Protest Evaluation: If Only You Could Hear Them

I researched into the companies that used animal testing for their cosmetics, food and medicinal products. I found that P&G are a huge user of animal testing for multiple companies that endorse and apply the use of animals to test their products, damaging creatures and fatally injuring a huge fraction of the 100 million animals that are killed each year, due to animal testing.

" "Procter & Gamble" also known as P&G, is an American multinational consumer goods company headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, founded by William Procter and James Gamble, both from the United Kingdom. "

We researched the brands that are directly associated with P&J and used them in our protest in order to educate our audience on the products that use animal testing in the hope to raise awareness and thusly encourage them to boycott the products.

Some of these products and brands include:

Max Factor
Aussie
Clairol
Olay
Pantene
Herbal Essences

and many more.

The harsh realities of the sufferings that animals must go through really ran through our protest as I used elements of what we had found throughout. For example, I looked up the affects that animal testing has on the animals themselves, as "71 per cent of all experiments were carried out without anesthetic". I wanted to really highlight how painful it must be and that the truth of animal testing isn't that it is all easy, kind and delicate but rather torturous and painful, going against the natural instincts of the animal and so forcing them to permit experiments that they don't want to have or may even be life threatening, I really displayed my resentment and distaste towards Billy and |Felix, I constantly looked for a way out and tried to escape their clutches, naturally I didn't want to allow them to force feed me pills or spray on my face wanting to move and avoiding their glares was highlighted to expose the miscarriage of justice and their going against my will as a human and as the animal I was portraying. The fact that "chemicals are rubbed into their skin or dripped into their eyes" we used multiple cosmetics that allowed us to do this and exposed lots of skin in order to allow them to test as much cosmetic products on the largest amount of surface area. "Until they are killed at the end of the experiment – which could last days, weeks, months or even years – their lives are marked by pain and fear." The use of sellotape as my costume displayed the use of animals over extremely expansive periods of time and so the fact that they use these deformed and worn out creatures for way past their physical ability and mental capabilities.

My role in the performance protest was performing as the animal that had to suffer the common abuse that several animals face every day. As a human I feel that the performance became even more distressing for the audience, as evidence of animal cruelty isn’t advertised and we wouldn’t of been able to perform this to an audience using an animal due to the fact that it would’ve gone against the aim of the protest humanising it helped the audience to relate and see the harsh realities of this form of cruelty, in a way that was kind and as I was able to display my willingness to take part in this sort of immersive protest.  They used multiple cosmetics and medicines on me as well as food, informing that not only the cosmetic industry uses animals to test the products; they applied it to me and also lead me around with a leash attached to my neck. My role was to fight and use animal instinct that developed across the length of the performance and resist as an animal would to the treatment. On researching animal behaviour I found that they displayed erratic behaviours and found that after numerous animal testing experiences they bit and ran in circles. I re-enacted this in my protest and helped explore real accounts that occur due to this abusive treatment.

I think that our performance was developed properly and I believe we really knew thoroughly our subject and what we were aiming to fight for, as a group we wanted to raise animal testing awareness concerning the treatment and methods they go through to utilize innocent creatures, we aimed to instil a mild level of guilt in order to encourage them to not use brands that endorse that treatment, we did this through allowing the audience to test on me which I believe displayed the direct effect of using products and brought animal testing to a personal level and experience . We also helped the audience do something about this as we displayed products that used animal testing to develop them, leading them on to be able to boycott such products. We remained in character for the entire 30 minutes which I believe made this performance extremely well executed and enabled any viewer to see the torturous experience of the animal.

The practise and thought that we went through enabled it to be extremely effective and thought-provoking as the audience visibly and verbally displayed their distress, proving the honest and obvious discomfort that the piece gave, making it incredibly effective. The audience spoke to the doctors and displayed their disgust through shouting and image taking of the horrendous conditions that some animals suffer.

I believe that the weakness of this performance was mainly the placement and the surrounding sounds of the other performances and the fact that the silence of the piece wasn’t considered because people struggled to hear anything anyway and so the silence wasn’t as noticeable. It may have worked better in a quieter place, perhaps the canteen or library as the sound of other performances drowned out the silence. However the other performances around really allowed us a constant flow of people to disperse and view our performance. I believe that the concept was strong as the “If only you could hear them” really hit home and displayed the fact that if this happened to humans here in the UK it would have heightened media attention and awareness.

The fact that the protest was performance based made the protest much more interesting and multi-dimensional as it became passionate and allowed us to show a literal display of animal testing abuse, rather than shouting and the use of placards and banners that although are effective, are a much more common use of protest and it allowed the audience to increasingly relate and a much easier level, persuading them with quiet personal experiences, rather than shouting your argument in their face, which I believe isn’t as persuasive.



Reading the Play

Reflecting on the Political play:

I found through reading of the play that for me it gave me an idea of paparazzi and the filtering of what is allowed to seep through into the public's eyes. It reverberated a sense of what's worthy enough to be exposed in the news and what the reporters and editors consider will sell, highlighting an important political stance in the idea that a famous persons excursions take place over the impoverished sufferings of others and the awareness of the hardships that brings them.

