Universal Protest paper

There is Something in Nothing

 

On November 20,^,  2002, artist/activist Charles Banaszewski, an Arizona State University graduate student (with an emphasis on Theatre for Political and Social Change) and founder/director of the Arizona Surveillance Camera Players (AZSCP) debuted a new public performance entitled “The Universal Protest Sign” that implements Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and  Augusto Boal’s Invisible Theatre and Forum Theatre techniques.

 

As a political activist/artist, it is difficult sometimes to establish a true dialogue with your intended audience.  Often times, people walking by street theatre protests do not have the time to stop to get more information about an issue, or are intimidated by the performers’ non conformist behavior in a public space, or simply disagree all together with the words on your placard and refuse to remain open-minded to a different opinion.  The people that generally do stop already support the issue at hand and usually offer encouragement or gratitude for the activists/artists having the courage and time to advance the social/political topic.  There is no real dialogue or critical thinking taking place with audiences already supporting the issues.  My new performance, although it happened serendipitously and developed organically through praxis, demonstrates that there are methods we can use in protest performances to stimulate critical thinking skills and dialogue while at the same time advancing issues and creating new audiences. 

 

For the past couple of years, I have performed on Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona as a member of AZSCP.  In November, I was sitting on my couch going through my assortment of cardboard placards trying to pick an issue I really wanted to address.  (The AZSCP usually protests several issues during a single performance.  We do not simply protest public surveillance cameras.  For example, AZSCP may address Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s crime.com, Tempe’s no-sit laws, and reality based television programming all in one show).  As I looked, I remembered that the Tempe government recently passed a law prohibiting individuals to ask pedestrians for change more than once, which is a clear violation of 1^st amendment laws.  I also remember being kicked out of a public looking space (actually privately owned) called Centerpoint (Mill Ave) by T.E.A.M security guards for handing out flyers and performing AZSCP scenes.  I thought to myself, how could I present a scene that protests 1^st  amendment (freedom of speech/right to assemble) and 4^th  amendment (privacy) violations.  Instead of drawing up a new sign, I picked an unused piece of cardboard (3x4 foot brown cardboard).  I wanted to see if the T.E.A.M. security or any law enforcement officer would kicked me out of this “public” space: 1) for staging a protest on private, but public looking property, 2) for testing the law’s verbal and non-verbal parameters, 3) for being different and non-conformist (not shopping), 4) for holding a blank “sign”.  

 

I went down to Mill Avenue and stood in my customary spot, (in front of Tempe’s government sponsored web cam) but this time ten feet inside the “private property” area.  What happened next honestly surprised me.  People’s reactions to my blank placard ranged from fear, to laughter, to anger, to confusion, to going out of their way to cross the street and read what was on the placard, to taking action (walking up to me and offering me pens and markers saying pejoratively “you need this” and my polite response, “No, you need that”), and most importantly to asking questions, such as “Is this about recycling?” and “Is this about the homeless?”  My internal response was to say no, but instead I responded, “It could be”.  As time went by I stood there and thought reflectively about the audience’s behavior and responses to my protest. 

 

The first thing was the audience’s altered behavior and post-reaction.  Many people walked out of their way while others would pass me from behind, and then turn back to read the “sign”.  Most people’s initial facial reactions were of shock and disbelief, which quickly turned to a rolling of the eyes or a big smile because they were just “duped” into walking up and reading something that wasn’t there.  Initially, I was surprised how many people, purposely changed their paths to read my “sign,” but then I thought about how signs play a major role in our lives.  We are constantly bombarded with signs.  Some signs try to warn us of dangers, while others try to sell us things, and some are meant to differentiate one thing from another.  There are countless other possible uses and meanings for signs.  The people that walked up to me with the pens and markers reinforced my thoughts on the subject.  These individuals needed me to have words on the cardboard 1) to feel more comfortable with my presence, 2) to better understand and form an opinion, 3) to meet their expectations of what is “normal” or “expected,” 4) to maintain power.  What did they hope the “sign” read?  Well, since I was standing in an area designed for people to shop and eat at cafes, I figured they probably thought I was trying to sell them something.  Sarcastically, I said to myself, “Aren’t you glad I’m not trying to sell you something”  (I would later use this thought as part of the final script).

