The third week of the great dance marathon Rave to the Grave is about to begin. Broadcast live, 24 hours a day, the show started with one hundred contestants; now only eight remain. They fight for a cash prize — and for recognition. The rules are simple: whoever stops, even for a moment, must leave the floor; whoever endures the longest will win 100,000 dollars and a chance to change their life.
The performance They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is an adaptation of Horace McCoy’s novel of the same title. It transposes the story of the Great Depression in the United States into the reality of late capitalism, the age of social media, mass pharmacology, and reality shows. The play observes contemporary young people entering adulthood, struggling with the hostile, dangerously accelerating world of the “society of fatigue.” It asks how a young person today finds themselves amid the extreme conditions of 24/7 productivity — and what price they must pay to survive. Are we, as Byung-Chul Han wrote, “too dead to live and too alive to die”?
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A graduation performance by the 4th-year students of the Acting Department.
The show contains intense strobe lighting, smoke effects, and loud music. It also includes strong language and references to suicide, sexual violence, and substance abuse.
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Photo: Grzegorz Piotrowski
