"I love westerns," says one of the African players. "Because you always know how they end. Clearly. With only one winner." On the playing floor are four smoothly twirling, stomping dancing, trained performers from the Ivory Coast. They are a stark contrast to their co-stars: two lumbering, yoghurt-pale and uncoordinated German actors. The Africans speak French, the Germans mostly English. The rest of La Fin Du Western is - to put it mildly - somewhat less clear-cut. It is unsettling, raw, at times highly irritating and cluttered, but also a great theatrical experience.
As a theme, theatre makers had Monika Gintersdorfer and Knut Klaßen was inspired by the recent power struggle in Côte d'Ivoire. After a chaotic election race in 2010 - accompanied by fraud, nepotism and intimidation - two politicians claimed victory: the ex-Marxist and African Hugo Chavéz-in-the-head Laurent Gbagbo, and the neoliberal and great friend of the International Monetary Fund: Alessane Ouattara. It led to months of rampant conflict between the two hotheads and their supporters. Gbagbo entrenched himself in his bunker and eventually lost out. He was permanently kicked out of the saddle earlier this year.
In the middle of the playing floor is a number of aluminium partitions, which together form a tall rectangular loft: Gbagbo's bunker. The African performers stand right in front of the audience, one by one they grab a wireless microphone and start explaining in a dramatic tone and with lots of wild gestures and jerky movements how things really are in Côte d'Ivoire, with all this political scheming. And who is right. And also: that those hypocritical Westerners don't really have any right to speak and should mind their own business.
This flow of words is carried by a golden find: actor Hauke Heumann, who, with a panicked look, bold German accent and awkward motor skills, is rapidly trying to translate the Ivorian's French-language tirades into English. Impossible work. And Heumann plays that with genially comic timing, adding a hilarious extra layer to the African players' tense, pent-up rhetoric in translation.
But then. "Yes! It's a democracy here," shouts Heumann in a skipping voice, on behalf of his Ivorian colleagues. "You can come along or you can stay seated." The players rush into the stands, chasing some of the audience like cattle towards Gbagbo's bunker on the playing floor. There, a kind of grim hazing ritual takes place, out of sight of the spectators in the stands. Amidst the huddled audience in the bunker, one of the dancers is alternately surrounded by the others each time. As drilsergeants screaming commands into his ears at a high rate of speed. "SIT! LIG! SPRING!" - as he shuffles through the crowd like an epileptic. You almost feel complicit.
Some spectators walk back to their seats. Just in front of the stands, the other players are shouting hallelujahs, and "God is our army! God is our weapon!" Moments later, spectators in the front rows even have to dodge the well-aimed spit of one of the irate players.
Pro-Gbagbo or Pro-Ouattara? It is indistinguishable anymore. Walking back and forth between playing floor and stands remains possible, but the fanaticism is everywhere. The good guy is beyond words. Thus, La Fin Du Western makes the tragic absurdity of the Ivorian situation palpable. For how do you choose sides when all the alternatives are repulsive?
La Fin Du Western, by Monika Gintersdorfer and Knut Klaßen. Seen Friday 30 September in the Small Hall. Also on Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 September.
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