Make Plays Not War: Is Theatre Helping the Protest Movement?

By Jon Ironmonger

Theatre doth protest so much methinks – since the rhetoric of 6th Century Athens, drama has been weaved together with the expression of political ideas. And dramatic activism is nothing new. A lazy name was coined in the 1960s: Guerilla Theatre, as journalists sought to describe a riot of outlandish performances in defiance of Capitalism and the Vietnam War. Now in the second decade of the new millennium, theatre in London takes countless forms. But it is more than a creative spark which spurs players from the stage to the street and from paying audiences to the unsuspecting public; it is impassioned opinion. And a vocal and highly liberated youth, bubbling with resentment and galvanised by social media has led to a splurge of protest performances throughout the capital; above convention and unafraid of the critics.

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On the cusp of 2012 a number of forthright individuals with a burning political agenda commandeered a Daimler Ferret Armoured Scout Car – or the Think Tank, for brevity – and drove it to the now disused Old Street Magistrates Court. The subsequent “liberation” of this derelict building was the latest in a string of escapades by the Occupy movement – best known for refusing to relinquish their campsite on the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral – and it was to become one of the first which was as much a performance: a mock-trial to pass verdicts on a wealthy minority of bankers and politicians. “We are turning the court into a place where the 1 % are going to be put on trial for how they have caused the financial crisis” said Ronan, a protestor at the time; raising more than a suspicion that proceedings may already be a done deal.

The show – free to the public of course – was all cabaret and pageantry, put on by a troupe of artists and street-performers known as Invisible Circus. Members of the audience stood in the viewing gallery of the main courtroom while garish and grotesque characters, from pigs in capes to vagrant clowns and fettered criminals, were conveyed in turn before a pallid judge and summarily sentenced. Neither the Prime Minister nor his cronies were spared judgement – taken to cheerless holding cells below the ground with the rest of the convicts. And then as the evening spiralled further beyond the realms of the surreal, spectators were invited to watch as captives – Tony Liar, George Bush, Goldman Sachs etc – their names scrawled in chalk on blackboards, were tormented by bands of bizarre and costumed assailants.

As a production it was all too chaotic to be called a success and frequently given to rambling diatribes about capitalist greed or corrupt politicians. But as a political demonstration it was far better than linking hands around an oak tree and vastly more meaningful than poking the Duchess of Cornwall with a stick through the window of a limousine. The members of the Occupy movement have struggled in the past to find sympathy for their ambivalent, albeit strongly held aims and messages. Perhaps theatre could provide an effective way of channelling them. Yes, it isn’t as newsworthy as a mob of kettled activists, but at least it would seem to guarantee an audience for the right reasons.

The use of drama is an idea which has been taken up elsewhere by protestors. In the spring of 2011, a group of medical students and NHS workers reacted to proposed cuts to the health service by staging a short street-play outside of the Department of Health. Cast as doctors, nurses and patients, they gave a graphic, if not gratuitous performance which culminated in comic-tragic fashion with a fake-blood bath and a pile of tangled corpses. Shakespeare it was not, yet the play served to generate more interest than shouty slogans and crude placards.

As demonstrators have adopted theatre to express their views, so playwrights have used protest for inspiration as well in recent months. This was notable in Theatre Uncut a collection of eight short plays by as many writers which responded directly to the issue of public sector spending cuts. The plays were made available for free online, and performances in London were enhanced by hundreds of stagings by amateur and professional theatre groups in sitting rooms, pub cellars, community centres and suburban streets across the country. In David Greig’s Fragile, the protagonist is a mental health patient traumatised by the closure of the centre he attends. In Lucy Kirkwood’s Housekeeping, a family in the red is forced to sell their grandmother. The plays are raw, and absurd; true to the form of performance protests: raw because they deal with angry emotion, absurd to echo the very policies they oppose.

With news that the UK’s economy is shrinking again, the outlook for 2012 is pretty gloomy. But what better to harness all that unrest and disillusionment than new and elaborate forms of theatrical protest? Perhaps we will see Fat Cats: An Opera on Ice or some other such madness. Because let’s face it, civil disobedience is getting boring and rioting is so last year.