This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, and the University Musical Society.
"Why did politics [become] a game show?" asks Alexander Devriendt, artistic director and founding member of the acclaimed Belgian theater company Ontroerend Goed.
Devriendt can’t or won’t answer that question himself, but from Sept. 25-29, Ontroerend Goed’s renowned performance,
"Fight Night," will contend with precisely that question at the Ann Arbor Power Center. The show's Ann Arbor run is presented by the
University Musical Society (UMS).
Devriendt created "Fight Night" in 2013, when broader questions about electoral politics prompted him to wonder: "Why do we vote? Why is it necessary to vote?"
It’s almost a cliché, Devriendt says, that the idea came to him in the shower: what if you could adapt the game-show element of politics to live theater and vote actors off-stage? Each "Fight Night" audience member is therefore given a small machine and invited to cast their vote for a member of the cast. Those with the fewest votes leave the stage.
Devriendt says this can feel shocking at first for audience members, but after a moment, they might realize, "I [do] have a preference; I can make a choice." But what drives those preferences in audience members?
Devriendt says he urges his actors to think about which voters they’ll appeal to, an appeal that can change from day to day and can fluctuate wildly depending on both actors' and audience members' moods and other variables.
"It’s fascinating how you can manipulate the vote," Devriendt says.
If statements like these sound oddly eerie in the year of a presidential election, they’re meant to. When "Fight Night" prompts us to ask ourselves why we’ve voted the way we have, those questions carry over into every other segment of our lives.
But Devriendt also says that the immediacy of voting in this context — not only the participatory nature of it, but the looming consequences, the actors leaving the stage, their disappointment all too palpable — is unique to theater.
Even on TV game shows that ask audiences to cast votes, Devriendt points out, the result feels "distant, and there’s no [real] interaction there" between viewers and contestants. For Devriendt, it’s "the spirit of the here and now and the events that you share together with [an audience]" that creates a uniquely meaningful experience.
Devriendt says it was crucial to him not to make "Fight Night" about any particular country, political system, party, or issue.
"So many people don't question anymore whether they vote left or right. They will always vote Republican or Democrat, because that's just the way it is," he says.
Ontroerend Goed will be on tour with "Fight Night" for a total of seven weeks in the United States. The company has taken the performance all over the world, including to Russia, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Kazakhstan.
"Fight Night" urges viewers to question their stance not on a particular issue but on every issue. It urges us to ask ourselves why we’ve chosen to align ourselves the way we have and it provides us with no reassuring hints that the moral choice may lie one way versus another.
Tickets and more information on "Fight Night"'s run in Ann Arbor are
available here.
Natalia Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and others.
Photo by Michiel Devijver.
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