Tactical Performance

Serious Play and Social Movements

Larry Bogad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317422204
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Artes escénicas

Tactical Performance tells fun, mischievous stories of underdogs speaking mirth to power - through creative, targeted activist performance in the streets of cities around the world.

This compelling, inspiring book also provides the first ever full-length practical and theoretical guide to this work. L.M.Bogad, one of the most prolific practitioners and scholars of this genre, shares the most effective non-violent tactics and theatrics employed by groups which have captured the public imagination in recent years.

Tactical Performance explores carnivalesque protest in unique depth, looking at the possibilities for direct action and sometimes shocking confrontation with some of the most powerful institutions in the world.

It is essential reading for anyone interested in creative pranksterism and the global justice movement.

Part I
The question of carnival

Chapter 1
Tactical carnival

Dialogism and social movements

All Power to the Imagination!

—Situationist International slogan

This chapter examines the most basic social movement performance form: demonstrations in public space. It questions the underlying goals and aesthetics of demonstrations, and posits the possible role of modified forms of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, and Boal’s methods of dialogical performance, in the conception and creation of more dynamic and compelling actions. It posits and defines “tactical carnival,” and two overlapping modes of public action—“occupying space” and “opening space”—and the pros and cons of using both modular, familiar forms and creative, disruptive, and chaotic forms of protest.

Washington, DC, 26 October 2002: A preemptive peace demonstration, responding to the Bush Administration’s call for preemptive war on Iraq, is in progress. Hundreds of thousands have gathered for the largest anti-war demonstration here since the Vietnam War. Although the call to demonstrate was first made by International ANSWER, a group largely run by the Workers’ World Party, the massive turnout includes people of many walks of life and worldviews, from all over the country and beyond. This diversity is encouraging for the potential growth of the peace movement.

International ANSWER has organized a very long series of orators, and while thousands of people in this massive rally cannot see the soundstage or hear the speakers, many stand quietly and listen to the amplified oratory, applauding and cheering when moved to do so, while others mill around, chat, and wait for the announcement that the march will begin.

However, at least one troupe of costumed performers called Absurd Response is not listening to the speakers. Instead, they move randomly through the throng, singing, dancing, and improvising with the crowd around them. They walk behind a banner that reads “ABSURD RESPONSE TO AN ABSURD WAR.” These are the Perms for Permawar: eight alluring men and women wearing fluorescent colored gowns, opera-length gloves, and two-foot high Marge Simpson-type wigs. Each wig sports a brightly colored letter, which together spells “P-E-R-M-A-W-A-R.” The Perms, also known as Bombshells for their glamour and pro-war orthodoxy, lead festive chants such as “We Need Oil! We Need Gas! Watch Out, World, We’ll Kick Your Ass!” and “We Love BUSH! We Love DICK! All You Peaceniks Make Us SICK!”

The Bombshells are accompanied by dozens of other characters created around the theme of absurd response. A ghoulish trio, The Spirit of ’76 Gone Wrong, costumed in pallid skin, bloody rags, and militarist trappings, carry drum, flute, and flag, which reads “OIL”. As the comitragic, mute flautist, the gasmask on my face makes it impossible to play, but I keep trying, banging the flute against the air filter on my snout. Gibbering War Clowns bounce and pounce around the perimeter of the procession. A singing, stilt-walking Angel of Death¹ in a red dress hovers above. She plays a squeezebox, and hanging from her neck are a miniature skeleton and a sign reading “Death ♥s W.” A slew of Billionaires for Bush are there as well, in their top hats, tuxedos, jewelry, and formal dresses, to ironically support the war effort and cheer their boy “W” onward.

Finally, the speakers on the stage are finished. The enormous march begins, and Absurd Response joins the parade. At one point, we are passed by an International ANSWER sound truck. ANSWER is as one-way in their communicative style as their name suggests. They are heavily amplified, overpowering the voices of those below them, as they shout old, plug-in chants such as “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, George Bush Has Got to Go!”; “George Bush! You Can’t Hide! We Charge You with Genocide!”; and “The People, United, Will Never be Defeated.”

