Protest Update #3

We got started straight away on how to make sure that the audience had a connection with the patients, which would firstly inspire them to watch the whole of our protest, but also create more of a shock when the people they have seen on such a human level are treated like animals with the use of face down restraint. The answer was simple: they would get onlookers to play ‘Grandma’s Footsteps’ with them! Whilst the doctors were marking on their tally how many times they’d restrained patients, the actors playing patients would ask onlookers if they’d like to play the game, and then they would really be up close and personal to the issue, and they are experiencing it instead of being shouted at by us as angry protesters.

After getting a few people to play the game as well in order to test this theory, our results were positive, although all agreed that the speech we were using - a mix of the patients saying ‘get off of me’, and the Doctors telling them to calm down all at once- was hard to pick out and form a message out of. From this, we came up with a set script of patients saying ‘I can’t breathe’ until this noise builds and becomes desperate, and then the doctors in unison saying ‘I can’t let go of you until you calm down’. Then the doctors will stand up, and the patients, sitting up will say ‘Face down restraint is a dangerous practice’, to which the doctors will reply, pointing to the start line, ‘It’s for your own good’. The piece will then begin again as doctors mark off their tally chart and patients gather more players.

In this session, we also solved these questions that we set for ourselves:

How will we stop the audience playing with us from being harmed if they are so close to the action? - We will have a point in which the patients instruct civilian game players to ‘wait here’ and not cross a certain line. After this, only the three patients will cross to touch the backs of the three ‘Grandma’s’, and this way there will be no way that an audience member can be caught in the crossfire between the doctors and patients, or be restrained by accident because they won’t have the opportunity to touch the doctors themselves. This will also mean that the view of the restraining will be better because people won’t be clumped around the actors at this time.

What will the back of the doctors’ coats say? ‘The Mental Health System’, which both specifies exactly what our protest is about - mental health - and that it is attacking the ‘system’ and not the workers. In the same way that actors represent social groups in Brechtian theatre, so will the doctors in this case, which reflects on it being a broad, expansive protest about society in terms of mental health as a whole.

How will we draw on the advice of our principle and prompt the audience to do something about the political issue after the protest? Some of our members requested that the cast of ‘Tomorrow I was Always A Lion’ provide us with the same postcards they hand out at the end of their shows, which are petitions that can be signed and mailed to local districts requesting address on the issue. The cast very kindly did this, and so our 7th member will act in arguably the most important role, of moving along audience members that have played the game after the end of each ‘cycle’ saying ‘There’s nothing to see here’, whilst handing out these postcards. This very effectively urges them to find out more about the issue as well as acting as clarifying the subject with the information on the postcard.

I am very excited to perform this protest tomorrow, and think that whatever happens, we have become more socially aware actors because of it. Furthermore, our knowledge of politics in my opinion is one of the sharpest tools an actor can have.