As We Like It

The perpetual advocates of the free market like to praise its efficiency. The free market regulates itself, they say, it brings jobs and wealth, in short: it’s the only system that really works. Let’s set something anachronistic against that statement of “it really works”, let’s counter it with a plan, the central plan of this piece. It enters the stage, a huge volume with thick pages and a shiny cover and it contains everything that is going to happen. It promises work and entertainment and its implementation requires co-ordination and collaboration among the audience.

Then the audience is divided: lobbying groups, spectators and secret societies are created, groups of artists enter, stands are built, officials talk, saboteurs act. Workflows are repurposed to register the dissolution and regeneration of political societies against the background of the call to action. Should the plan turn out to be unfeasible, it will still prevail as fiction and thus as an alternative to the belief that everything is only made of work.”

ScriptedReality is an open collective searching for strategies to remain true to the promises of art by meeting it with scepticism. Their method involves slowness and the smoothing of scenes, a repurposing of formats and media and the formation of theories. The group is interested in bad acting and didactic plays, plans and situations, bizarre narratives, parodies and the relations of production. Its members come from different contexts but met at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen, Germany.