The Arsonists
Recommended
This event is in the past
May 17βJune 3, 7:30 pm, ended Jun 3, 2019
Gallery Erato
Pioneer Square (Seattle)
$28
More from Our Arts Guide
In gearing up for The Horse in Motion's latest piece of immersive theater, The Arsonists by Max Frisch (translated by Alistair Beaton), director Bobbin Ramsey has been posing a moral quandary to her company members. "You're holding a burning match in your hand," Ramsey says. "What are you going to do? Put it out? Point it out and do nothing? Ignore it until it burns you? Or are you going to hold it to a drum of gasoline and blow everything up?" Each of the characters in Frisch's absurdist "morality play without a moral" assumes one of those positions in response to the incendiary activities of a group of political activists. Decades before the phrase "burn it all down" gained a certain ironic popularity in social-justice circles, Frisch, a Swiss playwright who wrote The Arsonists in 1953, was putting the idea to the test. Ramsey says this play asks, "Okay, if we're actually going to burn it down, then how do we hold the responsibility of that?"
by Rich Smith