We the 1%
THE MOST WEALTHY ARE INVITED BY FIX+FOXY INTO OUR PERCEPTION OF THEIR LIVES
They live in ghettos. Predominantly spending time with others, who share the same cultural values. Their children are enrolled into special schools and they don’t wish to contribute to the larger community.
The most wealthy among us are invited by fix+foxy into our fictionalised version of who they are and how
they live. In a performance that deals with vulnerability of being extremely rich and isolated from the rest of society.
Then, there is a knock at the door: It’s the underclass.
We the 1% is produced in collaboration with Theater Republique / Revolver, and is supported by Danish
Arts Foundation, Beckett-Foundation, Knud Højgaards Foundation, Østerbro Lokaludvalg, Danish Actors’
Association and Axel Muusfedts Foundation.
The show was first performed August 25th – September 18th 2021 at Revolver, Østerbro Teater in
Copenhagen.
Previous tours:
24-27 April 2023, Teater Nordkraft
12 June 2023, Musikhuset Aarhus
“It is pure theater magic that we can actually one moment regard the rich Jesper as an exotic animal in a zoo, and the next we fully feel his discomfort”
POV, International ★★★★★
“Fix & Foxy is brave, We the 1% brave theater and bravely staged because it can go wrong, the actors are brave to participate, and it speaks its own intrusive and explosive stage language. Also in the new decade, it is some of the best that Danish theater can offer. “
Politiken ♥♥♥♥♥
“This performance evolves around two central characters: a selected rich man (new every night) and then the actress Maria Rich, who is eminent in her innocent seeming improvisation.”
Kulturkupeen ★★★★
“Tue Biering has created a realistic civic performance that both provokes and qualifies the conversation about the divide between rich and poor.”
mortenhede.dk ★★★★★★
“… Some of the most moral and socially debating theater I have seen in many years.”
Børsen ★★★★
We the one % is a co-production with Revolver, Copenhagen.
Cast Maria Rich
Director Tue Biering
Set and costume designer Karin Gille og Marie Rosendahl Chemnitz
Lightdesigner Karl Sørensen
Sound designer Janus Jensen
Dramaturge Aljoscha Begrich
Consultant Sascha Kempinski
Caster Naomi Aisen Sattrup
Stage Manager Signe Lausen og Rose Marie Jul Lerstrup
Props coordinator Therese A. Jensen
Production Manager Jesper Sønderstrup
Chief Carpenter Rasmus Rahbek
Head of Costume Christina Seistrup
Producer Karoline Michelsen
International producer Annette Max Hansen
Curator and Artistic Director at Revolver Rikke Hedeager
Photo Søren Meisner
Backstage
Excerpt from Tue Biering’s “Hostages of me”:
The Ultimate Encounter
Over the years, we have worked on all our blind spots. We have invited everyone on stage.
We have worked with the vulnerable, those who rarely get a voice, those who are overlooked, and also those with whom we disagree.
However, there are some who someone like me always sees as the bad guys, the ones who are to blame for the way things are. Those who have created imbalances in the systems. We have created many representations of them, but never met one of them ourselves or given them a place on stage. They are very exotic, and also keep to themselves or with others who look like them. They are the very richest in society.
We wanted to do a show about how exposed a position it is to be rich. We would invite the rich in and announce our many images about them. Every night a very rich person would come on stage. Some own thirty million kroners, others more than a billion. What they all have in common is that they don’t want to appear in public in the media, but they want to step onto a stage and meet an audience at eye level and talk about their experience of being particularly privileged and distanced from the rest of society.
In WE THE 1% (2021), an actor engaged in a choreographed dialogue with the rich, trying to make them live up to our notions of rich people. An installation of the world of the rich was built around them, with designer furniture, lobster, champagne and symbols of the upper class. In the end, the rich were caught up in our imagination of them. However, it turned out that the rich are also people for whom one can feel sympathy, and so the situation was exacerbated when a homeless person entered the stage. A meeting between society’s poorest and richest is a very rare encounter, and we can see how uncomfortable the situation became for the rich. Later, more homeless people, drug addicts, criminals, indebted people arrived. They intruded the stage and eventually took over the rich men’s , removing everything before our eyes and before the eyes of the rich. Meanwhile the actor speaks the line, “people like us love to see people like you being dragged through the ringer and brought down to the level of the rest of us.”
We’ve got what we wanted and we’ve happily watched. Until a live video from Moldova flashed up on the back wall. Here, a family sat in a kitchen and now started asking the audience how we feel about being much more privileged than them, about being among the 1% richest in the world and about, how we would feel about losing our privileges.
The performance was once again not about those on stage, but about the audience, who were now put in the uncomfortable position of being the privileged ones.
Backstage:
Picture 1:
In-ear technician and director’s assistant Mathias Sauers working station backstage (2021)
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Picture 2:
Director Tue Biering, set & costume designer Marie Rosendahl Chemnitz and producer Karoline Michelsen at the closing party at Revolver in 2021.
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Rest of the pictures (3-16):
Pictures of the new run of WE THE 1% at Teater Nordkraft, 2023.
