Chapter Sections
1. Undercover Investigator
2. Video Activist
3. Animal Friendly Traveller
4. Preacher
5. Animal Rescuer
6. Investigative Reporter
7. Media Watcher
8. Philosopher
9. Flyer
10. Personal Activist
11. Animal Lawyer
12. Politician
13. Prisoner Supporter
14. Public & School Speaker
15. Aerial Snooper
16. Scientific Investigator
17. Solo Information Worker
18. Street Theatre Actor
19. Teacher
20. Voluntary Worker Abroad
How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals
You can act for animal rights in more ways than one. Street theatre actors take their performance literally onto the streets: to street corners, market places, town squares and busy shopping centres. Serious street theatre performers can use their acting skills as a political weapon by circulating current ideas and exploring controversial social themes to influence social reform. Street theatre is an opportunity for you to probe the social, moral and political questions arising from animal rights. This is what the Mac Factor Street Theatre Group were doing in Belfast. They staged an anti-hunt performance in which a fox fights back to get the better of a whip-cracking red-coated huntsman. Performances were watched by crowds across the city centre and were co-ordinated by the League Against Cruel Sports as part of a campaign in 2007 to ban fox-hunting in northern Ireland.
Street theatre is a tradition that people watch around the world, from San Francisco to Sidney, where audiences are as diverse and different as cosmopolitan London and remote rural India. It reaches even people who have never been to a regular theatre. Street theatre actors perform for anyone passing by with time to stop and watch them, and there is no entrance free. The genre is not 'outdoor theatre', where an indoor performance is entirely transferred with props, lighting and all to an outdoor arena, such as an amphitheatre, set aside for an audience to pay a fee for admission. Nor do merely acrobats, jugglers and fire-eaters dominate a street theatre.
Your Street Theatre
As street theatre actors your performing group is peripatetic, so you can only use minimal costumes and simple portable stage props. Your audiences may be largely composed of by-passers who have not come prepared to watch a play and are preoccupied with other things, which imposes a limitation on keeping your plays short. At a performance you could start off by singing or playing a loud instrument to attract people. When a sufficient number of onlookers have gathered around, you can begin. In the bustle and hubbub of a busy street you will have to be loud and larger than life and may employ humour, slapstick, song and lively dance to keep the attention of mixed crowds.
You could perform independently or in conjunction with the campaigns of other animal rights groups. Either way you could deliver your message with more certainty by handing out literature about yourselves, your aims and your plays, and at the end of each play by holding a public discussion questioning its purpose (see The 'Y', below). With many street plays under your belt you would be in a good position to organise workshops to teach the art to other aspiring street theatre actors.
Where to stage your performances? Go on tour to schools, factories and civic centres. Book a place at festivals and fairs. Act outside the headquarters of animal abusing companies, supermarkets, animal laboratories and zoos, especially if they constitute the theme of your act. Find out whether you require a licence from your local authority to stage acts and discussions in the street. If you need a licence and do not have one, be prepared to make a bolt for it if a policeman turns up to watch you!
The 'Y'
The 'Y Touring Theatre Company' is a leading theatre group founded in Britain in 1989 as part of the Central Young Mans Christian Association (known as the Y). Their aim is to shake up people's attitudes by creating quality theatre to highlight serious and perplexing contemporary issues. The company has toured throughout Britain and abroad.
One of the Y's interests is ethics in science. To this end the playwright Judith Johnson wrote Every Breath for the Y. The play raises moral, social and scientific questions inherent in using animals in medical research, posing fundamental questions like whether you are right to put your kin above the lives of animals. It is intended for students aged 14 plus as part of their science, drama and religious education curricula. The Y have staged the play for thousands of school children nationally and have performed it for audiences at the annual Edinburgh Festival. Interestingly, Every Breath has received funding by a number of organisations and backing from all sides of the animal experimentation debate.
The setting of the play is with a family in danger of breaking up because of the animal experimentation dispute. The four characters in the play are a teenage vegetarian campaigning peacefully to stop a university animal laboratory being built (shades of Cambridge University, see Animal Lawyer, Chapter 4); his older sister, a research student experimenting on rats; their mother, a single mum dedicated to her children; and her boyfriend, an odd job man from a rough background contemplating Buddhism, and who brings some light-heart humour to the serious nature of the performance.
One of the principle aims of the Y Touring Theatre Company is to create an impartial arena for learning through debate. So following a performance they encourage the audience to discuss the issues raised by their play. Before performances the company distributes 'preparatory lessons' for teachers and students to prepare themselves with background information to make most opportunity of the play and subsequent debate. The premiere of the play at a school in London was followed by a "rowdy and combative discussion", according to one reviewer (1).
What You Need
The minimum necessary you need to be a street actor is:
- A burning desire to act and the recognition that you can satisfy it in the street.
- The skill of projecting your body movements and voice so that scores of people standing around you can comprehend what you are trying to convey. In short, you must be able to act with many distractions in a noisy crowd.
- Dedication and sufficient time, not just for acting but to devote to the planning, organising and rehearsing that go into each performance.
- Non-sensitivity, in that you do not want to be overly delicate when playing to a diminishing crowd. Your audience will definitely walk away if they get bored or are busy!
References
(1) Guardian. 14 March 2006.
Links
National Association of Street Artists. Artists & companies creating street and outdoor arts work in Britain.
| How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals. © Roger (Ben) Panaman, April 2008. All rights reserved. |