Ganesh Versus the Third Reich

Overview

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich is a play about the famous Hindu god, Ganesh — recently popularised by the T-shirts of a thousand faux hippie festivalgoers, teamed with a bindi — and his imagined quest to reclaim the Sanskrit swastika symbol from Nazi Germany’s Third Reich.

Ganesh is the god of overcoming obstacles, and judging from the story's premise, his journey throughout director Bruce Gladwin’s performance will acutely test his ability to do so. At the same time, in a parallel universe, the cast of the Back to Back Theatre company who are to perform the piece must overcome the tribulations that accompany their attempts to tackle such contentious subject matter, with this second narrative also played out onstage.

An interesting factor that is perhaps best approached head on, as it is in the play, is that all actors in the cast can be classed as "intellectually disabled". Whilst the abilities or disabilities of the actors are not explicitly a focal point, the way they sit alongside a story set amidst Word War II Germany, when the Nazis were attempting to create a "pure" race through unnatural methods of brutality, cannot be overlooked. The audience must confront both general questions of humanity, prejudice, and guilt, alongside their own motives, reactions, and motivations as participants in the part fiction, part reality of the performance.

Image via backtobacktheatre.com