BERRIES OF WRATH//INTERNATIONAL

A road trip through the social geography of Europe. Under the white plastic that covers the endless fields of southern Europe, we find large groups of an
anonymous underclass living, sleeping, eating, and dying, while picking our berries in hope of a better future. We are at the end of the long chain of transactions.
It all begins in the southernmost part of Europe, in a lawless parallel society of tent camps without electricity, no running water and wages below EUR 20 a day. It ends in the supermarket tempting us with cheap, fresh berries. The only thing we customers see is the berry. It is time to meet the berry picker! Inspired by John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer award-winning book – The Grapes of Wrath – we explore the socioeconomic inequality in Europe. We follow different Europeans simultaneously while tracking the berry from south to north: On stage is a recreation of a strawberry field and an attached tent camp in Spain. On a screen, we simultaneously follow a live-filmed car driving from Spain. In the car are the strawberries, used daily in the performance.A cast of North African, Danish, and Spanish performers reenacts situations from Steinbeck along with berry pickers acting themselves. They tell the Danish cast about their thoughts and what exactly happened to them. At the same time, they use lines and situations from the original Grapes of Wrath about grape pickers in California. The Moroccan berry pickers now begin to direct the Danish performers making them recreate the situations representing the Moroccans. They shout that we are inept and that we are worth nothing. We are spoken to as subhuman.

THE CONTEXT

“We prefer to challenge positions rather than taking up one specific. Our shows are investigations into our own and our audiences’ potential blind angles, ignorance, poorly informed assumptions and ideas. We are not into premade conclusions –  and part of our artistic projects involve audience participation and therefore are dynamic shows which will reveal its own truth or conclusion differently every night. Basically, what drives us is a curiosity and we like to think of ourselves as courageous in the sense that we don’t always present the most likable views and the most admirable gaze – but we allow ourselves to present the inconvenient in the understanding that this might make all of us more tolerable and wiser, if we dare look at the sometimes less presentable, less agreeable. We allow ourselves to be stupid in order to get wiser. And you will never find a know-it-all in our repertoire. We like to mirror the audience and the many gazes.

Having said that – our starting point is often the privileged one. As we dig into the route of the berry picker – we find it interesting, because we are not berry pickers. But the berry eaters. We can not escape where we come from and who we are – but we can be curious about the world; question it and our place in it.”

THE COMPANY: FIX & FOXY

Fix&Foxy has produced work for little more than a decade – theatre, performance art, social interaction, immersive installations etc. Their work is driven by curiosity and a desire to create complex narratives through playful, entertaining, and easily accessible formats while challenging our – presumptions and misconceptions about ourselves and the world we live in. By sharing stories about people who make up society and address the times, we live in, Fix&Foxy wants to engage with the world. Like us at CPH STAGE, they believe that performing arts play a vital role in society and can make a difference.

Fix&Foxy forms a team for each production and is privileged with a large group of creative artists.

INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY

“We globalize our practices from process to presentation; through anchoring special formats that use local casts; by touring and co-producing with international venues and including artists worldwide in
collaborative processes. We include digital tools in the development of formats and development of
working methods and creative processes. We create meetings across all sorts of borders. We are currently roaming in the North, Germany, UK, Spain, and France and squinting towards Eastern Europe and Canada and lately Asia as well, with no fatal geographic determination. Most importantly, we want to create great, fruitful relationships while cultivating the existing ones. We identify with being an international company – based in Copenhagen, Denmark. For this production – we are currently looking for international collaborators and co-producers.”

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CONTACT PERSON

Annette Max Hansen, annette@fixfoxy.com

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‍FORMAT AND SUSTAINABILITY

“We continuously develop tools that focus on expanding conversation and dialogue across borders of all kinds while reducing our physical footprint while leaving noticeable, artistic marks. It is in FIX&FOXY’s DNA to produce formats that can be anchored locally with local partners and local cast.
In this way, the performance remains relevant in its new cultural context and ensures identification with its new audience and at the same time we can travel and move easily with limited imprints. Without moving players and with no or limited scenography, we can present performances all over the world. We are major consumers of human resources, while limiting our material consumption.

We want to recycle by incorporating our concepts into a global context so that they can have long
meaningful lives. The recycling concept also concerns larger productions, where scenography is built in
viable, recyclable, and lightweight, transport-friendly materials. And we create works that become part of our repertoire and not created just to be staged once.”

LANGUAGE

English

TRIGGER WARNINGS

No trigger warnings

AUDIENCE TARGET GROUP(S)

12+

SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

We believe in theatre as a place where we can respectively meet each other on equal terms and with mutual respect based on a genuine interest in people who are not like us and perhaps do not share our beliefs. Working with a wide group of people such as war veterans, children, homeless people and physically challenged as part of our artistic practice, obviously diversity and inclusion is part of our company DNA. We continue to collaborate with special capacities, psychologists, and therapists to ensure that we employ the needed sensitivity in our practice.

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