Mike Bonanno

Regie, Performance & Kollaborateur*in

Do you believe in the effectiveness of protest?
Protest works. Sometimes if doesn’t feel like it, but you have to take a long view to see how many failures lead to success.

If you would have to choose: Love, play or fight?
I start with the love and the play follows. Fighting is not my thing.

How do you protect yourself?
I like to use humor to protect myself. However, not everyone gets the jokes.

What do you learn primarly in theater?
Before learning anything in theater I had to learn that I was making theater. It was not clear to me until someone told me. So I learned that theater is a thing you can make without knowing it.

Is a revolution necessary?
A non-violent revolution is badly needed to derail planet-destroying capitalism before our own culture eats our future.

What are you afraid of?
I am afraid of the chance that revolution does not happen. I am also scared of my ex wife.

Biografie
Igor Vamos, geboren 1968, ist Polit- und Medienaktivist, und als Mike Bonanno gemeinsam mit Andy Bichlbaum seit bald 20 Jahren Teil des US-Amerikanischen Kommunikationsguerilla-Duo The Yes Men. Mit ihrer Methode, sich als Vertreter einer Organisation (Repräsentanten der Welthandelsorganisation, Halliburton oder Exxon Mobile) auszugeben und die Medien zu nutzen, um deren Strategien zu entlarven, sowie den daraus resultierenden Filmen «The Yes Men», «The Yes Men are Revolting» und «The Yes Men Fix The World» hat das Duo nicht nur Mediengeschichte geschrieben, sondern auch real-politische Konsequenzen provoziert. Vamos lehrt als Professor für Medienkunst am Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. «They Shoot Horses, Don’t They» ist seine erste Arbeit im Theater.