Gob Squad’s Act of Rebellion – Revolution Now!
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Claudia Georgi
Abstract
With its recent production Revolution Now! (2010) the English-German performance collective Gob Squad tackles “the current mood of disengagement” of contemporary theatre as identified by Kritzer (218) and attempts to stir up a revolution by involving the audience and unwitting passers-by outside the theatrical venue as amateur revolutionaries. Yet the production neither adheres to a concrete political ideology, nor does it further specify the cause of discontent or the need for a revolution. Although it turns out that the public, ‘The People,’ is hardly ready for this improvised revolution, Gob Squad manage to unite performers, audience and passers-by in a temporary community that pursues the single goal of finding a member of the public who is willing to instigate the revolution. This is achieved primarily via the excessive use of mediatisation that connects stage, auditorium and the streets outside the venue by means of two-way live transmissions. The onstage revolution is thus projected into the ‘reality’ beyond the stage and the theatre whereas ‘reality’ is simultaneously framed and becomes part of the action on the stage. In the end, it remains questionable whether the revolution actually reaches ‘the masses’ or whether revolutionary activism is to be seen as an absurd or ineffectual performance that is moreover manipulated and distorted by its mediatisation. More striking is the sense of immediacy and authenticity evoked despite the mediatisation and overt theatricality as well as the feeling of individual responsibility for the performance. Since the spectators have to face themselves as projected onto the screens on the stage – in the roles of sceptics, passive observers or active revolutionaries – it becomes impossible for them to remain detached. In this sense, Gob Squad explore a new form of theatre able to challenge political disengagement by combining the immediacy of liveness with the inescapability of mediatisation.
Works Cited
Primary Literature
Revolution Now! By Gob Squad. Perf. Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Masha Qrella, Sharon Smith, and Bastian Trost. Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London. 26 June 2010.Search in Google Scholar
Revolution Now! By Gob Squad. Perf. Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Masha Qrella, Sharon Smith, and Bastian Trost. Ayla Suveren, 2010. DVD.Search in Google Scholar
Secondary Literature
Boyle, Michael Shane. “Revolution, Then and Now: Gob Squad’s Sean Patten and Bastian Trost Interviewed and Introduced by Michael Shane Boyle.” Theater 42.3 (2012): 31–41.10.1215/01610775-1597602Search in Google Scholar
Dapp, Götz. Mediaclash in Political Theatre. Building on and Continuing Brecht. Marburg: Tectum, 2006.Search in Google Scholar
Gob Squad, and Johanna Freiburg, eds. Gob Squad und der unmögliche Versuch daraus klug zu werden. Berlin: Gob Squad, 2010.Search in Google Scholar
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Kelleher, Joe. Theatre & Politics. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
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© 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theatre and Politics: Theatre as Cultural Intervention
- Articles
- Intervention, Interaction, Insufficiency: Theatre’s Critical Repertoire?
- From Theatre & Everyday Life to Theatre in the Expanded Field: Performance Between Community and Immunity
- Between Homeland and Exile: Witnessing the Homo Sacer at the Heart of Hotel Medea
- Gob Squad’s Act of Rebellion – Revolution Now!
- Remixing Politics: The Case of Headphone-Verbatim Theatre in Britain
- Navigating New Patterns of Power with an Audience
- “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”: Staging Treatments of Riots in Recent British Theatre
- Bola Agbaje’s Off the Endz. Authentic Voices, Representing the Council Estate: Politics, Authorship and the Ethics of Representation
- Staging the unsayable: debbie tucker green’s political theatre
- (Sub)Versions of the Them/Us Dichotomy in Iraq War Drama
- Going Straight: The Politics of Time and Space in David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness
- New Plays of Ideas and an Aesthetics of Reflection and Debate in Contemporary British Political Drama
- Howard Brenton and the Improbable Revival of the Brechtian History Play
- “Surreal and unbelievable and fantastical”
- Reviews
- Elżbieta Baraniecka. Sublime Drama: British Theatre of the 1990s. CDE Studies 23. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013, x + 270 pp., € 82.95.
- Jeanne Colleran. Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses since 1991. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 241 pp., $ 90.00.
- Astrid Haas. Stages of Agency: The Contributions of American Drama to the AIDS Discourse. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011, 334 pp., € 38.00.
- Barbara Ozieblo and Noelia Hernando-Real (eds.). Performing Gender Violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, vi + 198 pp., $ 85.00.
- Patrick Duggan. Trauma-Tragedy: Symptoms of Contemporary Performance. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2012, ix + 214 pp., $ 88.00.
- Philip C. Kolin (ed.). Contemporary African American Women Playwrights: A Casebook. London and New York: Routledge, 2012, x + 207 pp., £ 80.00 (hardback, 2007), £ 28.00 (paperback, 2012), £ 28.00 (ebook, 2007).
- Helen H. Lojek. The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, x + 181 pp., £ 55.00 (hardback).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theatre and Politics: Theatre as Cultural Intervention
- Articles
- Intervention, Interaction, Insufficiency: Theatre’s Critical Repertoire?
- From Theatre & Everyday Life to Theatre in the Expanded Field: Performance Between Community and Immunity
- Between Homeland and Exile: Witnessing the Homo Sacer at the Heart of Hotel Medea
- Gob Squad’s Act of Rebellion – Revolution Now!
- Remixing Politics: The Case of Headphone-Verbatim Theatre in Britain
- Navigating New Patterns of Power with an Audience
- “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”: Staging Treatments of Riots in Recent British Theatre
- Bola Agbaje’s Off the Endz. Authentic Voices, Representing the Council Estate: Politics, Authorship and the Ethics of Representation
- Staging the unsayable: debbie tucker green’s political theatre
- (Sub)Versions of the Them/Us Dichotomy in Iraq War Drama
- Going Straight: The Politics of Time and Space in David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness
- New Plays of Ideas and an Aesthetics of Reflection and Debate in Contemporary British Political Drama
- Howard Brenton and the Improbable Revival of the Brechtian History Play
- “Surreal and unbelievable and fantastical”
- Reviews
- Elżbieta Baraniecka. Sublime Drama: British Theatre of the 1990s. CDE Studies 23. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013, x + 270 pp., € 82.95.
- Jeanne Colleran. Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses since 1991. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 241 pp., $ 90.00.
- Astrid Haas. Stages of Agency: The Contributions of American Drama to the AIDS Discourse. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011, 334 pp., € 38.00.
- Barbara Ozieblo and Noelia Hernando-Real (eds.). Performing Gender Violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, vi + 198 pp., $ 85.00.
- Patrick Duggan. Trauma-Tragedy: Symptoms of Contemporary Performance. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2012, ix + 214 pp., $ 88.00.
- Philip C. Kolin (ed.). Contemporary African American Women Playwrights: A Casebook. London and New York: Routledge, 2012, x + 207 pp., £ 80.00 (hardback, 2007), £ 28.00 (paperback, 2012), £ 28.00 (ebook, 2007).
- Helen H. Lojek. The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, x + 181 pp., £ 55.00 (hardback).
