Friedrich Kirschner, what have you brought along?
This is a push button. We used a lot of them in Battle Royale, a mini-simulation of various social systems that we developed as part of the scene study “Hybrid Forms” for the Next Level Festival in Dortmund. We tend to think of buttons as fairly simple constructions, but when you work with them you realise that in fact they are sophisticated mechanical arrangements. Many of our productions include a tactile element. In Battle Royale the audience took on a number of roles, including those of workers, and they were meant to press buttons like this. Each click increased the GDP. The fact that this playful process could function as an illustration of work is also connected to the sound, and above all their tactile nature. Along with the costumes that the workers wore – welders’ masks and aprons – it hit that mid-point between “we’re working” and “actually we’re just tapping at keyboards”, between “you used to hear a click” and “now we just tap on screens”. That’s why it was important to use precisely this switch.
In participatory forms of theatre, switches can often be important when it comes to...