The case of a German ballet director who attacked a critic with faeces has loosely inspired a satire about the relationships between creators and critics
Among the spikier offerings at this year’s Theatertreffen, the annual festival of drama in Berlin, is a play whose dramatis personae may ring familiar. There is an angry ballet director, a female reviewer who gives his show a critical mauling and an adjacent dachshund. Their paths converge in the same lurid way as happened in real life last year, when the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, Marco Goecke, attacked dance critic Wiebke Hüster with dog excrement in response to a negative review.
Die Hundekot-Attacke (“the dog poop attack”) is conceived by Dutch company Wunderbaum and devised by an actors’ collective from Jena. The play has a plot that features a group of actors from Jena devising a provocative play based on a real-life hundekot-attacke, in a desperate bid to draw critics to their provincial theatre – a big idea from a small-town ensemble.
