THE EXCLUSIVE HOUSE

– a feminist, anti-capitalist, performative attack on Western neocolonial power structures through the use of knowledge, care, laughter, solidarity, dance, anger, song, poetry, and other subversive behaviors.

The history

Late one evening in Copenhagen, four women are sitting in their respective hotel rooms, browsing the internet. They have just returned from the conference Leadership and Governance organized by the World Economic Forum. Now they’re searching for information that can explain how resources flow from the Global South to the West, and how those resources become cash flows circulating in closed loops among rich countries. They imagine invisible electrical signals working beneath the asphalt of European cities; they stare at numbers and graphs—four women—all with both Danish and non-Western backgrounds.

The internet connection is unstable, and the women keep getting disconnected, but because they keep searching, they slip into a time warp—specifically, to the Berlin Conference on February 26, 1885, when the European countries drafted the rationale that gave them the right to divide Africa into colonies among themselves.

The women are reading, and as they read, they imagine how it all happened; and as they imagine it, they slip into that room where 22 men are seated around a dark mahogany table, signing an agreement. None of the men have heads, and yet they speak.

One of the women is surprised when she hears the same words a Danish politician used in his speech at the conference: “With its new Africa strategy, the government has come to realize the importance and potential of Africa. It has realized that it is crucial for Denmark to be involved…” One of the other women looks at the large map of Africa hanging above the mahogany table. She looks at Ghana and is reminded of the Danish frigate Esbern Snare, which was sent to the Gulf of Guinea in 2021 to protect Danish merchant ships from piracy. It strikes her that Denmark has been there before—namely, 300 years earlier, in connection with the transatlantic slave trade.

It is the past, but it is also the present, for we find ourselves in a vacuum where time flows together, where historical events repeat themselves in new guises, and where the prevailing set of rules is the expectation of economic profit. A connection is beginning to form between these four women.

Why This Performance?

Leading economists and social commentators are questioning the capitalist system. They point to growing inequality and discuss how the pursuit of endless growth and profit can be changed, how to mitigate the increasing inequality among people and the overexploitation of natural resources, and they are working to develop viable alternatives.

In this context, we will stage the play in the spring of 2027 The Exclusive House, which is about four women’s desire to break away from Western society, intangible cash flows, and isolation, and their inner search for a different, more human way of being in the world—a journey through both time and space. The performance is about resistance, strength, and unraveling invisible systems of power, but it is also about survival strategies, love, care, and hope.

Together with a team of performing artists from diverse ethnic backgrounds and a critical, research-based advisory group, we are working with *The Exclusive House* to challenge Western capitalism.

For many years now, the Olske Orchestra has explored Danish and European colonial history and its significance for the West’s narrative of itself. The latest performance The Wandering Human was about Denmark’s colonization of Greenland and the neocolonial structures that still exist in the relationship between the two countries.

With The Exclusive House , we continue our decolonial focus—this time from an anti-capitalist global perspective.

Supporters

The Danish Arts Council’s Project Support Committee for the Performing Arts
The Knud Højgaard Foundation
The Henrik Lyding Memorial Fund
The George Jorck and Emma Jorck Foundation
The Grete and Sigurd Pedersen Foundation
The William Demant Foundation
Production Grants from the Danish Actors’ Union

Credits

Cast: Meleat Fredriksson, Ross Mangal Khan, Angelina Kirchhoff, Katrien van der
Velden, Øyvind Kirchhoff
Playwright and Director: Lotte Faarup
Set Designer: Rolf Søborg Hansen
Lighting Designer: Emil Wardeh
Sound Designer: Jonas Jørgensen
Graphic design: Therese Buch-Andersen
PR: Lena Hedegaard, Art Attack
Project Manager: Charlotte Rindom