The Powerless

The Powerless is a documentary performance by Barbara T’Jonck, Martha Balthazar and May Abnet about the sense of powerlessness among the people in power. Trigger warning: capitalism is harmful to health“What is power? Waw, yes, it’s a zillion things: it’s your title, but more so it’s who you know, what you know, what you own, who you sleep with, how many languages you speak, what yoga studio you go to, where your kids go to school, … It’s knowing when to comply and when to contest. It’s not to be understood as one thing… Of course, power needs our consent. It relies on the unspoken. We construct it collectively and that makes us all powerless and powerful at the same time. We have a say in it, but at the same time, when you're in these places of power, the moment you stop consenting, you lose your power, you're out. So you need to go along.”*The Powerless is a documentary performance by Barbara T’Jonck, Martha Balthazar and May Abnet about the sense of powerlessness among the people in power. It’s a search for how responsibility and liability work and are experienced within the ‘ruling class’ – and for who exactly that ruling class is today. The performance draws from in-depth interviews with dignitaries from the ‘EU bubble’ to create a vivid picture of the estrangement of power. In a monologue that feels like a drinks reception that got out of hand, the audience is guided through these conversations. With the central question: who is really the boss?*This passage was taken from our interviews, conducted according to the Chatham House Rule: all information from a conversation can be used as long as the identity of the speaker or their link to the subject is not revealed. This allows people to speak freely as individuals rather than as dignitaries