Our Other Ogan is a one man show (almost) written and performed by Boaz Barkan.  It was originally designed specifically for the old anatomy theatre at the medical school in Copenhagen.  For the performance at SummerWorks we have to imagine the black box of the Incubator as an amphitheatre with busts of Galen and Hippocrates looking down at the anatomist and his subject.

Barkan is there to introduce us to a new organ; the one where our racism resides.  To this end, on the table he has the very tall and very scantily clad Dane, Joel Degerfeldt.  Barkan intertwines his demonstration of the form and function of the other organ with the story of his Jewish family over the generations from Tsarist Russia through the Holocaust to present day Israel showing how the tentacles of the other organ absorb anti-Semitism and ultimately regurgitate it as the lack of empathy that makes contemporary genocide and ethnic cleansing possible.

He does this with a very light touch and the most surprising thing about the show is how funny it is.  There are many laugh out loud moments which seem to sit quite comfortably  with some very uncomfortable ideas.  Nobody actually gets dissected of course but there is a lot of fake blood as the implications of all we have heard become more apparent.  It’s a riveting 55 minutes and I highly recommend it.

Our Other Organ is presented by NoLands in the BMO Incubator at The Theatre Centre as part of SummerWorks.  It runs until August 13th.

Photo credit: Jacob Tekiela