Let's play I am old and tired
A live gaming theater with Total Refusal
Yes, we can. - Barack Obama
Sorry, too tired and exhausted - Slavoj Žižek
Live in front of the audience, TOTAL REFUSAL and the TiB create a tired hero who wants to lead a secluded life in the mountains of a video game - like in Henry David Thoreau's “Walden”.
Avatars, the main characters in video games, almost always lead the life of the young up-and-comer. They start out as insignificant nobodies and learn to dominate the world over the course of the game. Their toned bodies remain forever young and motivated, never becoming frail, insecure or ill. While more and more people in real life lack the strength to expose themselves to the political hopelessness and social hermeticism of capitalist realism, their alter egos in digital worlds can remain attentive and focused for hours on end.
Are these eternally young bodies, which know no decay, no listlessness, indeed usually even death as an irrevocable end, really suitable for giving us inspiration with their programmed “jamlessness”? What if the avatar goes through the game weak in decision making, old and without motivation - tired and exhausted by the excess of stimuli, impulses and information? What would be the superpowers of such a depressed, self-forgotten hero who is actually too tired to care about his quests?
Tiredness, exhaustion and burnout are omnipresent. They are the permanent symptoms of a permanently sick economic logic. A performance fascism. Outside of this work ethic, the video game becomes a safe space, a place of retreat. A delicious, reliable promise of happiness, where you always know that your need for distraction and adventure will be reliably satisfied. A home of the expected.
by and with
Jacob Banigan, Susanna Flock, Johanna Hierzegger, Lorenz Kabas, Robin Klengel, Moke Rudolf-Klengel
Concept and text
Theater im Bahnhof and Total Refusal
Set and live editing
Johanna Hierzegger
Technology and sound design
Moke Rudolf-Klengel
Lighting design
Martin Schneebacher
Modding
RCPisAwesome
Idea
Monika Klengel and Robin Klengel
Direction
Monika Klengel
World premiere on 11.09.2025 at 20:30 as part of the premiere festival NEWSOFFSTYRIA. Further performances from November 2025 in the Quartier Theater im Bahnhof.
Total Refusal and TiB in co-production with Theaterland Steiermark
in English and/or German
(We have our texts translated by DeepL)
