The starting point of BIKINI DEMOCRACY is a fictional situation taken from the piece by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Blood on the Cat’s Neck, in which an alien comes to Earth to study democracy. The concept of democracy is clear and taken for granted today and nobody ever questions it. However, imagining an alien who needs to be shown what democracy is gives us a chance to examine the whole idea all over again. BIKINI DEMOCRACY disturbs the deeply rooted ideas about the world and the system to which we belong by asking a simple question: Is democracy as we know it the best of all options?
This fictional story is the starting point of a theatrical experiment which first and foremost poses the following question: Can theatre change any aspect of society for the better? BIKINI DEMOCRACY goes beyond the limits of a theatre performance and turns into a kind of activist and political platform in which all participants on equal footing discuss the burning issues of local community as well as current issues in all western democracies. At the end of this experiment, the "theatre plenum", made of spectators and performers, through the procedures of direct democracy passes decisions which are announced to the public in form of manifesto. This is how BIKINI DEMOCRACY examines the impact of theatre on reality, but also discloses its weakness when it comes to solving the very problems it addresses. BIKINI DEMOCRACY is directed by Borut Šeparović and produced by Kosztolányi Dezsõ theatre.
