Our political protest was.... well interesting. My group: (Dajay, Sophie, Alice, Rachel and Megan,) and myself chose the topic of "legalising euthanasia in the UK" which is something we all wanted to change in reality. Initially we found it hard to think of ideas from the beginning as we were apprehensive about suggesting certain things in fear of them being seen as inappropriate or insensitive, as the topic is one of sensitivity. We were so adamant to do the protest and topic justice that we kept failing to stick to one plan and one idea. Eventually we did and when the day finally came, we were eager to perform. It didn't actually go to plan and we were taken by surprise at the elements of the protest we didn't initially expect, like other activities around us, the weather ect...
Suitability of area:
We thought it was good idea to do it outside in between the theatre building and the main building as the protests were during break time, so we would grab peoples' attention as they passed from one building to another. We chose the area on grass with wooden stumps in the ground as they made for a good platform to stand on. This would have been a good area if we had considered the weather.... it rained before, during and after our protests which meant the grass was muddy and horrible and as our protest was an audience participation activity, no one would be willing to cross over the mud to get to us, which we understood. We tried to move areas halfway through but by that point we were all wet and muddy, our paper signs were floppy and ruined from the rain and the fire we had inside us to do the protest has been extinguished. So in conclusion, the suitability of our area was.... unsuitable.
Suitability of choice:
To begin with, our choice to protest about legalising euthanasia in the UK seemed like a strong and prosperous idea as we were all so passionate about it, but as mentioned before, we struggled to come up with effective yet sensitive ideas to handle the matter. It was a nice idea to do, we all agreed, but then in the long run we began to realise that none of us could actually connect with the want on a personal level. We relied too heavily on other peoples' stories, which is fine, but it would have been more suitable to chose an idea we all had history with for example.
Suitability of audience:
If my group and I weren't able to intently engage with the idea, it was more than likely that neither would our audience. I don't think many of our audience engaged with it as well because I don't think it was something most people were familiar with; they couldn't engage or connect with the matter so they felt like it didn't effect them. When we addressed people on the matter, we did get some people thinking because I guess the fact that they didn't know much about it was an actual advantage to us. They acted as blank canvases so that because they didn't have an opinion on it, we could start them off and give them a base. Other people however, didn't have that desire to stay and listen to what we had to say because, to them, it didn't matter. Whether euthanasia was legal or not did not matter to them.
Preparation:
Our preparation could have been better... way, way better. We had so many different ideas between us but we failed to decide on one for a long time, meaning the rehearsing, looking for props ect was put off for longer than it should have been. We didn't want to be offensive or stereotypical within our protest but it was hard to think of an effective idea that didn't cross either of those boundaries. We didn't consider the weather in our plans: this is England, of course it's going to rain in November so we should have been prepared in wearing more suitable clothing and not having paper signs where the pen (a main feature we asked our audience to be involved in) failed to work on them because it was wet. We should have been prepared for the other groups that would be based around us: of course we weren't the only year 12 group in theatre doing a protest so we should have been ready to shout louder and be bolder when the other groups were drowning our chants out. We should have been prepared for some people who just didn't want to take part: of course they didn't have to and it wasn't personal, we were just thrown off guard and disheartened when some people just walked straight past us as in our little ideal world, our protest had everybody stopping and caring!
Refinements:
If we were ever to repeat this process, it would be highly beneficial if we chose a topic we all felt passionately about... one that we really really really wanted to change peoples' minds over as, after all, that is the point of a protest. That way we would probably come up with more stronger ideas which would make for a better protest. We would need to be prepared more and take every potential negative situation in our stride: think about weather, the audience ect... We would choose a better place where we were actually approachable.
Our protest didn't go horrifically but there were definitely certain aspects of it we could have improved to make it a million times better... we just didn't know it at the time.
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