Kampf des Negers und der Hunde - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Kampf des Negers und der Hunde

A corpse should be properly mourned and buried. The dead man in a West African settlement is Alboury's brother. But the corpse is not to be found, the mother of the dead will not be able to lay branches over him, as the rite prescribes. Alboury's brother died on the road construction site of a French company - a place that resembles a fort. A "white" place in a "black" country that blacks are allowed to enter only as laborers. The site manager Horn tries to cover up the accident that the black worker seems to have succumbed to. Was it really an accident? Cal, an engineer who has served too many pointless projects in countless developing countries, wants and can not blame. He takes refuge in cynicism and alcohol, fears for his dog, which the African "dog eaters" have captured and killed. Or did he himself rush the dog at the Africans?

Europe and Africa, white and black, man and woman, colonialist and colonized - Koltès' forty-year-old piece draws a world of contrasts whose significance seems to be firmly established today. At the same time it reveals its inevitable consequence: loneliness. What do terms such as progress and enlightenment mean? What oppression and threat? And: What are we really afraid of?

In the German translation of the play title Combat de nègre et de chiens is the word "Negro", which is avoided in today's parlance because of its discriminatory and offensive function. In this context, we have decided to graphically put that word down in order to distance ourselves from it, but still to write it out. In this word is expressed that in Koltès' piece is less about skin colors and more about oppression and exploitation. These power structures that stand behind the word and that persist until today are revealed and deconstructed in the play. The use of this word in the artistic context is intended to negotiate the eyesore of the European colonial past and its postcolonial present rather than masking it with a title change.

Subject to change.

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