Mercenary looks at what it takes to build the World Cup dream (Image: Andreas Gebert, Alamy Live News)
When: 21st – 23rd June 2018, 7.30pm
Where: Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, London SW11 5TN
£: Tickets cost £15 or £12.50 for concessions. All tickets for this show are standing tickets
What is it?
In 2022, Qatar will stage one of the biggest spectacles the world has ever seen; the FIFA World Cup. It’s a phenomenon shrouded with hype even in its construction and as the huge stadiums emerge from the sandy terrain, so do the stories of mass exploitation of a diverse migrant workforce.
Travelling across Qatar, Nepal and Sri Lanka, performance-maker and footballer Ahilan Ratnamohan expected to come face to face with the reality of what it takes to build our global World Cup dreams. Through interviews with the workers themselves, he glimpsed behind the Western media headlines and into the lives of those on the ground, discovering that much like the beautiful game itself, the truth is often a fallacy.
Ahil Ratnamohan’s Mercenary (Image: Elisa Nocentini)
Mercenary is a collaboration between Ahilan Ratnamohan, a Sri Lankan-Australian footballer-artist now based in Antwerp, and Mutamassik, an Egyptian-Italian-American musician.
The performance features Ratnamohan’s distinctive football-dance movement seen in his LIFT 2014 production, Michael Essien I want to play as you …, fused with Mutamassik’s trademark first-generation, punk jaw, electronic pan-African derivatives.
More info: www.bac.org.uk
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