Overview
The first rule of Fight Night is: you do not talk about Fight Night. But the second rule? You will have your voice heard. Theatre-goers exercise their voting muscles in this pugnacious work, a collaboration between Belgium's Ontroerend Goed and Adelaide's The Border Project.
In a kind of popularity contest-meets-game show format, five contenders battle it out to win approval from the audience, who use handheld voting technology to keep their favourite candidate in the running. Described by the Independent as "a cross between Big Brother and an Italian general election", it's an interactive show that manages to make a profound statement about democracy without ever having to explicitly refer to it, inviting viewers to reflect on the complexities of choice itself.
Politics is a game, says Ontroerend Goed's Angelo Tijssens, who was asked by director Alexander Devriendt to play the show's bowtie-clad MC. "People love to see winners and losers, and the tension of waiting for the results," says Angelo. "We cheer for that person, we don’t cheer for the other person. And very often it doesn’t have anything to do with what they actually stand for."
With that in mind, the show's contenders never discuss a specific policy. Instead the focus is on the voting process, how we're influenced and how we choose — ideas so internationally relevant it's understandable that Fight Night will soon be translated into Turkish and Cantonese.
With over 60 performances under his belt, Angelo remains struck by how reliably audiences succumb to the techniques contenders use to gain votes: usually the same ancient tricks of rhetoric, false modesty and charming manipulation that we fall for as voters. But ultimately, it's not a cynical show. "We still believe in that system [democracy]," he says. "That it’s really a wonderful system. People are prepared to die for it so it would be cynical to say that it just doesn’t work any more. That would be a crime."
The Border Project first became acquainted with Ontroerend Goed years ago at Adelaide Festival and crossed paths again in 2012 when OG (the inevitable abbreviation of a very tricky name) performed A History of Everything with the STC's residents, several of whom were Border Project members. Working together this time involved a three-month rehearsal process, during which the Aussies adjusted to the freer Belgian practice of occasionally calling it a day at 2pm to go home and digest things.
"I think we’re artists and it’s better to go home and think about it and have coffee and two packs of cigarettes and then get back to work," says Angelo. "Well, it works better for us." The Aussie contingent apparently also adjusted to the Belgian nicotine habit. "They’ve started smoking again. I don’t think they like it but they do it just to please us."
If you saw The Smile Off Your Face at the 2009 Sydney Festival, the good/bad news is this time you won't be blindfolded and pushed around in a wheelchair. Fight Night won't provide the same sense of shock or potential outrage for audience members with a rigid sense of the theatrical rulebook, which might explain the drama-free reception so far in comparison to other shows Angelo recalls ("Audience was a lot worse. I remember in Edinburgh a guy actually started throwing his shoes — heavy, Scottish, I-shall-walk-in-the-mountains kind of boots — so that was pretty, um, full-on?")
But the warm invitation to interact so essential to OG as a company is still there, just on a more subtle level. "We're still doing the same thing," says Angelo. "We still take them by the hand, and we don’t drag them along. They get to choose whether they join us or not. Luckily, most people come along."
Fight Night is on at The Wharf Theatres' Wharf 2 from March 20 to April 13 as part of the Sydney Theatre Company season. Limited tickets are left. Our advice? Try to nab a Suncorp Twenties ticket: just $20, with a new batch made available weekly.