MAHAGONNY IS EVERYWHERE
Durational and Participatory Theatre (2012)A 48 hrs Immersive-Environment, this event is built upon the rules of capitalism. Audiences become complicit in the system as soon as they buy ‘an executive chair, which starts at €59 Neuros’. The site of the performance building announces its beginning with an exchange of show-currency, which the audience needs to buy in order to participate in the performance-system. Inside the building is a bar, an orchestra, casinos, shops, bank, sleeping and leisure areas, stock-market, restaurants, and more. Based on ‘The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny', a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill, made into a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht, Mahagonny is Everywhere highlights and accelerates the working of the post-industrial society into a free-wheeling, fast-moving spiral. Audiences become participants as they engage in buying/selling/winning/losing/stealing/hoarding, and are encouraged to speculate as a means of surviving within the system. Rules are suspended intermittently to pause and punctuate the inner-logic of the performance itself.
Performed by Audience and Experts | Concept & Direction by Christopher Roth (with Amitesh Grover) | Produced by Bremen State Theatre, Germany, 2012.
