Review: Ape army
Ape Army – financial market madness, trading, cryptos and a journey to Mars
Ape Army premiered at Studio Pasila on 27.9.2023. The play, written by Okko Leo, was described in the introduction as a carnivalesque satire that moves in the world of millennials in the jungle of cryptocurrencies and meme investing. Just as telling is the remark heard in the theatre lobby after the performance: “Three hours, I didn’t understand anything, but it was fucking good!”
Background to the play – what are diamond hands, for example?
Screenwriter Otto Leo has tackled a super interesting topic: how to get rich at the click of a button. Of course, this could also be summed up as how a group of small investors decided to join forces and shock the international financial markets. Or how a group of ordinary, mostly young people managed to make millions inspired by social media memes.
I often go to see a play without getting any additional information on the subject: let it come what is there to come. However, it was good that I had read the Helsingin Sanomat article and the City Theatre’s script in advance. I recommend the same to everyone, because you can get a better grasp of the play if you have at least read the vocabulary in the script.
YOLO: You only live once > You only live once. An international acronym and saying born from the millennials’ attitude to life, which is indifferent to the future.
Ape Army Handbook Glossary
The play is based on a real phenomenon that started a few years ago and revolutionized the world of finance. Individual investors met on the Reddit platform and started buying shares of GameStop (GME), which operates in the sunset industry, and as a result, the company’s share price skyrocketed, rising by 2700% during the year. This caused hedge funds that shorted the stock to lose 20 billion euros. Suddenly, a random social media group had the power to swing stock prices without any fact-based analysis. When someone came up with a meme funny enough for a joint investment attack, followers (read small investors) began to be found. The group is called wallstreetbets and according to the script, it now has about 14 million members.
Diamond Hands: Refers to holding on to a stock without worrying about losses. The diamond hand is also a kind of status, which describes the investor’s toughness, risk-taking ability, and belief that the value of the share will eventually rise.
Ape Army’s vocabulary
Millennials, Taivalkoski’s grandma and other overtures
The play focuses on two unemployed millennials, Janica (Anna-Sofia Tuominen) and Otto (Olli Riipinen), who are not interested in long-term plans such as owning a home or a career. Now the goal is a greater conquest of the world – or Mars. Of course, also with as little effort as possible. A suitable solution is investing, the start-up capital can be conveniently obtained from unemployment benefit and by going to the bench. Then you just pick up your mobile phone and the adventure can begin.
To make sure that the play doesn’t just follow Jannica’s and Otto’s placement patterns, Irmeli from Taivalkoski joins in, who plays to Night Line, led by Satoshi Nakamoto. The soothing voice inspires Irmeli to enter the realm of bitcoin. Both investment lines are followed in detail, and gradually the newer patterns of the financial world are becoming more familiar to viewers as well. At the same time, the terminology used in the sport is starting to catch on. Every line has either an English derivative word or a fuck, usually both. Some are twists like “callo’s pawalism”, some you have to google like NFT (non-fungible token).
On stage, we also see very stereotypical representatives of big business, their infiltrator Melvin, monkeys, miscellaneous characters, a copy of Elon Musk, theatre director Kari Arffman and the very best monkey, a meme DJ (Mikko Virtanen).
Boomers in the stands
Let’s start with the fact that according to the definition of the script, Martti and I are boomers, i.e. born between 1946 and 1964. The years of birth of millennials are listed as 1981-1996.
We boomers were very fond of the multi-layered play, its hilarity and freshness, and especially its millennial actors! The tight issue was served with brilliant energy and exhilarating exaggeration. The presentation was perfectly suited to the screens and video recordings, which were used to highlight related digital content. While the Doge is dancing, on the second teletext screen, Stora Enso closes the Sunila mill and the Church Information Centre’s website is gaping empty.
The play flowed with brisk intensity, 2 h 40 min (with intermissions) went by in an instant. The plot was set in 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Matrix and Alone on Mars. For a moment, I was annoyed when the elderly had been stereotyped as goofballs, but then I opened my eyes and realized that all the characters were over-the-top representatives of their stereotypes. Could there be more of a stereotypical investment banker than Melvin (Juho Uusitalo), who seemed to have been borrowed directly from Hanken’s Financing and Investment lecture?
The millennial line – Anna-Sofia Tuominen, Olli Riipinen, Juho Uusitalo, Mikko Virtanen – and Vappu Nalbantoglu, who was a couple of years older, were excellent in their roles. The speech was internalized, the stage presence strong and the skill admirable – BRAVO! I thought that the millennial chain is actors unknown to me, but after browsing this blog a bit, I found that they have all been praised before (see the list at the end of the article). Next time I’ll remember the names for sure!
Strong recommendation – you won’t regret this investment!
If you’re interested in a thought-provoking, time-bound play that is also exhilarating, then grab the masses and buy tickets to Ape Army!
The last performance of the play is already on November 14th, which is a shame, as this would be the perfect Christmas play, especially for all people interested in finances. Forget Occupy Mars, head to Studio Pasila!