About the work
They Them Okocha is a play by Bonn Park, which he premiered himself in the 2024/25 season at Schauspiel Frankfurt (music: Ben Roessler). In 2025 it was invited to the 50th Mülheimer Theatertage. The title plays wryly on the Nigerian football star Jay-Jay Okocha and on the pronouns "they/them".
Plot
In this "socialisation drama", Noah-Wilhelm and his friends Cem, Jürgen A. and Jürgen D. pass through three exemplary phases of life — the inspiration-rich "childhood", the more exciting "puberty+" and the brief "rest". As if from the remotest deep strata, they dig up the generation-defining reference material of a West German childhood: Teletubbies, Lego and above all Jay-Jay Okocha's legendary 1993 "goal of the century" in the original commentary. Faced with a news situation that only ever looks "not good", Park meets the hollowed-out present with lucid humour and post-pop melancholic wit.
Cultural significance
Bonn Park, an idiosyncratic author-director of contemporary German-language theatre, achieves with They Them Okocha an artistic diagnosis of the times of rare quality: the portrait of a society that no longer grows up. His stage directions, left unspoken in the production itself, possess a literary quality of their own and made the 2025 Mülheim nomination also a tribute to silent reading.