During a premiere at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, there was a disturbance and a physical assault on an actor on stage. Several audience members had previously voiced their discontent with the roughly ten-minute “monologue of a fascist” that appears toward the end of the play “Catarina, or The Beauty of Killing Fascists.” Eventually, two theatergoers allegedly tried to pull actor Ole Lagerpusch off the stage to end the monologue, according to a spokesperson for the theater. “There was physical contact.”
The incident occurred on Saturday during the German-language premiere of the piece in Bochum. Several media outlets had reported.
The play by Portuguese author Tiago Rodrigues has already been staged in several other countries and has provoked strong reactions from audiences there as well. “But it has never happened that audience members physically attacked the actor,” said a spokesperson for the Schauspielhaus Bochum.
In the closing monologue, a fascist head of government delivers a speech that grows increasingly radical, drawing on homophobia, racism, and misogyny. There were boos from the audience. “Yet the fascist does not back down; he keeps talking, and talking, until a chorus of jeers echoes through the hall. ‘Shut your mouth,’ one person yells, while another audience member counters: ‘That’s part of the game, you idiot,'” reports the WAZ of the premiere.
The actor remained uninjured
Two male theatergoers eventually rushed onto the stage and physically confronted the actor, the theater’s spokesperson said. A colleague came to his aid and managed to defuse the situation for the moment. The actor was not injured, and police were not called.
In a statement, the theater defended the production: “The Schauspielhaus Bochum understands itself as a place of artistic confrontation, where controversial topics and aesthetic challenges are debated.” The fact that an actor “had to endure physical attacks while performing his artistic work deeply shocked us; we consider this intrusion completely unacceptable.”
