A new play showing in Berlin has dramatised a 2023 incident in which an award-winning German ballet company director smeared his dog’s poo on a journalist who had consistently criticised his work.
Showing at Berlin’s annual drama festival Theatertreffen, its on-the-snout title does little to veil its inspiration and tries its best to capture the headlines: “Die Hundekot-Attacke” (The Dog Shit Attack).
At the heart of the play is an incident which occurred in February 2023, when award-winning German ballet company director Marco Goecke smeared his dachshund's poo in the face of dance critic Wiebke Hüster in response to what Goecke called years of “annihilatory criticism” from Hüster.
Die Hundekot-Attacke’s deeply self-referential plot follows a group of actors from Jena, Thuringia as they put together a piece that will catch the eye of critics and draw interest in their small-town theatre company, all narrated in “pseudo-documentary form”.
Addressing many of the same discussion points which bubbled up after Goecke’s attack on Hüster, the production takes to task the world of German theatre and art criticism, misogyny and violence against women.
From 690 pieces submitted to the Theatrertreffen festival, Die Hundekot-Attacke by the Wunderbaum theatre group made it into the programme of just 10 shown at the festival.
Explaining its selection, the Theatretreffen jury said that Die Hundekot-Attacke is more than the happenings at its core, “It is a show about power structures in the theatre and the genius cult, about the “both attractive and disgusting words dog faeces”. And above all, it is a show that challenges these issues and thus the art (and theatre) scene.”
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