Walker Art Center presents
Ontroerend Goed
Fight Night
Thursday–Friday, October 10–11, 2024
7:30 pm
McGuire Theater
FIGHT NIGHT
Directed by
ALEXANDER DEVRIENDT
Written by
ALEXANDER DEVRIENDT & ANGELO TIJSSENS
Performed by
ANGELO TIJSSENS, AURÉLIE LANNOY, JONAS VERMEULEN, JULIA GHYSELS, BASTIAAN VANDENDRIESSCHE, MICHAËL PAS, & PRINCE K. APPIAH
Voting System
SAMIR VEEN, NICK MATTAN
Design
NICK MATTAN
Costumes
VALERIE LE ROY
Production Manager
LYNN VAN DEN BERGH
Technical
TUUR DECOENE, GERRIT DE BREMME, BENT DUJARDIN, DIEDERIK DE COCK, INE VAN BORTEL
Software
FLORIAN VAN BELLEGHEM, MIXX
Production
ONTROEREND GOED
Coproduction
PERPODIUM
In cooperation with NTGent with the financial support of The Flemish Community and the city of Ghent.
This show was made possible with the support of the Tax Shelter measure from the Belgian Federal Government & Casa Kafka.
Special thanks to UMS Ann Arbor, Charleston Gaillard Center and the original co-creators The Border Project.
Tonight’s performance runs approximately 80 minutes with no intermission.
Join us for a Q & A with the company following Friday’s performance.
Accessibility Notes
Audio description (AD) is planned for Friday's performance.
Sensory Note: This performance incorporates audience participation through the use of a clicker.
For more information about accessibility, visit our Access page.
For questions on accessibility, content and sensory notes or to request additional accommodations, call 612-253-3556 or email access@walkerart.org.
A Note from Ontroerend Goed
Five contenders. Five rounds. Your vote. Only one will survive. The stakes: your attention, your love, your approval, your laughter, your compassion, your weak spot, your guilty pleasure, your heart, your support, your choice. We help you to decide through random checks, voting signposts, coalitions, campaigns, debates, consultants, exit polls, spin doctors, opinion gauges, list pushers, referendums.
We’ll do anything to make the best not win.
Fight Night, created in 2013, has been touring the world, playing from Australia and Belgium to Canada, from Hong Kong to Switzerland. Remakes were made in Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkey, whilst a French version was touring Europe. Fight Night remains one of the most popular shows in Ontroerend Goed’s repertoire, ready for a new world tour in 2024, the election year.
Ten years after its premiere, we are remaking Fight Night. Because, a decade later, we and the world have changed. Today, more than ever, trust in democracy is faltering. A conspiracy of fake news, mainstream media and stolen elections is no longer an absurd analysis. Back then, distrust in the system was a rather marginal phenomenon. Now it has permeated the broadest segments of the population -and political parties.
The structure of Fight Night remains the same. However, the changed context inevitably is felt in the performance. In the past, questions were answered, or not. Now, increasingly, the premise of the question is not accepted. Which is symptomatic of the distrust for the system we have taken for granted for years.
In the brand-new Fight Night, the world will remain outside. No political statements, only a sharp analysis of how democracy works.
About Fight Night
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.
Fight Night has toured the world in the last few years. The show was in Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Australia and Hong Kong, and there has been a remake in Istanbul (Turkey). In 2024, Ontroerend Goed updated the performance to correspond to the changing political climate.
Learn More
In the run-up to the presentation of Fight Night at the Walker, Ontroerend Goed’s artistic director, Alexander Devriendt, sat down with Philip Bither, McGuire Director and Senior Curator, Performing Arts, to discuss theater, politics, and participation for the Walker Reader: Every Action Matters: Alexander Devriendt on Participation and Politics
About Ontroered Goed
The Belgian theatre-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. Whether they are performing backwards, turning spectators into voters who eliminate actors, guiding strangers through a labyrinth of mirrors and avatars to meet themselves, or placing the audience at the controls of the financial system, the company has made it its trademark to be unpredictable in content and form. 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. Since then, the Belgian company has won numerous prizes across Europe and has hit New York, Berlin, Sydney, Singapore and London to critical acclaim. Ontroerend Goed tours worldwide and creates remakes of their productions in other languages: there are versions in Russian, French, Mandarin, Cantonese and Kazakh, among others.
Ontroerend Goed delivers intense experiences built in the reality of theater. Convinced that life goes on during a performance, the group fabricates possible realities that question how we as individuals position ourselves in the world today. Led by artistic director Alexander Devriendt, the collective is 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 is Alexander Devriendt, Charlotte De Bruyne, Karolien De Bleser, Aurélie Lannoy, Leonore Spee, Samir Veen, Remi Cosijn, Wim Smet, Beth Thyrion, Luna Boone, Hannes Pieters & Justine Boutens.
About the Artists
PRINCE K. APPIAH is an actor, music artist and writer. He graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp in 2021. His studies include a 7-month stint at The Royal Conservatory of Scotland from 2018 to 2019. He has played in plays like Vrede Liefde & Vrijheid and Kiss & Ride from Het Nieuwstedelijk. He played the lead in the television miniseries De Shaq (2021). Following Funeral, Fight Night is the second production of Ontroerend Goed in which he can be seen.
