by The Cultch. At the Cultch’s Historic Theatre on Tuesday, October 18. Continues until October 29.
I recommend this show. Buy your tickets at tickets.thecultch.com or by phoning the box office at 604-251-1363.
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