Viva Brighton Issue #73 March 2019
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THEATRE<br />
.....................<br />
£¥€$<br />
Empathy for the devil<br />
Photo: Michael Devijver<br />
Exploring the themes of banking and the<br />
mysteries of the world’s wealthiest 1% through<br />
an immersive casino-style environment, £¥€$<br />
(LIES) is a hearty combination of thoughtprovoking<br />
and gambling. We spoke to Angelo<br />
Tijssens, who wrote and developed the show<br />
with his colleagues in Belgian theatre company<br />
Ontroerend Goed, ahead of their performances<br />
at the Attenborough Centre.<br />
We began thinking about the show during<br />
the financial crisis of 2006-2008, because it<br />
feels like it’s something so large and vast that<br />
you can’t seem to be able to grasp it. Therefore<br />
you don’t understand it, therefore something<br />
is wrong, so all bankers are criminals and they<br />
should all be hanged.<br />
We started studying and soon we learned<br />
that the idea of debt is not something that<br />
was invented by an angry banker in 1972: it’s<br />
older than the written word. The idea of ‘if you<br />
owe me this, I owe you that’, and that creates<br />
trust, and peace even, between people, between<br />
tribes, between nations.<br />
It would have been lazy and cheap and easy<br />
to make a show about bankers where we all<br />
wear the same dark blue or grey pinstripe<br />
suits pretending to snort cocaine, talking<br />
rubbish about the people. But we’ve seen that<br />
and that’s already how we imagine it to be – I<br />
think everyone, except for the bankers. We<br />
thought that it would be much more interesting<br />
to use that very powerful tool of empathy and<br />
put our audience members on the 1% seat.<br />
They’re normally the ones trying to look in or<br />
up to the 34th floor of a very large and concrete<br />
building, but what if you put them there, give<br />
them the same tools, let them handle it. We’ve<br />
played the show over 200 times already, the<br />
result isn’t that different: we all like to play<br />
with money.<br />
Audience members are separated when<br />
they come in. There are seven people<br />
around one table, which might resemble a<br />
blackjack table but isn’t. You’re there, if all<br />
goes well, with six complete strangers and<br />
you all become banks. Instead of being Joe,<br />
you become the Bank of Joe, or the Royal<br />
Bank of Joe if you’re the richest. Each table is<br />
a metaphor for a nation: all tables combined<br />
become a European Union, or a World Trade<br />
Organisation.<br />
It’s a show where you as an audience<br />
member have a lot of power because we give<br />
it to you. But we don’t expect you to make the<br />
show, we already did that for you. Even though<br />
you’re very involved in playing the game with<br />
us and playing the show with us, you’re still an<br />
audience member.<br />
We’ve had people who were very loud about<br />
how money is not really their kind of thing.<br />
Give us an hour and a half and they’ll be<br />
shouting for government bonds and complex<br />
financial structures by the time the lights go<br />
out. It’s so human to want that and to want<br />
to engage in that. That winning rush is so<br />
powerful that almost every audience member<br />
gets drawn into it. As told to Joe Fuller<br />
ACCA, 13th to 15th, 6pm/9pm<br />
....51....
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