Protest Evaluation

In small groups, we took part in a political protest performance. My group focused on the issue concerning the stereotypes of black youth in modern day society. To challenge this issue, we created characters for each person in the group who were the complete opposite of these stereotypes. For example, my character was a gang member who was actually homosexual. The idea of our protest was to make pour audience think about the situations black youth are in before they judge them on their looks or dialect. To do this, each person in the group created a monologue as their character. Next, we printed out tags which had words which are used to describe the youth on them. We stuck these tags on our bodies and when performing the monologue we ripped them off one by one. The audience would approach us and we would not start our monologue until the audience members came close enough or tapped the play button we had strapped to our chests. Once our monologue was finished we would stand in neutral until another audience member approaches us.

I believe that we picked this protest idea as every member of our group had African-Caribbean routes. We were able to relate to this issue as it had meaning to our lives and we were passionate about this topic; this gave us motivated us to create an effective protest performance. We did research individually; each person in the group was given a certain issue concerning about the black youth and we found certain statistics through the internet and books. We then came back together, shared our ideas and included each members research in our protest. I believe that this was successful as our audience consisted of a lot of black youth which allowed them to relate to the protest and made the performance more engaging. Also, the surprising situations are characters found themselves in really made the audience think about what we were saying which made our protest successful.

I believe that the tags stuck to our bodies were an effective element of our protest. I believe this because it was the first thing that the audience noticed and drew them into our protest. It also included colloquial language which was used a lot by the majority of our audience which also made them interested in our protest. Another effective element of our protest was the interaction between us and the audience. The audience had to come into contact for us to begin our monologues and when this occurred, we were face to face with them whilst performing them. I believe this was effective as it really stuck the emotions and issues of our protest in their mind as it was a lot more interactive than regular theatre. After our protest the audience reacted in a shocked kind of way. They were unsure whether to clap or think about what was being said in the protest. Majority of the audience walked away talking about the separate monologues which shows are message got across to them.

If I was able to take part in a political protest again there are certain aspects I would change. The first element I would change is the location we chose to do our performance. Personally, I believe there were not enough audience members around our area so the amount of people watching was limited. Next time, I would choose a more populated location and also one which is inside so if it is cold or raining it will not restrict people from seeing our protest. Furthermore, I would the amount of interaction taking place between my group and the audience. In some cases, the audience would not know what to do and walk past us causing us to lose audience members. Next time, I would influence my group to walk around in a certain perimeter and drag the audience in physically; that way they know we have begun the protest and they have no choice but to watch it and understand the meanings behind our protest.