Commander

The unique production combines a physical theatre performance with live music and a film starring child actors to communicate an urgent, yet widely overlooked, topic – the online radicalisation of youth. The performers' dynamic movement, the pulse of live music, and disturbing images together create an unusual insight into the digital darkness that most of us are – perhaps intentionally – unaware of. The work incorporates authentic dialogues taken from real chats of an extremist online group that was run by a thirteen-year-old boy operating under the nickname “Commander.” 

In the film, we see these online dialogues transplanted into a new environment: children are saying them while being in common, everyday situations. This clash allows us to see these children from a new, striking, and highly unsettling point of view. The children’s conversations about sex, death, and hatred have a chilling atmosphere that balances on the border of absurdity, humour, and unease. On the other hand, the performance, by means of physical theatre, depicts a company of immature adults who play their lives like a game, uncovering the hidden patterns that enable radicalisation to occur in the first place.

The production bears the distinctive artistic signature of the Farm in the Cave ensemble. Both parts – the physical and the audiovisual – were created by a team led by Viliam Dočolomanský. The work of the internationally acclaimed physical theatre ensemble Farm in the Cave combines physical theatre, video, film, and live music into a unified work of art and has long been engaged in exploring contemporary and neglected social issues. In 2022, the ensemble celebrated the 20th anniversary of its existence.