Evaluation of political protest - slut shame and victim blame

 nivenbrechtgenius: slut shame
Today we had our protest for our political theatre assessment. We had planned our piece to take place outside, with us wearing provocative clothing; we had made signs with slogans and rape crime statistics on them. We wrote rude words used to describe women all over our arms and chest.

I think what worked well in our piece for me is that I had done lots of research and I felt very strongly about the issue we were protesting for, and so did some others in my group. This meant during the protest we were naturally driven throughout.

The issues we didn't take into consideration was the weather, we knew that we would be cold, but just not quite how cold. The water we were using to wash ourselves with meant that we got even colder when we were just standing and chanting. This was a good experience despite the discomfort because it will mean we can begin to work in any kind of environment and learn how to work through outside forces such as weather or how you might be feeling and still carry on with your piece.

The choice of costume we made was very important to our protest. If we hadn't dressed the way we did our protest wouldn't have been as successful or as powerful and it would have lost some of the meaning. I think what we overlooked is that not everyone who came to watch our protest would have had a mutual respect for us and our cause. I noticed they were lots of people taking pictures, laughing, pointing and objectifying my group and me. I found this disturbing because of the subject matter we were dealing with. This is a key part of public performance, not everybody will understand where you’re coming from and you won't always get the reaction you were hoping for.

The good part about the site we chose was that it meant that when all the year 10s and 11s came out on their break time we were the first thing they saw as they came out of the main building. This meant we attracted a large audience which is what protests aim to do, to get attention and support for an important issue. We seemed to get a better reaction from the pre 16 students. They seemed to respond to it as we had people joining in with our chants and asking us some questions about the cause. This felt like we were making more of an impact with them.

If we were to do it all over again I would have learnt more than one passage from project unbreakable. This is because we had to do our protest on a loop, so it would have kept it fresher for us if we had more things to tell, and perform. I maybe would have chosen an indoor sight. People seemed to respond well to our chanting and when we had a feedback discussion someone said how they thought this was a good way of getting our message across. I would have thought more about if people make inappropriate comments on our costumes and us as people, what we should do about it. We could have made a plan of things to say back to anyone who did to challenge them and try making them understand our point. As well as this more audience interaction would have been interesting it may have made the people watching like they could ask us questions and try and understand the issue more if they didn't already.