There is a palpable clash in style and worldview between Absurd Response, with its irony, satire, multivocality, and even ambiguity, and the monotonous monological chant of the sound truck. Before long, some new call-and-response chants emanate from the Absurd Response contingent, no longer merely mocking the warmongering White House, but lampooning ANSWER’s dogmatic, redundant, unimaginative style. These chants include: “Three Word Chant! (Four Words Are Better!)”; “March March, Chant Chant, Rhetoric Rhetoric, Rant Rant!”; “Bad Slogans, Repeated, Ensure That We’re Defeated!”; and my favorite:

“ Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho—“Hey Hey Ho Ho” Has Got To Go! ”

The people on the ANSWER sound truck, perhaps unwilling to break their rhythm or come up with a comeback, simply continue their own chants and drive down the street. A brief, instructive disruption has occurred. These groups have clashing approaches to the performance of demonstration, and to the role, if any, of the carnivalesque in protest.

This chapter is an exploration of performance aesthetics and tactics in social-movement activism. It focuses specifically on what social movements are most known for: demonstrations in public space. It draws on the praxis of the global justice movement, specifically in the US and mostly in New York City. This is a local effort meant to open the subject; I am not trying to arrive at final conclusions, nor to write from one locality in a way that creates generalizations about this incredibly diverse, dialogical, and decentralized movement. Finally, a look at social movement theory will help us understand the importance of the public demonstration and where Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) fits within the wider range of activist practice, at both planning and execution stages.

Building social movements

A social movement is a network of people engaged in sustained, contentious, collective action, using methods beyond established institutional procedures such as voting (Tarrow, 1998: p. 3). For example, the global justice movement, also known as “globalization from below” (Brecher et al., 2002), or the anti-globalization movement by its detractors, seeks to oppose the disastrous effects of corporate globalization while building progressive, constructive, and dialogical connections between the people of the world. Performance, both public and private, is a key element in the formation, sustenance, and building of such social movements.

Hidden transcripts and the cycle of contention

Movements often form slowly, through the daily building of social networks, a growing awareness of a collective complaint, and an increasingly articulated conceptual frame for taking action. Even in periods of repression, people can build networks for potential social movements through the clandestine creation and nurturing of a “hidden transcript” (Scott, 1990). Hidden transcripts are the highly articulated and stealthily nurtured worldview and grievance list of the oppressed. They are the stories, rumors, complaints, and utopian visions that a subculture or counterculture keeps alive for the historical moment when, because of shifts in political opportunities and constraints, substantial mass liberatory action becomes possible. While Scott refers in his work to truly abject and dominated people in total regimes such as slavery or medieval serfdom, the idea of a less hidden but still separate and partially coded transcript still applies in the development of social movement narratives in more open societies.

Alternative worldviews need an alternative space in which to be developed and shared. Nancy Fraser argues that the oppressed create “subaltern counterpublics” as an alternative to the dominant bourgeois public sphere because they need:

[V]enues in which to undertake communicative processes that were not, as it were, under the supervision of the dominant group … to articulate and defend their interests … [and] to expose modes of deliberation that mask domination by absorbing the less powerful into a false “we” that reflects the more powerful.

(Fraser, 1997: p. 81)

Through this communicative process, counterpublics can develop a collective action frame, or a way of looking at the world that argues that mass mobilization for struggle is both possible and necessary (Tarrow, 1998: p. 21). The development of sophisticated subaltern counterpublics, including the nurturing of hidden transcripts and/or collective action frames, is a necessary precursor to the launching of a powerful social movement.

An example of this is the development of the civil rights movement in the US. Though locked out of the halls of power and civil society in the South, this movement was able to nurture resistance based in churches, civic organizations, and their own press and allied cultural workers (musicians, artists, theatre-makers, et al.). They also built coalitions across region, race, and class, sustaining their struggle against American apartheid over the course of decades.

A “cycle of contention” begins when the incentives for contentious collective action are raised, and/or when the costs of such action are lowered for various reasons, such as when there is a perceived split in the elites, a weakening of the state’s repressive apparatus, or a shift in the relative power of competing or allied forces, encouraging social movements to get active across an entire society (Tarrow, 1998: p. 24–25):

[C]ontentious politics is triggered when changing political opportunities and constraints create incentives for social actors who lack resources on their own … When backed by dense social networks and galvanized by culturally resonant, action-oriented symbols, contentious politics leads to sustained interaction with opponents. The result is the social movement.

