Alexander Devriendt of Fight Night
Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed and Australia’s The Border Project theater companies are joining forces for “Fight Night,” a play presented as an election that puts choice into the hands of the audience. It inevitably asks questions about the fairness of elections and the nature of democracy—and couldn’t be a more timely piece of theater for Hong Kong. Ahead of its run for the 43rd Hong Kong Arts Festival, Evelyn Lok asks the show’s director Alexander Devriendt about learning to vote.
HK Magazine: How did the idea for “Fight Night” come about?
Alexander Devriendt: I had the idea for the longest time: what if the audience could vote the actors out? I wanted to question the idea of a majority that decides everybody, even in a democracy. For instance in America, Obama had 53 percent and suddenly was in power. And what about the different systems of democracy?
Photo: Reinhout Hiel
HK: Does the show support democracy?
AD: I don’t want to be moralizing, like “This is what you should do,” so I’d like to keep I want to keep it open. As Winston Churchill famously said, it’s the best and worst form of government. The show doesn’t approve and it also doesn’t disapprove. It just makes you think about how you, the voter, position yourself towards different kinds of democracy. What makes you vote, how does it work for you, which form would work?
HK: So it’s questioning how or if democracy works?
AD: I want to see what people really believe in. What makes you like somebody and then vote for them? What triggers you? A lot of people I know vote for the appearance of somebody—he seems trustworthy, he has authority—but seldom on their agenda or their beliefs. For instance in Belgium, there’s a politician now in power who was on a quiz show called ‘The Smartest Person in the World.’ The problem is he’s quite right-wing, but because he won that quiz, people started to think that he’s smart and funny. But they seldom ask what he stands for. Then what happens is he comes in power and suddenly we have a lot of protests against the government. A lot of people voted for him because they trusted him. That’s what I want to question: the danger of democracy.
