theater committee, kickoff planning
Gavin White
Sweatfree Northwest campaign, which will take place at noon in Salem,
April 1.
Logistics and event support, please read this too – we need your input
in order to know which pieces to prioritize. Research, we'll need a
summary list of the specific abuses we want to demonstrate – this
could easily come from the documents presented last night by our guest
speaker. We'll also need a list of common counter-arguments, for use
in planning our "debate".
Those of us on the Theater Committee are encouraged to gather at my
house (2137 SE Taylor St, 97214 – more info at http://www.wholesome-house.net/directions
) on Sunday evening, March 9, at 6pm. The list I have includes
Natalie Baker, Alex Hebler, Les Johns, Matt Ellis, Gavin White, Al
Bradbury, and Jolie Bozian. I understand Al can't make this meeting,
and Les might be inclined to let us design a role for him and plug him
in. I've also BCCed some friends who I think might be interested, and
I encourage you to pass this along to your politically active friends
in theater.
We'll have a few skits to work out. I've asked the logistics and
event support committee to provide us with a summary of message points
and durations for our skits. Pieces that were brainstormed last night
include:
1) skit explaining what sweatshop conditions are
2) display conditions in a mock sweatshop (possibly with workers
claiming to enjoy obviously horrible conditions)
3) yes-man style poking of fun at WTO &/or free trade in general
4) staged debate between "pro-sweatshop" and anti-sweatshop voices:
- point & counter-point
- mocking vs. real-world
5) self-mocking announcements
6) skit showing supply-chain from grower to consumer
It seems to me like #1 and #2 can be combined quite easily. #3 seems
like it might be a little off-message for our event, since we aren't
claiming to be focused on trade issues per se. #4 offers an excellent
opportunity to frame the debate. I'm not sure how or where we'd use
#5, but it could be fun, and I'm excited about the potential of #6 to
quickly educate a large number of people about the intricacies and
impacts of our proposed policy.
So for our meeting on Sunday, I'd suggest we work on whichever of
these the logistics and event support committees have asked for,
fitting them into the time given to us for the performances. I'll
have dinner ready at 6, we can limber up with some acting games, and
then we can go into making theater! As an initial approach, I'll
suggest breaking up into small groups to develop material, then
presenting to the group (possibly with extras from among the rest of
us), followed by iterative refinement (possibly in varying groups).
By the end of the evening, we should have a rough version of each skit
we plan to perform, as well as a list of props, costuming, and other
materials that we'll need.
--
Gavin White
gavin...@alumni.reed.edu
http://wandreilagh.org
971-404-7294
Gavin White
some political theater being done by another group of which I'm a part.