Theater Log Book Term 2

In preparation for our political protest, my group and I decided that we would perform our protest in the foyer, where it is usually busy during certain hours of the day. Then, we wrote multiple questions in which we would later hold up during our protest. Some of the questions were: 'Would you sit next to me on the train', 'Would you trust someone dressed like me', and 'Would you marry someone like me'. Additionally, we came up with the idea to join ourselves to each other with a piece of string as a metaphor that we are all the same. We also then printed out several pictures that had a relation to the way we were dressed, this way when people were in contact with out protest, they would be able to understand even more who we are portraying ourselves as. Here are some pictures of how me and another group member were dressed, with an item or piece of clothing representing another culture.

Representing Culture.

Evaluation of Political Protest

What went well in the protest?: During our protest my group and I engaged with the public very well, as we included audience interaction and direct address towards the public, however, I did notice that sometimes the public would sometimes try to ignore contact when they are approached, probably because they thought that it seemed slightly weird. This reaction reminded me of Brecht's verfremdungseffekt, because the public seemed to have been confused with the idea, however it left them with questions which as a result left some of them wanting to engage and communicate to find out more. Additionally, another thing that I noticed during our protest was that the clothing we were all wearing had a strong effect on what the public thought of us. I noticed that it drew their attention towards us, and in fact they wanted our attention to take photos and ask us questions. This attracted people and it allowed my group and I to protest. In many ways the public being attracted to our costume related to our theme of protest which was 'against culture stereotype', as people tended to stare at us because of how we were dressed which was what we were protesting against,(judgement, inequality, stereotyping) because overall we are all just human. Furthermore, my group and I came up with a sentence that goes against stereotyping and judgement, which we expressed vocally together at the same time. The sentence we spoke aloud was 'Under the clothes, the hats, the cloth, we are all one body'. This caught everyone's attention which made them more attentive to listen and understand what we were trying to project to everybody. Lastly, another thing that worked well in our protest was the usage of posters and signs with questions. Once the public had read a question from each of us, they had an option to stick 'yes' or 'no' on us depending on whether they agreed with the statement or not. The Brechtian technique of audience interaction worked well in our protest because, the public seemed much more interested and were willing to find out more about our protest.
What didn't go so well in the protest?:  Something that didn't go so well in our protest was that some of the audience tended to walk away when I addressed them directly, so at times it was hard to get some people's attention. However, from this I learnt that people actually tend to avoid protests when there is just lots of shouting at the audience, therefore it has to be done in a way where the audience can take time to observe and acknowledge what we are protesting for/against, and then a member of the public can then be approached. Furthermore, the use of being connected with each other with the string had it's positives but on the negative side, it was hard for us to move around without the string tightening, so it sometimes caused us to lose some focus. Also, we had an idea of playing music that related to our cultures that we were representing, however as we were in a busy and quite loud area, the music didn't reach as far as we had wanted. On the other hand, we always acknowledged what we were aiming for and didn't let negatives rule the performance.
What could be improved?:   The things that we could have improved on in our protest was being a bit more organised. We could have done this by maybe having a few more meet-ups to talk about our ideas towards the protest. This links to the fact that our protest at times didn't have a stable structure, however from this I learnt that protests are not always necessarily structured how planned, because there is a public entitled to their own reactions and opinions therefore it could go either good or bad. Despite the fact, it could have improved if there was some sort of routine that we could follow so things would be slightly more organised. Backing the previous point, this reminded me of how Bertolt Brecht structured his performances as he enjoyed the idea of not having a linear structure in a performance. Lastly, I think that our protest could have included a more theatrical vibe towards it. With these things included properly in our protest, it would have improved lots more and probably would have been slightly more effective for us and the public too. 

Overall, we performed our protest well and included Brechtian ideas towards it like audience interaction. I learnt that when trying to get a point across, people will try to avoid contact or feel out of their comfort zone, this is similar to Bertolt Brecht's ideology because during performances, he didn't want the audience to sit in comfort and enjoy a performance behind a fourth wall but he rather wanted them to be left with questions and thoughts and he wanted them to be included. As a group we combined our ideas together and included many different ways of getting our protest publicized to the audience in an interesting way which captured our attention, so overall it was a success and I have realized how different people can react to certain things, so I've learnt lots from this experience.