(Tarrow, 1998: p. 2)

Social movements cannot preordain a top–down loosening of national policy in order to better facilitate their own actions, but they certainly have the agency to “seize the time” if they perceive a chink in the establishment’s order or a Certeauan “occasion.” When a historical opportunity for such collective agency presents itself, a cycle of contention may begin. To take advantage of the opportunity and to build group formation and cohesion, activists need to construct a cultural frame or a set of impassioned, shared meanings, which justify and motivate collective action. A cycle of contention gains momentum when social actors perceive that change is desirable, that the risks and costs of movement participation have lessened, and that the chance of victory has grown (Tarrow, 1998: p. 21–24). Without a sense of shared grievance, purpose, and possibility, an effective social movement cannot develop; but that sense of shared meaning, a role in history, and liberatory agency, can sustain resistance even when the tide has turned and danger has increased (Wood, 2003: p. 231–41).

Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) workshops can play a vital role during cycles of contention in helping members of a burgeoning movement to define their issues and explore possible solutions.² Whether participants are seasoned activists or people who have never engaged in overt political action, TO’s Image Theatre techniques can help bring people together, in a common space, to creatively, nonverbally, and dialogically express and develop their perceptions of their world, power structures, and oppressions. TO’s Forum Theatre techniques provide a relatively safe space, protected from the actual ramifications of reactive state repression, to experiment with possible contentious methods. This is oppositional praxis in action. TO’s Legislative Theatre methodology can even help a movement to develop a parliamentary agenda. With its myriad variations, this body of practice can assist social movements in developing hidden transcripts and collective action frames.

Boal was not the first to call for decentralized, anti-authoritarian methods for building progressive movements. In fact, various methods of “rehearsing for reality” are a common staple of organizing manuals from way back.³ However, these manuals generally call for activists to discuss overall strategy, and to role-play and rehearse only the moment of action, public performance, and/or confrontation. For example, nonviolence training teaches activists, through practice, how to stay calm, centered, committed, and nonviolent in the face of harassment or abuse. Theatre of the Oppressed expands the role of radical rehearsal for reality, helping people at any level of political commitment not only to rehearse direct confrontation with the state, but to use improvisatory performance to decide what their problems are, what they want, and what they are able to do about it.

There is a long history of theatre at the service of social movements. But Boal’s unique, historic contribution is the inventive synthesis of these traditions with Freirian and anti-Aristotelian theory, and the established theatrical rehearsal techniques of sense-activation, improvisation, trust creation, and ensemble-building.⁴ The result is a powerful dialogical tool for building a movement. Boal denounces globalization, not only as a process of economic oppression, but also as the imposition of a top–down monologue upon the entire world. Influenced by Freire, Boal calls for dialogical resistance (Boal, 1998: p. 251): a director or auteur does not dictate the activist performance, but rather a joker facilitates the creative collaboration of a group. Jokering is not unproblematic, of course, but TO strives to minimize hierarchy. In his first book, Boal (1979) articulated the ways in which his theatre consciously resists Aristotelian catharsis. This is ideal for social movements’ development of collective action frames and tactical and strategic praxis. A social movement seeks to galvanize, to agitate, and to articulate dissent and dissatisfaction; the purgation of social complaint through catharsis is anathema.

Movements communicate with the greater public by using “culturally resonant, action-oriented symbols” (Tarrow, 1998: p. 2). The challenge with symbols is subtle: if a symbol is too conventional, tame, and general like the national flag, then it will not eloquently communicate the special identities and agenda that the movement wishes to project. However, if a symbol is so avant-garde that it is beyond what Baz Kershaw and others have called the “horizon of expectations”⁵ then it will not resonate outside of the ranks of the movement’s cognoscenti. The most effective new symbols do not solely evoke established symbolism, nor do they confound understanding. Rather, they stretch the horizon of understanding further; using, inverting, and twisting the given symbo...