Because of how they look, people with Down syndrome are sometimes pejoratively labeled ‘mongoloid’. In Monster Truck’s and Theater Thikwa’s Genghis Khan, three performers with Down syndrome take to the stage as traditional inhabitants of Mongolia. Dressed in thick fur coats, they parade across the stage and treat the public to ‘authentic Mongolian’ behaviour. A setting reminiscent of the ‘human zoos’ popular in Europe at the time Dr Langdon Down was making his discoveries. The performance plays with our judgements and prejudices concerning ‘the other’. It stirs up discussion about both colonialism and racism as handicaps. In this way, Genghis Khan creates space for shock and empathy, fear and fascination, projection and reflection.
Monster Truck was founded in 2005 in Giesen, Germany, and very quickly acquired a reputation for avant-garde installations and interdisciplinary approaches to theatre. Their work focuses on the examination of the spaces, images and structures that shape the social subconscious and alleged consciousness.

It is impossible to know whether the Thikwa actors are aware of what they are doing and whether there is an undertone of irony – this is one of the many clever elements of this exceptional evening of meta-theatre, evoking both uncertainty and sheer joy.
– Tanz

By & with: Sabrina Braemer, Jonny Chambilla, Manuel Gerst, Sahar Rahimi, Oliver Rincke, Mark Schroppel, Ina Vera
Dramaturgy: Marcel Bugiel
Music: Mark Schroppel
Production: Monster Truck
In cooperation: with Theater Thikwa
Coproduction: FFT Dusseldorf, Pumpenhaus Munster, Ringlokschuppen Mulheim & Sophiensaele Berlin
Supported by: Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs, Kunststiftung NRW, Kultursekretariat NRW, Rudolf Augstein Stiftung, LAG Soziokultur NRW, and Fonds Darstellende Kunste e. V.

Part of the program of the Polish-German jubilee year ŚWIĘTUJEMY! / WIR FEIERN! organized by the Goethe-Institut and the German Embassy in Warsaw on the 25th anniversary of the Polish-German Treaty on Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Relations. goethe.de/swietujemy