Commander

One evening – two art forms. One topic – two worlds. An audiovisual projection with child actors and physical theatre featuring adult performers.

A unique production, Commander 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 combine to create an unusual insight into the digital darkness of which most of us – perhaps intentionally – are unaware. The work incorporates authentic dialogues taken from the 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 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 create a chilling atmosphere on the borders of absurdity, humour, and unease. Through the medium of physical theatre, the performance, on the other hand, 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.

An international theatre ensemble, Farm in the Cave has evolved from a "theatre laboratory" into an engaged ensemble whose original work transcends various art forms and even art itself. Farm in the Cave delves into its topics through the lens of various artistic approaches and educational formats and isn’t afraid to hack the usual ways of thinking to deliver new insights into what’s happening in our society and new ways of understanding individual art forms.

Since 2018, Farm in the Cave has been in permanent residence at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, which shares their courage to express their views on burning issues through art and transcend the established borders of the cultural world.

Awards

Commander (film), Best Educational Short Film, Prague International Film Festival 2022