Fight Night begins with a sinister host emerging from the shadows of a set resembling a boxing ring. “Friends, voters, audience, lend me your ear,” he intones, evoking a much older play about the perils of picking leaders. Five actors materialize.
Or rather, candidates. One is a young Black woman with stylish, scarlet hair that matches her turtleneck sweater. One is a middle-aged white man, short and grumpy.
Another white man is Kennedy-handsome, tailored and lean. A white woman wears a surprisingly short skirt and a semi-transparent blouse. A Black man with long dreads smiles cheerfully.
Over the course of the next 90 minutes, they appeal to audience members to choose them. Each audience member is given a small device that allows them to anonymously vote for the candidates in different rounds and answer questions that range from age, to income, to qualities most valued in a leader. Fight Night premiered to great acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013.
It’s toured the world since then, with performances in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, Australia and Hong Kong. The current U.S.
tour includes upcoming stops in Durham, N.C., Minneapolis and Santa Barbara, Calif.
Angelo Tijssens plays the sinister emcee and is part of the Belgian theater group Ontroerend Goed. The group created this show, under the direction of Alexander Devriendt, after a real-life political crisis that paralyzed the country. “We spent 541 days without a federal government in Belgium,�.