Political theatre protest - Evaluation

For our political protest each of us stood or sat outside the main foyer entrance to the school. Some were sleeping, asking for money or busking. Each of us had signs made from cardboard making a statement, mine quoted "we're not just asking for spare change, were asking for a spare change".

We wanted highlight the issue of people not being housed and the attitudes people have towards people who are homeless. The feeling that the audience had waking past us and ignoring us highlighted in their minds their attitudes towards homelessness and society awkwardness when it comes to talking openly with them.

I personally selected my topic out of an interest and personal closeness to the subject. As having a family member that became homeless, i understand the domino effect it has on the outer family and the person itself. I also could see how someone can become homeless so easily and how that person once had a family, a job and a home. Because i had seen it first hand i wanted to tackle why people feel so negative towards people living on the streets and talk about how people living on the streets shouldn't be judged on the person they have been or are but the person they have the potential to be. 

As a group we bean by discussing our person opinions on the matter and our experiences. It was interesting to hear that homelessness had actually affected more people in the group then we all realized, that's when i realised that its actually more prevalent then people realise. We then started mind mapping ideas, quotes and statement that we wanted our piece to represent. Then we began to look at other areas like housing and squatters rights, this helped us piece together ideas and individual story lines for characters.We then went on individually and researched statistics and used videos etc. to find story's.

I believe our piece was successful because the response from the audience was positive and insightful. Making the choice to not just sit in our places but to actually interact with the audience, generated useful discussions and allowed our piece to be more thoughtful as people began discussing the issue between themselves. Because we felt like homelessness was quite an un-talked about and awkward topic in society we enabled fruitful conversation to occur, that in it self made our piece successful. In addition giving out leaflets with information and links to charity's where the audience can help, further strengthened our piece because we were not just offering a problem but a solution, although not the only solution of course.

Another effective element was our costume and plaque cards. The way we dressed ourselves and having sleeping bags did help the audience feel like we really were homeless and because some of us only had a blanket and it was very cold outside people started to emphasise with us more, which was another aim of our piece - to challenge people's perhaps harsh view on the topic. In addition the plaque cards helped make short and snappy statements that i believe would have stuck in people's minds for example my card said "we're not just asking for spare change but for a change", this statement caused a reaction in the people and made people think about how they could actually make a change as a whole.

The audience responded well, interacting with us and discussing the issue. This allowed us to get instant feedback because people would make a comment about how the piece made them think or changed their view. However evidently there were people who didn't respond and just ignored what they were seeing, which in a way highlighted the fact that they ignore the issue and i would imagine they would get that same feeling of guilt and awkwardness that you get in real life.  

If i could an element of the protest i would make something where the audience could actually physically write down their opinion  and views and get all members to interact with the audience as some weren't. I think doing this would further draw the audience in and drum up more conversation with written evidence too of peoples views.