Actor shouted down and pelted with fruit during Catarina, or the Beauty of Killing Fascists
An actor at a theatre inGermanywas at the weekend shouted down, pelted with fruit and subjected to an attempted stage invasion as he delivered a final monologue in character as a far-right activist.
The violent scenes came on Saturday during the German premiere of the Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues’s work Catarina, or the Beauty of Killing Fascists in Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia.
The provocative, prize-winning play from 2020 tells the story of a family with a macabre annual tradition: to avenge the murder of farm workerCatarina Eufémia, a real-life resistance martyr shot and killed in 1954 during the Salazar dictatorship, they kidnap a “fascist” each year in order to execute him during a family feast.
Over the course of the play a generational conflict breaks out between bloodthirsty parents and their more squeamish adult daughter about what means are justified to defend democracy. At the end of the last act, the year’s chosen victim, a far-right party functionary, delivers a 15-minute monologue laying out a nightmarish extremist agenda.
As the actor Ole Lagerpusch launched into the incendiary speech, the audience became increasingly agitated, the theatre spokesperson Alexander Kruse said. At first, people began whistling and heckling, insulting Lagerpusch and urging him to stop. An orange was thrown at the actor, narrowly missing him.
Kruse said some of the audience then got out of their seats. “Furthermore, two spectators mounted the stage, apparently with the intention of dragging [the] actor off the stage, which was prevented,” he said, calling the assault “completely unacceptable”.
Martin Krumbholz of the culture website Nachtkritik.de, who was at the Bochum Schauspielhaus to review the play, said Lagerpuschpersevered despite the hostile reactionand managed to deliver his chilling last line: “The future belongs to us.”
The play’s acclaimed Slovenian director, Mateja Koležnik, said by telephone from Ljubljana that she was “incredibly proud” of Lagerpusch and denounced the “stupidity” and brutality of the spectators’ attack. “For me it was quite a shock – we did expect people talking back, even shouting back, because, of course, the last monologue is a provocation,” she said.
She said Lagerpusch, who she described as “traumatised”, was so effective in the role because he was softly spoken, even affable, in conveying his hateful, divisive message. “[But] I was astonished by the stupidity, really. I never ever thought – nobody did – that somebody from the audience would jump on stage and try to hit the actor … I would expect this from the people we are voting against, but not from the people who should be on our side.”
Source: Drudge Report
