I want revenge, grandma, created and performed by Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald, was restaged on 17 and 18 January 2026 at Sophiensæle as part of the 35th Tanztage Berlin. The piece addresses European colonial violence in Africa.
After the performance, I go to the online catalogue of the Humboldt Forum. Under the section titled “Ethnological Collection,” I click on “Africa.” There, I find images of various ancestral masks from eastern Liberia. It feels absurd to know that these spiritual and sacred objects are behind glass at a museum in Berlin. I am thinking of the scene in I want revenge, grandma, in which Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald, an artist with Kpelle (Liberian) roots, appears on two video screens hanging above Sophiensæle’s Festsaal stage. The video shows a door labeled “Afrika,” and behind it, sterile-looking white shelves archive objects from Africa. We see Fitzgerald’s face screaming. Her recorded voice says that whiteness and extraction are linked.
Onstage, Fitzgerald lies still and quiet on a mound of dark brown soil as the voiceover, coupled with documentary footage from the mid 1960s, explains the destruction brought to Liberia by what she calls “ignorantly blissful white life”—referring to the German mining project, Bong Mining Company (1958–1990), which destroyed the mountains of an indigenous village in Liberia. “White life has a way of thriving in the midst of destruction, especially if the destruction benefits them,” she says, accompanied by scenes of plowed down forests. She speaks of a burning anger within her, waiting to explode.
In the following live dialogue with the spirit of her grandmother, Fitzgerald unapologetically describes the kinds of revenge she desires. She declares that she wants to be evil like the white people and make them her slaves, become obese and have them carry her around, push a knife through one of their chests… She asks if her grandmother also fantasized about taking revenge, if she imagined wrapping her fingers around the thin neck of a white man. Witnessing Fitzgerald express her fury in such an undiluted way feels cleansing. It is a dense rage passed down for generations. One who listens carefully would hear the ancestral masks at the Humboldt Forum whispering the same words.
Just like the way the performance began, it ends with what Fitzgerald names as “Kpelle dance”: upbeat and quick patterns of steps, arms gesturing smoothly up, down, and out, and joyful, rich facial expressions. Before this final dance, she invites all audience members to come closer, onto the stage. Once we encircle her, she explains that this will be a moment of interpersonal reparation, meaning those who have caused the most harm pay back to those who have been most harmed. To enact this, she asks the audience—without singling out white people—to bring cash and place it on the soil. Her assertion of power, directing the audience to go get their wallets and give money, moves me. Once many coins and a few bills have been placed on the soil, Fitzgerald performs the dance, occasionally throwing soil and money toward us. Some white audience members jerk back as the soil flies their way. I notice the faces of Black audience members lighting up. Some stomp their feet and cheer.
This evening, standing together on the land Fitzgerald describes as one where white people enjoy comfort and wealth built on generations of African exploitation, we engage in a communal ritual to acknowledge the colonial violence—both past and present.
I want revenge, grandma, by Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald, was shown on 17 and 18 January 2026 at Sophiensæle as part of the 35th Tanztage Berlin.
