The revolution eats your children! Peaches-rooster

2018 | a co-production by Schauspielhaus Graz and africologne

With: Julia Graefner, Florian Koehler, Raphael Muff, Michael Pietsch, Evamaria Salcher, Komi Mizrajim Togbonou | In the video: Laurenz Leky And: Diarra Isouf, Daniel Kaboré, Paul Kaboré, Moussa Kougaté, Viola Novak, Leopold and Cornelius Köhler-Novak, Ira Safi, Adjara Sanogo, Ezé Wendtoin and Banda Internationale, Dresden | IInterview partners in the video: Serge Bambara (aka Smockey), Aino Laberenz, Amsa Sankara, Blandine and Odile Sankara (sisters of Thomas Sankara), Felwine Sarr, Maria Goretti Zongo, Robert Zongo | director: Jan-Christoph Gockel | Stage and costumes: Julia Kurzweg | Costumes: Sophie Du Vinage | Puppet: Michael Pietsch | Video: Eike Zuleeg | Dramaturgy and project management: Jennifer Weiss | Travel support and project management: Gerhardt Haag |Photos: Lupi Spuma | Premiere: 11/23/2018

"Put the people from the theater on the alley."
Georg Büchner, DANTON’S DEATH

The project THE REVOLUTION EATS YOUR CHILDREN takes us to Burkina Faso. We spend October 2018 in the capital Ouagadougou and travel the country. We are looking for nothing less than a revolution!

THE REVOLUTION EATS YOUR CHILDREN follows the traces of the Burkinabe revolution of 2014, which overthrew the autocratically ruling President Blaise Compaoré. The former French colony of Obervolta has been called Burkina Faso since 1984: "Land of upright people". The namesake was the charismatic fighter for independence and President Thomas Sankara, the "Che Guevara of Africa". Sankara was murdered after only four years of presidency, presumably by his successor Blaise Compaoré’s regime. The Compaoré regime was overthrown on October 31, 2014, 27 years later, by a popular uprising. Right in the middle: Jan-Christoph Gockel, who happened to be in the country at the time and tried out the COLTAN-FIEBER project: The 31.10. should have been the day of the premiere, which of course failed. Instead, it was celebrated, then a curfew was imposed, and then the military took over. It was elected later, and today there is a democratic government. And so our title is to be understood as a question: what happened to the revolution? How has the country changed?

Now we are traveling to Burkina Faso in 2018 to explore the theatrical. At the same time, we also travel back in time and tell the story of a theater company that will undergo a revolution in 2014. In the luggage a European revolution, the French or rather how Georg Büchner described it in DANTON’S DEATH and its protagonists as dolls: Danton and Robespierre meet Sankara and Compaoré.

New dates will follow.

The production has the Nestroy Theater Award 2019 in the category "Best state performance" won.
Jury OUR AIM To reassure:
In 2017 Jan-Christoph Gockel’s production “The Mission: Danton’s Death” (after Heiner Müller and Georg Büchner) was awarded the NESTROY for the best federal state performance at the Schauspielhaus Graz. Two years later, Gockel in Graz developed the follow-up project "The revolution eats its children!" for one NESTROY is nominated. The self-developed piece is about an African expedition that the “order” ensemble actually undertook. The staging derives its joke from the fact that it presents the research results as part of a self-ironic fake documentary. On the one hand, we see actors traveling to Burkina Faso and seriously interviewing activists there, but on the other hand, we also represent a megalomaniac acting group who wants to make history. Gockel confidently undermines the obvious criticism of his project by aggressively making it his own subject. Political theater or backstage comedy? Documentary or fake? Rarely do you leave the theater as excited and confused as this evening.
(Wolfgang Kralicek)

“This type of fake documentary has one main goal: to face exactly the traps that post-colonial discourse has to offer in such a European-African way of bridging the gap. Actors peddle as actors with the values of European Enlightenment in Burkina Faso and inevitably fail. That is pretty awesome. (…) The production plays with its own production project and can ‘show’ its own self-righteousness, its racism, its blindness from all sides. In a way, that makes them untouchable. But as a viewer, you looked into the depths of their contradictions. ”
The standard, 11/25/2018:

“A lot of film material, street scenes and wooden dolls as well as impulses to recreate and rethink – interwoven in the theater project "The Revolution eats its children!". An amazing encounter with Africa (…) "
Small newspaper, November 24, 2018

"A big, an important evening."
Kronen Zeitung, November 24th 2018

"Jan-Christoph Gockel brings a lot together this evening: Europe and Africa, political theater and backstage comedy, documentary and fake documentary, Büchner and Burkina Faso."
Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 28, 2018

"The revolution eats their children" by Jan-Christoph Gockel makes it clear that contemporary history can also burn under the nails at the theater. This piece is a wild hybrid, takes your breath away, presses the tear glands, rumbles over itself and clears up, in the style of the house. Or more precisely: in the manner of Jan-Christoph Gockel. (…)
Despite all the theatrical interventions, it is possible to retell the recent history of Burikana Faso in an exciting way. But not only. Because there is also a lot of room for reflection on theater, colonialism and how we can make the cultural rapprochement of European artists in Africa work without better-knowing attitudes. And not just intelligent, but extremely entertaining. (…) "
European Cultural News, 11/23/2018

2018 | a co-production by Schauspielhaus Graz and africologne

New dates will follow.

RELATED ITEMS