Beautiful Trouble
Electoral Guerilla Theatre:
· Merit- Usually when Election times come, people get divided into their political parties, families stop talking to each other, friends fight, co-workers starts addressing each other differently, and many other behaviors are showcased during these times. But also, what usually happens is that all of that stops once the elections are done (Which was not the case this last 2016 election). Jokes and mocking run from all sides, especially in TV advertisements. Candidates talk trash to each other for month. To have that “trash” and “mock” as a living being, will bring the attention of the audience in a more “serious” way.
· Challenge- The biggest challenge would be to take over the candidate that the guerrilla theatre performance it supporting. This has to be done in a way that the message is being delivered to the audience, clowning the candidate that they don’t support and bringing forward the candidate that has the platform they support.
Think Narratively:
· Merit- We as human beings use stories like we use oxygen to live. We thing more with our guts than with our brains. We are emotional beings. The stories that we are told as we grow shape us. And that same stories shape the societies around us. If we use those stories in our favor to push the agenda we are looking for we would be able to reach the audience guts and take the audience to our side.
· Challenge- there are stories on both sides of the coins, and pretty easily the story created to support the agenda of the oppressed can be turned to support the agenda of the oppressor. The story needs to be developed in a way that completely relates to the oppressed, that the universal elements and analogies of the story can’t be supporting the oppressor as well.
Alienation Effect:
· Merit- It would be interesting to see a performance like this to be performed in a venue like Broadway. How audiences, who are mostly wealthy white people, react to the disruption of a play, and are exposed to a social change agenda. The fact that the audience is being reminded that this is not real life and that it is a performance and on top of that to be reminded that real life is out there is powerful already. To take it to another lever and add the platform we support to the performance is another powerful tool we have the opportunity to take. And as the article mentions we have to think on “how to confront the problem of emotional manipulation while creating a stimulating, surprising, entertaining, radically critical, popularly appealing and accessible social art practice.”
· Challenge- contemporary audiences, go to the theater for the magic of realism and to step out of their own reality. And a performance where the stage directions are being screamed, or the theatre magic is being explained can be too much for those audiences, and they might disregard the performance or the social change it aims to tackle.
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