Political Theatre Protest
We were told to create a political protest based around a political
issue or problem that is currently going on. The protest would have to be 20-30
minutes long and should draw in a large number of people and have an effect on
them and make them want to do something productive to improve the issue. Our
idea was a protest about child soldiers- an issue
which isn't currently talked about a lot in the news.
We didn't want everyone to forget that this is still a hugely
important issue which still affects hundreds of thousands of people today.
Research
We researched the topic of child soldiers in detail in order to expand
our knowledge and understanding of our protest and the reason for protesting. I
found out many fats which shocked me. Some children are under the age of 10
when they are forced to serve. Also, a few of the countries who have reported
use of child soldiers since 2011 are Afghanistan, Colombia, India, Iraq,
Israel, Libya, Mali, Pakistan, Thailand, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. In addition,
40% of the slaves are female, many of which are used as sex slaves, and
therefore they are sexually assaulted or raped. A very worrying fact is that
there are over 250,000 child soldiers in the world today, this is a huge number
which made me wonder why the subject isn’t covered much by the press and doesn’t
get the attention and support it clearly deserves. I found some of these
statistics shocking and upsetting me which motivated me throughout the
protest. This idea became very political when I found out some chid
soldiers are recruited by the government rather than rebels, this shows how the
corruption and cruelty of governments in some countries needs to change. Child
soldiers go through many traumatic experiences. Some of the children have to go
through the horrifying experience of killing their own family member. The child
soldiers can be rectified or abducted in many ways. Some are abducted from
their own homes. Villages may be forced to provide a certain number of children
in exchange for their own protection from attacks. In rare cases, children volunteer
because of ideological reasons to avenge the death of a family member.
Creating the protest
We had to think of an enticing and original way in which we could convey
the ideas of our protest that would captivate the audience and make them want
to change. We decided to use the stage area outside the canteen as this was at
a high level and was at a place that many people could walk past to watch our
protest. Our idea was to show three child soldiers partaking in military exercises
such as marching, press ups and practising shooting. This all happened while they
were being maliciously shouted at and beaten by their general. This helped to
convey that hardship and trauma that the younger vulnerable children have to go
through while fighting. The three soldiers wore placards around their neck which
showed their age. The ages around our necks were 7, 8 and 9. This showed just
how young the soldiers are and how traumatic this would be at their young age. We misspelt it to simultaneously show that we were child soldiers and also that child soldiers aren't educated, that their ability to shoot a gun is prioritised over learning to read or write. We also wrote this as a slogan, saying "taught how to use guns before they can write." We also had two girls playing the sex slaves, they were tied up to a pole using
rope and were whipped by the general. We created many posters for the protest
in order to capture the attention of people passing by. We also created large
signs in order to add clarity to the protest. We were dressed up as soldiers and brought in props such as rope and
guns.
Problems
A key problem for us was the weather because we had chosen to set outside.
Unfortunately, it was very windy which meant that many of the signs were
blowing away and it was very cold. The cold weather made it more difficult to
perform to the best of our ability. Furthermore, it meant that less people
would want to be outside, therefore less people would be watching our protest.
We had to use staples and a lot of tape in order to make sure that our signs
wouldn’t blow away. This made the signs harder to see, therefore meaning we
couldn’t catch the attention of the audience as easily as we would have liked
and our location became less aesthetically pleasing. There weren’t many people
outside which meant that it was hard to get the attention of everyone and get
them to watch our protest. This meant that we decided to march round the
school, going through the foyer by Reception and through the canteen in order
to catch everyone’s attention. I feel like this was quite affective as we were
able to use a marching exercise to demonstrate the military exercises the young
children have to go though. At the beginning of the protest, one student
decided they would walk up to us and try and join in the protest by picking up
the guns and other props, marching alongside us and making immature comments. This
became very distracting and frustrating for us, as performers. In addition, it
became more difficult to act when Tom, who was playing the general, became
clumsy with his whipping and actually whipped us with his belt which was very
painful and distracting in the performance. Finally, we were unable to get any
water guns for our protest because it is winter, therefore nobody was selling
any. The water guns were meant to represent the childlike nature and innocence
of the children. Moreover, we would have shot out fake blood or some other red
liquid to make it more effective and scary. However, we had to use toy guns
instead. In my opinion, this didn’t have the same effect as the water pistols
would have had.
Evaluation
Overall, I was pleased with
how the performance went. I feel like we conveyed an important message to the
audience and this made them remember how important it to make a change is. I
feel like the performance side of our piece was very good and captured the
attention of the audience and was entertaining as well as thought provoking. We
had a lot of ideas for the performance and managed to include all of them. The
piece was shocking for the audience and hopefully rather emotional. We marched around
the school as Tom repeated simple phrases such as ‘250,000 child soldiers in
the world today’ and ‘did you forget?’ in order to make everyone think. The
costumes, set and props all came together well to make our performance very
clear and simplistic rather than misleading or confusing. This is an important
aspect in political theatre as the message is always obvious. However, I
believe that we could have included the audience in some way in order to make
our protest more memorable or keep the audience more interested. When I saw
other groups speaking to the audience or including them, like in a piece of
immersive theatre, I thought this was very clever and worked very well.
Moreover, we could have made it clearer to the audience about how they could
help and make a change. Perhaps, some of the member of our group could have
been giving out leaflets or interviewing people passing by in order to improve
their understanding of the topic. In addition, I would have changed the
location to somewhere where there are more people, therefore we would have had
a larger audience. I hope our protest had a lasting effect on the audience and
would have been memorable.
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