How About Some Protest Theatre?

Marched in a big demo in Montreal against the war in Lebanon this grey rainy afternoon. Should have brought a camera.

It was good to see so many people standing together and marching together to take this stand. But the mood was angry and confrontational. My mood was more sorrowful, and didn`t really fit in.


There`s an Elvis Costello song that features the line:

I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused

and it`s been my motto. But there`s really nothing amusing about this. Can`t laugh about it, so I`ll cry instead.

For years I`ve been saying to myself that I would like to make protests more interesting by introducing elementa of interactive popular theatre. At times I`ve been involved in attempts to do this (see above photo for one example) none of them very fruitful in the long run. At some point I`ll have to seriously study some theatrical forms- Forum, Playback, etc.- and see how some of those ideas could possibly be applied to a mass protest action. Of course the logistics would be a huge problem- it would have to be organic in the sense of not being all set up in advance, but with differant elements (music, minmes, dancers, clowns, actors)- that would enable the emotions that bring people to the protests to be played out and amplified, in ways that would simply happen- the theatrical set-up and structures would just facilitate this.

Hmmm.....I look like Jean Charest in the above photo....is this why I grew a beard?