ALEXANDER DEVRIENDT (°1977) is the artistic director and one of the founders of the Belgian theater performance group Ontroerend Goed. His past work includes the creation of the personal theater trilogy (The Smile Off Your Face, Internal & A Game of You), and the celebrated teenage play (Once, and for all we’re gonna tell you who we are so shut up and listen). His most recent productions are £¥€$, Funeral, and Are we not drawn onward to new erA. His plays have won several awards and are performed all over the world, recently performing in Shanghai, USA and Edinburgh.
AURELIE LANNOY (°1982) trained in drama at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion in Louvainla- Neuve (2000-2001) and in Lecoq techniques at Kleine Academie in Brussels (20012004). She studied actor studio techniques at the Susan Batson studio in New York (2010). In 2004 Aurelie joined Ontroerend Goed. She collaborates with them regularly as an actress, creator and performer and is a core member of the company. Alongside her work with OG, Aurelie works with other groups, notably the musical showgroup Les Vedettes (2016) and the Parisian theater company Les Divins Animaux for the project Flirt (2015), Les Perdants (2019), and Zoo (2021). On screen, Aurelie has featured as a lead character in Inacia (2013) by Charlotte Dupont, Lucha Libre (2014) by Ann Sirot and Raphael Balboni, and in Coupeur de route by Christophe Granger (2022).
ANGELO TIJSSENS (°1986) studied theater in Antwerp. He has been part of Ontroerend Goed for a decade, both as a member of the artistic core and as a performer, with credits in Fight Night, Are we not drawn onward to new erA, TM, A Game Of You, Loopstation, Internal, £¥€$, Every Word Was Once An Animal and A History Of Everything. He co-wrote several short films, with selections at the Cannes Film Festival and international awards. He was Lukas Dhont’s co-writer for the Camera d’Or winning feature film Girl. The film went on to be an international arthouse hit, winning awards all over the globe, such as the Queer Palm and a Golden Globe nomination. Together they also wrote Dhont’s second feature Close (2022), which was nominated for the Oscars. Meanwhile, he has become a member of The Academy, the body that sets the selection for the Oscars. At present, he is working on some new projects. His first novel, De Randen, was published in 2022, followed by his second Het einde van de straat in 2024. Angelo Tijssens teaches scenario at KASK/School of Arts in Ghent, and lives and works in Antwerp, with his husband and their cats.
JULIA GHYSELS (°1991) graduated in 2015 at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen. During her studies, she performed in De zaak van de dieren tegen de mensen (2014) by HETPALEIS and Alsemkomt (2014) by de Roovers. After graduating, she was in production like Othello (2015) by Toneelhuis and adult world (2015) by echo maker MT and Cie Covar. Her collaborations with Ontroerend Goed include Loopstation, £¥€$, Fight Night and TM. For director Jetse Batelaan she performed in Het eind van het begin van het einde (2020-2021). Her television credits include Gent-West (2017) and Fenix (2018). Since 2023, she’s a part of the ensemble of Het Zuidelijk Toneel.
JONAS VERMEULEN (°1990) graduated in 2013 at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp. Fans of electronic punk and rock may know him from the band Psycho 44. He appeared in several tv-shows such as Red Light, Studio Tarara, Den 11e van den 11e and In Flanders Fields. In 2022 he made his debut on the big screen as the main character Frank Verstraeten in Robin Pront’s feature film Zillion. Jonas works most of the time in theatre. With his own concert-theatre performances The Great Downhill Journey Of Little Tommy and The Only Way Is Up, which he created with partner in crime Boris Vanseveren, he toured around the globe. Jonas can frequently be seen as an actor and musician in the work of companies such as Ontroerend Goed, FC Bergman, Olympique Dramatique, Compagnie Marius, Hetpaleis and many others.
MICHAEL PAS has been acting prolifically in film, television and theater, since his graduation from drama school in Antwerp, Belgium. Michael is multilingual and performs in Dutch, English, French and German. On stage he has worked with ITA director Ivo Van Hove, and for film he collaborated with Lars Von Trier (Nymphomaniac II) and Lee Tamahori (Emperor, starring Adrien Brody). Are we not drawn onward to new erA was Michael’s first collaboration with Ontroerend Goed.
BASTIAAN VANDENDRIESSCHE obtained a master’s degree in International Political Sciences before studying Drama at the Conservatory of Antwerp (2017). With his controversial debut De Fuut, he won the Best International Performance Award at Amsterdam Fringe (2017). Afterwards he toured with the English translation through the UK. Later he created five more pieces (A White Man’s Burden, Mono, Mockingbird, Ode aan Buldegart, and Dorian). Ode aan Buldegart was nominated for the ‘Playwright award 2020’ and has been translated to French in 2022. As an actor, he has been working with Ontroerend Goed since 2017, performing in £¥€$, Fight Night, Are we not drawn onward to new erA, and Every Word Was Once an Animal. He also collaborated with 4hoog and KVS Brussels. In June 2024 he released his first autofictional novel called Staart - Op korte en hopelijk erna lange liefde.
Living Land Acknowledgement
The McGuire Theater and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.
We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.
We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work.
Acknowledgments
Producers' Council
About the Walker Art Center
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To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2023/24 Walker Performing Arts Season.
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