Intelligent and mindless satire
Okko Leo’s premiere play Ape army springs from meme investing, which became more widely known through the discussion site Reddit. There, small investors who found each other joined forces to buy huge amounts of undervalued stocks. The group, which calls itself monkeys, managed to make big profits and at the same time sway the stock market.
In the play, too, the global investment market and the global economy begin to falter when two unemployed millennials, Janica and Otto, invest their unemployment benefits in meme stocks.
“The phenomenon of meme investing is also about ordinary millennials feeling that their lives have no future, which manifests itself as a “just the same” attitude. Then you can start behaving against expectations and do absurd things,” says director Tuomas Rinta-Panttila .
In Ape army , the absurdity is taken to the extreme, and the end result is a carnivalesque satire that is both intelligent and unintelligent.
Meme aesthetics in
Ape army Rinta-Panttila became interested in an eclectic form in which a lot of things happen at the same time. Most of the time, all 11 actors are on stage, and music and video projections are used a lot.
In her previous works, Rinta-Panttila has tended to make symmetrical and precise stage images, while in Ape army , she has sought a chaotic atmosphere that would correspond to the short-lived world of the attention economy and the internet.
“This is not a well-made game that follows psychological arcs, but the performance plays with a meme aesthetic that is the aesthetic of cheapness, superficiality and quick sketches.”
Various memes are constantly projected on stage, and the hysterical meme show is run by Ape army’s chief monkey DJ.
“In antiquity, the choir acts as a commentator on stage events. Here, the monkey DJ acts as the same type of orchestra leader who comments on the events on stage with memes.”
For some viewers, memes may only appear as funny images, but young viewers who are dedicated to meme investing and who live in the reality of the internet can also read cultural references in them.
Joonas Tikkanen’s video design and Eliel Tammiharju’s sound design play a central role in the play. “To prevent this from becoming an awkward late-middle-aged tinkering with young people, I have wanted millennials to be the designers, who are part of the reference group and know the experience from which the work is made,” Rinta-Panttila says.
Economic Mechanisms
in Ape army Otto and Janica grow tired of the hegemony of the economy, where profits accrue to big business and investment banks, and start fighting big business.
“A small person versus a huge machine is a classic David and Goliath pattern. It opens up to all viewers, regardless of how familiar meme investing is,” Rinta-Panttila says.
In his opinion, the play also comments on the mechanisms of the economy, the idea of continuous growth and the overstimulated relationship with the economy in recent years.
“After endless acceleration, the play ends up being destroyed through hubris. If we think about the global situation and economy now, hubris is over and we are on the brink of a certain abyss,” Rinta-Panttila says.
He believes that satire can also make viewers think about what kind of world we live in or would like to live in.
“But I hope that such thoughts only arise after the performance, because the aim is to make a hilarious performance that sucks you in so strongly that you just follow the senseless frolicking on stage.”
Text by Ida Henritius.