Today we performed what we had created so far for our political protests, and received peer feedback in order to make the most effective piece for the public. From the one rough rehearsal we had, we began with three actors dancing, and then as one reaches out to interact with a viewer, another four of us (as doctors) lift her over to a table and carry out a physical theatre routine of restraining her and feeding her pills. The actress then slumps over a doctor and is carried back to her starting position to begin the sequence again. All the while the other two dancers perform their physical theatre routine using Skittles in plastic cups to indicate taking pills. The only words we used were the doctors saying ‘You want to get better’ and the patients replying ‘I want to get better’, so the whole thing was very surreal and open to interpretation. Upon getting feedback, the surrealism in fact was one of our protest’s weaknesses. In fact, the absurdist nature of the performance led to the subject matter being lost, and instead of people thinking it was about the ill-treatment of patients in mental health institutes, it was perceived as being about drug addiction. This was due mainly to the use of pills and it being seen as the central focus of the protest as the only prop. Secondly, with two separate physical theatre pieces going on at the same time the audience didn’t know where to look, and with poorly synchronised work, it was messy and bits were concealed from the audience by actor’s blocking at times. The pill cups were also kicked over and trampled - this was vital to know ahead of time considering we will perform in a busy school ground, and as they also distracted from the message, they were an entirely ineffective prop. However, we managed to create a routine that could loop successfully and could therefore be repeated for a changing audience, and I do think we have some good core ideas that just need to be refined slightly.
It was also really helpful to watch the protests of others and analyse what was effective and what wasn’t. Specifically, I realised that the use of signs in a protest is a rather uninspiring technique because sometimes your audience won’t be paying attention for long enough to read every single slogan. Secondly, live action will always be more eye catching than words; we need to consider this as we compete for audience interest on the day. What really stood out to me when I watched other groups was the use of ordinary objects like dustbins in making music. One group in particular did this by drumming on the side of a bin, and as well as it creating a solemn beat that was very atmospheric, it also grabs attention without invading the personal space of viewers by shouting or touching them. Stillness and slow-moving were also really effective, especially when coupled with moments of pace beforehand, so we all agreed that slowing the pace would improve our protest due to the feedback we received.
After this experience, we sat down and decided that by stripping our idea down to a very simple form, we could have a better and more concise protest. We then all acknowledged that this should be done just by focussing on face-down restraint instead of incorporating ideas with medication. This is especially because we have lots of research on the former, but nothing concrete for the latter, which could compromise the credibility of our protest! We want to stay with the use of one actor making a personal connection with an audience member and then being whisked away (as we did by carrying them to the table), as our feedback confirmed this was powerful in creating confusion for the audience. We want this confusion however to be the right kind, and for the audience to understand that we are showing people with mental health issues to be just like anyone else, except that the treating of them can be dehumanising. We will move forward with this idea by keeping to a core theme, that shies away from being abstract so that we can convey our message. This can be done by deciding on a few ‘frames’ or images of people being restrained and others saying in unison something like ‘I’m not a threat: I just wanted them to stop watching me’ mirroring the story of the women who was restrained after trying to leave the toilet. I think the repetition of the words ‘I’m not a threat’ could be really important because it highlights our focus on saying that the people using face down restraint are threatening; not the people being restrained. This way we can work with the stillness that we discovered was so effective, and we’ll have one visual ‘focal point’ that the audience can draw information from. The main thing we have to change is making our message clear, and this we will do in the next session by really stripping back our idea and keeping what was effective. All in all, the showcase was extremely beneficial to our group as we got the constructive criticism we need to devise with direction.
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