Today we performed our protest in front of our school. Overall I am very pleased with our journey from the first showcase in front of classmates, to the informed and considered presentation we gave today!
The actors playing patients were very successful at gathering crowds to play the game we had designed, and I was often quite surprised at how many people were lined up on the start line when we as Doctors turned around! This meant that we could build on the atmosphere of fun and community before the violent contrast of restraining the patients. Furthermore, in some feedback we were given, a participant confirmed that having audience interaction was effective and got people to really take in the whole protest instead of giving it a glance and moving on. The time we spent really synchronising our movements paid off to a great extent, as it added to the clinical feel of the performance and gave us greater ‘stage presence’ as a cast because our powerful movements turned heads.
 |
| Taken from Google images - The original 'Grandma's Footsteps' |
In terms of the props we used - the tally chart and the postcards given out at the end - both were very effective in carrying out the final explanation of our cause, and helped people who didn’t quite get the gist from our physical routine. In fact, I even heard people say ‘Oh’ in understanding when they saw the three doctors add to the tally chart named ‘Number of Inappropriate restraints’ at the end of the piece. The use of black paint also confirmed my premonition that it would make the whole protest grotesque and visceral, and as the piece looped over and over, the patients became more and more tainted by the oily liquid and this foreshadowed the danger that the doctors were, as our hands were dripping with the stuff. After the protest, some groups said that they had realised that they hadn’t given their viewers a call to action in terms of what to do in response to the protest. I think in giving out postcards people could read the information present to firstly gain a wider scope on what our protest was about, but also to make us successful in deciding what we wanted to come out of the piece. Viewers could then have a clearer vision of the fact that face down restraint is a real thing; happening all the time, and they too can do something about it by signing the petition on the postcards.
 |
| The finished tally |
On the other hand, there were definitely some things we didn’t plan properly for! The aesthetically pleasing technique we chose to use in order to restrain the patients became quite tiresome after only a few repeats of the protest, and coupled with slippery paint splatters on the floor, the technique very quickly turned into just falling on to the patients. Although I don’t think this detracted from the meaning of our piece, it put the people being restrained in danger of injury because the way in which they began to fall to the ground didn’t support them - I even found myself slipping as well - and landing on top of my patient, which could have caused serious injury. In the future I would do more rehearsal with the paint and in the actual location (which featured a hard concrete floor) to work out the logistics of a safe - yet attractive- maneuver to the ground. We also didn’t plan for the sheer amount of people that would be interested in our protest, and so the postcards handed out at the end of each ‘cycle’ quickly ran out. This meant that many of the people watching our piece either didn’t receive the information that would have clarified our cause, or didn’t have a way to take matters into their own hands and sign the petition. This has taught me to plan for the best! Next time, I would plan for masses of people coming to see my piece, and therefore would be able to cater fully for whatever amount I receive on the day, so that no one comes away from a protest feeling that they are unable to do their bit for the cause also. Speaking of furthering the message, one of the actors in our group picked up on the fact that many viewers only got the message after their eyes were directed to the ‘Number of Inappropriate Restraints’ tally chart, and some didn’t realise that this prop was part of our protest because it was placed a distance away from where the action happened. Consequently, we could have placed this tally chart on a board in front of the doctors so that it was immediately received as part of the piece, and maybe viewers would even have the gist of the protest before it started instead of having to wait until they were given postcards and such at the end. I have learned from this that in any future protest, all the information that you want the audience to receive has to be immediately available to them, instead of revealing it in ‘bits’. This is due to the fact that the medium of a public performance means that some viewers may not stay to watch the whole piece, which could jeopardise all of the work the cast has put in to create meaning.
When we began with our first showcase, our piece was clouded with separate ideas about mental health all squashed together, making a much too ambitious attempt to give the audience several different commentaries on the mental health system, including face down restraint, the prevalence of medication instead of therapy and government cuts. Today, our principle complimented our ability to channel just one issue within a wider problem - face down restraint - as a political theatre company has to trust that its audience will have some knowledge on the bigger picture due to them having an interest in politics already. I definitely think our concise explanation of the issue meant that our audience on the whole received the message. Therefore, I know now that not every detail has to be laid out, and political theatre is a genre that relies on its audience’s past knowledge of the situation, and in that they become part of the piece as well; unlike a naturalistic play that sets out all of the information ever needed in the two hour slot. The narrative of a political piece also carries on after it has finished, unlike the story that dies in a conventional performance after the curtain falls. In this world, the audience must go and seek more, so that they may carry on the initiative of the cast. With the power that our protest had overall, I think we have achieved this.
No comments:
Post a Comment