Political Protest:
Our protest began with two so-called "rooms." Each of the two rooms were decorated to extremes, one was decorated to look like a typical young girl's room, the other, to depict a young teenage girl's room. Two of our members were dressed accordingly. Our third member was dressed in a formal suit with our logo printed on it, "Sex it down," promoting the oversexualisation of young females. Music would play to match each of the girls, whilst the other was in a still image. As the member in the suit (playing the role of society, influencing both the girls) passed something newer and better than the object the young teen was holding, Society would take this old object, and pass it onto the young girl, who would then start playing around with it, unaware of the fact that society is changing her. It would then get to the point that the girl was almost completely identical to the teen, and get ready together for a night out. The older girl invited the young one to stay round after plenty of makeup and suggestive pre-party photos. The young girl agrees, but runs to her room, to grab something for the night. Her teddy. Symbolizing that she is still a young girl at heart, despite what society has done to her.
I think that the protest itself went fairly well. However, our group focused on the message entailed within rather than actually gathering the audience, and so when people did watch it, they seemed to enjoy it, but that was only for the few groups of people who actually noticed us. Our group also focused a lot of it's attention to symbolism and again, could only be understood if it was analysed enough, which is not practical when the main aim of protest is to get a message across, rather than focusing on the message of our themes. Protests are usually done so that one main message is given off to the public, and must be simple to understand, and easy to see within a few seconds, but our piece was the type of piece that had to be seen the whole way through, or it meant nothing if it was viewed half way through. We had stereotypical music playing when it was that characters turn to play, which was useful, as was the costumes, but because our aim was focused on the message, no words were said, unless it was coming from "society's" mouth. I think that the two characters should have at least had some scripted words, instead of improvised words which were initially intended, so that Brechtian techniques could have been embedded, making our protest more vivd to anyone who passed by at any time throughout our performance.
However, i think it went well too. I liked the way that it intrigued people with our subtle people, because people would stop by and pay attention in order to try and guess what it was were were promoting, and for those who really thought about it, understood it. I don't think that all protests should be so easy to understand, there are many examples where people create their own personal protests, and it is those that I find most admirable, because people need to learn what is going on in the world around them, and should not have to have people throwing the problems in their faces at such a small cost, without even thinking about it, so with protests like ours, people not only think about what our message is, but then they realise HOW we portrayed it, and start to think of their own underlying messages towards our theme, because of the thought they initially put in to it. Another thing i liked about our piece was the use of our third member playing society. Because we had no words, our third member really emphasised their words, and so every time they spoke, it was patronising but persuasive, which is in essence, how the media gets our attention. The third member in our group also manipulated us and our piece, so if she said something that wasn't planned, it would force me and the other group member to improvise, and even inspire us with new things to do.
Overall, i think our protest went fairly well. For the average viewer, it was hard to understand, but for those who stopped and thought, were taken away with something to think about, and not just our message that we had conveyed to them. I think our style was good for an abstract piece, but not suitable for a protest. The message was genuine, but for a protest event, something like that cannot be risked, and in such situations, messages need to be given straight forward, as that is generally the main aim of them, and so experimenting with protests isn't really the best thing to do.
I think that the protest itself went fairly well. However, our group focused on the message entailed within rather than actually gathering the audience, and so when people did watch it, they seemed to enjoy it, but that was only for the few groups of people who actually noticed us. Our group also focused a lot of it's attention to symbolism and again, could only be understood if it was analysed enough, which is not practical when the main aim of protest is to get a message across, rather than focusing on the message of our themes. Protests are usually done so that one main message is given off to the public, and must be simple to understand, and easy to see within a few seconds, but our piece was the type of piece that had to be seen the whole way through, or it meant nothing if it was viewed half way through. We had stereotypical music playing when it was that characters turn to play, which was useful, as was the costumes, but because our aim was focused on the message, no words were said, unless it was coming from "society's" mouth. I think that the two characters should have at least had some scripted words, instead of improvised words which were initially intended, so that Brechtian techniques could have been embedded, making our protest more vivd to anyone who passed by at any time throughout our performance.
However, i think it went well too. I liked the way that it intrigued people with our subtle people, because people would stop by and pay attention in order to try and guess what it was were were promoting, and for those who really thought about it, understood it. I don't think that all protests should be so easy to understand, there are many examples where people create their own personal protests, and it is those that I find most admirable, because people need to learn what is going on in the world around them, and should not have to have people throwing the problems in their faces at such a small cost, without even thinking about it, so with protests like ours, people not only think about what our message is, but then they realise HOW we portrayed it, and start to think of their own underlying messages towards our theme, because of the thought they initially put in to it. Another thing i liked about our piece was the use of our third member playing society. Because we had no words, our third member really emphasised their words, and so every time they spoke, it was patronising but persuasive, which is in essence, how the media gets our attention. The third member in our group also manipulated us and our piece, so if she said something that wasn't planned, it would force me and the other group member to improvise, and even inspire us with new things to do.
Overall, i think our protest went fairly well. For the average viewer, it was hard to understand, but for those who stopped and thought, were taken away with something to think about, and not just our message that we had conveyed to them. I think our style was good for an abstract piece, but not suitable for a protest. The message was genuine, but for a protest event, something like that cannot be risked, and in such situations, messages need to be given straight forward, as that is generally the main aim of them, and so experimenting with protests isn't really the best thing to do.
This is an honest evaluation of the protest piece you created. Your ideas about the performance were great, it was very theatrical, full of symbolism and very political. As a protest I think it lacked the punchy message that an audience needed to have from a repetitious performance piece. The audience needed to ‘get’ your piece in a short, sharp burst. You message and ideas were excellent and I could see that you had gone to lots of thought in how your piece looked and felt, it needed to be tweaked to be a better ‘protest’.
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