The use of no names in the play and just the use of the labellings "A, B, C and D" is another way to lead towards a Brechtian performance, as the V effect is increased in a sense that you have no association with the names on a personal level, they can be played by anyone, it can represent whomever you want so that you can as an actor question the "Why's" instead of what, because this play isn't clouded with narrative, more like snapshots of several conversations that as modern day people we are all familiar with.

There is also an underlying sense of tension ricocheting throughout the play and it's scenes as i develops into something that slowly becomes clear, causing a grating anticipation when we read the play, you are able to familiarize and identify the different personalities that come across and that undeniably brings a climax.The characters are able to become more apparent as time goes on and develops through the play.

I enjoyed reading it as I found that it was an extremely relevant to right now, the stories that have been laced into this play are very fresh and controversial, it is culturally relevant and so the audience already have an understanding, therefore the audience wonder less about the narrative of these stories and can distance themselves from what happened and again ask more of a "Why" as they wonder how hey can reach this state of discord in what we believe is a modern society. 

You are able to see the parallels between conversations that we have nowadays and the conversations that are touched on in the play and the possible unfamiliarity between some characters and the shock of news stories and how we aren't almost able to fathom how or why or even how to communicate to another person about your feelings towards such things.

In class I was struck by the amount of things we felt were political problems or things we would like to discuss and change, I felt that political issues are so widespread that we definitely could've gone on and that the relevance of this term is something that can be expressed in several ways and several art forms.

Research based on news stories in the play: 

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/23/ugandan-lesbian-deported-uk-aidah-asaba

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20026910

Brecht Day 1

Research:

Name: Brecht
Born: 1898
Died:1956
Nationality: German

• Lived through both World Wars and the Great Depression. 
• Worked as a medical orderly in WW1, therefore must've witnessed horrific injuries and deaths of fellow Germans at a young age, possibly making him susceptible to the idea of extreme views towards war, life, death, justice and politics.
• Became a Pacifist
• At the end of the WW2 he was an established figure, he was out of Germany during that time and was able to witness the war at a greater distance than the immediate countries that were directly involved, he was able to see the domino effect that the war brought. Looking at something at a critical difference echos his techniques in the theatre. 
• Reparations for Germany to pay minimized the armed forces, and increased the bills they had to pay as well as humiliating the Germans as they had to take the full blame. Out of this dark time fro the German people it made space available for Hitlers rise to power, creating space for radical and extremist views to grow. 
• This is relevant globally at this very moment as UKIP and and Isis really display the need for power at such a economically hard time. 
• Brecht as an intellectual in the 1930's saw facist views grow and looked for alternatives, the only other extreme power being communism. 

communism

• ˈkɒmjʊnɪz(ə)m/

  noun

  1. a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

  
  

• The Reichstag Fire caused commotion and danger for communists as they man "blamed" for the cause of this attack on parliament was communist, enabling Hitler to eliminate the communist party from power and position. Brecht was able to leave Germany the day before Hitler became Chancellor.

Practical Exercises Completed:

As a practical exercise we were asked to get into groups of however many the teacher called out and produce a simple stationary inanimate object physically. We created a chair using five others and were asked to go from a happy chair (without changing physicality) this was strange as we had to really concentrate on how we display this tension in our bodies without moving and really release a particular feeling without internalizing it, we just had to create an external and universal sign for happiness. We then went to become a sad chair within a frame of five seconds. This was effective because then we witnessed other peoples work and created scenarios on who's chair this might be, for example, as a sad chair people had ideas on whether it may have been the furniture of an obese person and therefore it is characterized as sad because of the constant burden of being a heavier persons resting space. This was very interesting because I feel that as a Brechtian exercise it really makes the chair poignant and rather than highlighting the story line or the plot the audience is able to speculate and actively decide what occurred to this chair and why the director may have suggested it be made up of humans. This could possibly expose an idea of oppression,(although the person may or may not literally use people as a chair) they may use people for their own benefit and disregard their discomfort. It created in my mind an idea of politics within making a chair physical as could be a sign of oppression of a higher class using humans as a chair, echoing a sense of authority power and excess of human labour, this makes it strange and unique for the audience as they are able to spectate and maybe explore a sense of the chair being a metaphor or representation for something much bigger than the chair. It really externalizes a lot of ideas, rather than keeping them hidden Brecht shows the use of power through deliberate physical activity. 

Using the idea of a string being pulled from your nose drawing it forward and also a string pulling out coccyx. This simple exercise, through finding a place to lead and creating points of tension in the body created a narrative in itself, this simple motion made some of us appear to look like elderly and previously hard working coal miners, or sassy old women, or possibly even sleuths. Through the way we accessorized our bodies and the way we placed our other limbs it altered the character immensely. We then lead from our knees forward, some of us appeared to look like geezers, or real "jack the lad" type characters because the tension in our knees caused us to fall backwards in our upper body and created a laid back character. This juxtaposed the elderly character and gave an interesting idea on status and possible class ranking of the characters through the externalization of their personality. Through performing the character outwardly emotionally we were much less drained than a previous term in Stanislavsky, our outward emotion reverberated into us and really pushed us to appear as we wanted to without thinking about the characters mindset but rather their physical alterations in certain circumstances. 

News Stories YouTube Clips: 

In this clip it really gives a sense of Brecht's work emerging into modern day theatre and they converse about the alienation technique, and how it is used in their play. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-828KqtTkA