Fight Night, ArtsEmerson

The last time I trusted America to use their vote wisely was when Kelly Clarkson won Season 1 of American Idol. My experience at Fight Night this past weekend reaffirmed my belief that the American people are still not to be trusted.

Fight Night is the brainchild of Belgian performance troupe Ontroerend Goed. It is a live-action “choose your own adventure” of sorts—an interactive theatrical experience meant to model the democratic voting process. There are five candidates, and each round, someone will be eliminated until there is only one candidate still standing. Each audience member is given a voting device at the start of the performance and, through a series of questions and guided prompts, will anonymously vote to decide which of the five candidates will ultimately reign victorious. It is highly improbable that any two shows will have the same outcome; it is all dependent on the who and the where. A crowd in Ghent, Belgium, for example, would not vote the same as a crowd in Boston, Massachusetts—which is where I personally got to experience Fight Night.

The five candidates are presented to us, and without even learning their names, we are immediately asked to vote for our favorite, with their physical appearance functioning as the sole criterion for the outcome. With stiletto pumps, bright red hair a la Loud era Rihanna, and an ineffable aura of confidence radiating from her without uttering a single word, Candidate #1 (who we would later find out is named Julia) was my winner from the get-go. The majority of the audience seems to share this opinion with me, seeing as Julia goes on to win the first round of voting—the “do judge a book by its cover” round. She is followed by Prince, Aurelie, Bas, and, in last place by a significant margin, Michael. The two people of color in the cast are leading the poll and the two white men are at the bottom. We’re off to a strong start, I think.

Next, we get to learn a little bit more about the candidates as they take turns introducing themselves, starting with the most popular (Julia, of course) and the least popular (Michael). Julia proves to be just as confident and charismatic as she looks. She is personable, intelligent, and incredibly well-spoken—a candidate I can fully get behind. Michael, on the other hand, is more playful, utilizing self-deprecating humor to his advantage to earn both laughs and sympathy from the audience. Aurelie, Prince, and Bas follow suit, imbuing their introductory monologues with a similarly overt sense of silliness, and I begin to realize that this experience is not as serious as I thought it was going to be. Fight Night is a comedy, a satire, a straight-up lampoon of the democratic voting process.

The host asks the candidates, “who do you think will be voting for you tonight?” Aurelie and Bas, two conventionally attractive white people, respond “men” and “women” respectively, citing their looks as reasoning. Before giving her answer, Julia scans the crowd, evidently taking mental notes of its makeup. “White people,” she says after a prolonged moment of silence, resulting in an eruption of laughter from the predominantly white crowd. Finally, a comedic moment from her—not all hope is lost.

But when the time comes to vote again, Julia loses her lead from the first round, finding herself in third place. Michael wins the audience over with his comedic appeal and sneaks into first place, with Prince following distantly behind in second place. Aurelie is in fourth place, and Bas is in last place with a scant number of votes. Then, the host announces a twist: candidates can partner up with each other to combine their votes and secure their spots in the next round. Michael and Bas team up (shocker—the two white men gravitate toward one another), and Prince joins forces with Aurelie, leaving Julia on her own and, thanks to this extremely convoluted and unfair twist, in last place. Thus, she is unceremoniously eliminated from the game. Needless to say, I am quite upset by this. This is not the outcome voted for—nor did the rest of the audience.

The following round finds the audience voting for the qualities they want in a leader, not knowing which candidate represents which quality. There are positive qualities (trustworthy, respectful, etc.) and negative qualities (a little bit racist, a little bit sexist, etc.) to vote for. At the end of this round, Bas takes the lead, most accurately representing the ideal leader for the majority of the audience based solely on his personality traits. Aurelie is in last place and, like Julia in the previous round, is eliminated. Both women in the cast are out first; Fight Night certainly does not pass the Bechdel Test.

We are left with three cisgender, heterosexual men upon entering the next round: the debate round. None of the remaining candidates particularly thrive in this debate format, each one simply talking around the question instead of directly answering it (much like a real presidential debate), but I just know Julia would have swept the floor with her competition if she were still present (yes, I am still bitter about her elimination). They each provide a closing statement—one final chance to plead their case—before the audience votes again. Prince places an emphasis on unity; he strives to earn a whopping 100% of the vote by reminding us that we all have more similarities than differences and that this is a chance for us to come together as one entity and, for once, agree unanimously on something. Bas instructs us to vote for the candidate we feel best represents us, even if that isn’t him.

Michael, the undeniable wild card of the group, throws a curveball at us. “Do not vote,” he tells us, subsequently positing himself as the most radical of the candidates by arguing that we cannot change this deeply flawed system if we play by its rules. He urges his supporters to surrender their voting devices and join him on stage in protest. A large portion of the crowd actually did—including myself. I did not have any ties to Michael (or any of the remaining candidates, for that matter), but because I was already jaded by the election process following Julia’s elimination, I was grateful to have this outlet to express my resentment. This causes a discouraged Prince to drop out of the competition; he obviously cannot earn 100% of the vote if there are people who are not voting.

Bas, who is now effectively the victor of the election, asks the audience to vote for whether or not the protestors should be removed from the theater. The audience votes “yes,” and we, the protestors, are moved out of the theater and into another space in the venue for the remainder of the show. Michael desperately tries to assure us that we are the real winners for standing up to the system while we listen to Bas’s acceptance speech through a speaker in another room, exiled from the rest of the crowd for daring to challenge the status quo.

Although I was dissatisfied with the results of Fight Night, the overall experience was absolutely unforgettable. It was unlike any other performance I’ve ever attended in terms of how interactive it was and how accurately it reflected the actual democratic voting process—albeit through a more playful, lighthearted lens. There is never an outcome that will please everyone, and the strongest, most forward-thinking candidates almost never make it to the end. On the brink of a highly contentious presidential election where tensions are at an all-time high and voting feels like being forced to begrudgingly choose between the lesser of two evils, Fight Night feels more resonant than ever—even without veering into legitimate, controversial, hot button political territory at any point.