The project LMWCL is a musical theatre performance based on songs from the new wave rock’n’roll album “Package deal” recorded in 1981. The backbone of the performance is made out of 17 songs recorded in a period when people believed that pop music can bring change to society. Thirty years later neoliberal capitalism brought us to the point where the world crumbles before our eyes producing countless collateral victims of the system. Music, theatre and art did not fulfill their promises about the changes in society. In the LMWCL new wave music experienced a radical transformation and became a repertoire of battle songs for the beginning of the 21st century. Punk rhythm and guitar riffs transformed into electronic dance hits speak of our reality in a politically incorrect way, without passed times nostalgia.
In the LMWCL performance the text is not spoken but sung. Thirty people in the performing collective were amateurs – deprived members of the Croatian society: Old People, Dykes, Workers, Serbians, Women, Blacks…and they were joined by professional performers. They were all united in the ‘’Choir of Little People” creating a new meaning for the populist empty phrase ‘’little man’’ in a society where the working class does not have self awareness or the necessity to self organize. ‘’Choir of Little People” spoke in a fighting energy about everything that repressed the ‘’little man’’: about brotherhood and union which ended in mass tombs, about war destruction, about the 90ies that dictated our present era, about the fascist currents in society, about capitalistic crisis…
The Choir’s performance is backed with a huge projection screen and other audiovisual content. Text from the original template is presented on the screen giving us a pornographic critique of our reality. The play unfolded a question of intellectual property which pushed music into the domain of capital. The play LMWCL therefore questions the concept of the society today, a society which has not justified the expectations of a better life.