 

The second thing was audience members’ questions about possible meanings for my standing there.  One person rode up to me on a bicycle and asked me, “Is this about recycling?”  I wanted to say no because I wanted people to realize I was with AZSCP, but I refrained for the moment, and said “It could be”.  The person rode away and I stood there shocked for moment, and then felt stupid for not thinking of the recycling issue first (an issue I aggressively advocate).  After I got over my ego, I realized that this person probably took an issue from their personal value system or at the least the issue was on their mind and interpreted my blank “sign” as a metaphor connected to the recycling issue.  The spect-actor used his personal experience and value system to teach me, the self-appointed teacher.  All of sudden, I had become the student, and he the teacher.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states, “The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking.  The teacher cannot think for her [his] students, nor can she impose her [his] thought on them.  Authentic thinking, that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 58).  Obviously, we did not have an extensive dialogue, but the experience served as an impetus for me to think more critically about recycling and my role in the street. 

 

This brief episode resembles Freire’s critical pedagogy and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed at work.  Freire critical pedagogy opposes the “banking” method of education. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire describes the method:

[A]n act of depositing, in which the students are depositories and the teacher is the depositor.  Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.  This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits […]” (Freire, 53).  

I believe many political activist/artists find themselves doing the banking method through written placards, flyers, protests and monologues.  It’s a basic transfer of information without any dialogue or critical thinking.  I was not depositing information for people to consume, but rather left audiences the opportunity to come up with their own meanings to teach me. Obviously, I did not plan a forum to practice critical pedagogy, but my experience with Boal and Freire’s work and dedication to critical thinking allowed it to happen. 

 

I thought the “recycling experience” was going to be the highlight of my day, until a girl walked up to me and asked, “Is this about the homeless problem?”  Again, I refrained from saying no, and responded “It could be”.  She was a sixteen-year-old Asian American girl living the squatter lifestyle and thought I was part of the squatter community.  She stood there with me for about twenty minutes talking about dropping out of school, hitchhiking to San Diego, and that her parents kicked her out of the house months earlier for being “unmanageable”.  Freire believes, “True education incarnates the permanent search of people together with others for their becoming more fully human in the world in which they exist” (Freire, Education 96).  We had a dialogue and I realized that our conversation and her physical presence next to me placed her into the performance, but it was her homeless issue that was now being communicated to others, and not my 1^st and 4^th amendment issues.  Arizona residents are very familiar with the homeless and squatters standing on street corners holding signs asking for change.  One person drove around twice in his car before he stopped and gave us ten dollars.  People were interpreting the “sign” based on their value system and past experiences.  My initial response of “It could be” changed to “It could be anything you want it to mean”.

The audience was now taking full control of the performance.  Similar to Boal’s Forum Theatre where audience members replace the actors and attempt their own solutions to the oppression.  My audience members ignored my meaning and replaced it with their meaning to help understand my behavior, but also to think about an issue close to them.  Also, the “sign” now replaced me as the principal character.  I momentarily became a prop holding up the audience’s social/political agendas.  I thought all of these events were extremely intriguing, but I felt I needed to remain an integral part of the performance. 

 

The third thing happened a short time after the girl had left; a gentleman in a suit walked up to me and said sarcastically, “Nice sign”.  My response (programmed from being in too many post-modern classes) was “Is it a sign?”  Instead of continuing to walk down the street, he stopped for moment and thought about what I had just said.  He then asked the question, “Well, why are you standing here holding a blank piece a cardboard?”  I asked him, “Well does it say anything to you?”  He looked at the cardboard closely for a second, and then he casually said, “No.  It does say anything”.  My spontaneous response used what I had been learning from my past spect-actor experiences and combined my original intentions for being there.  I said politely:

 

Well I have heard that, but others have come up to me and asked ‘Is this about recycling or about the homeless?’  And one person said to me, ‘Man, It’s refreshing you not trying to sell us something’ and then others asked if this was about the first amendment or the right to assemble or that government sponsored web cam on top of Urban Outfitters over there and you know what I say to those people…I say, Silence is not neutral.  There is something in nothing if you want there to be.  So let me ask you this.  Does it say anything to you now?”  His response was, “No.  Nothing.” And I responded with, “Well that doesn’t surprise me because most people today have nothing to say.¹

 

All of sudden, my simple protest transformed itself into a layered performance that borrows aspects from Boal’s Invisible Theatre and Forum Theatre techniques, and allows audiences to develop "new” meanings that carry “seeds of social consciousness” (Banaszewski, 2002; 2001). 

 

My role had moved from being the principal actor to becoming a prop for the “sign” to becoming a Joker.  “[The] ‘Joker’ is the system proposed as a permanent form of theater – dramaturgy and staging” (Boal, 172).  In the end, I was playing multiple roles: actor, spect-actor, playwright, dramaturg, director, producer, difficultator, advocator, provocateur, teacher and student.  I was leading spect-actors through the performance and issues while asking questions to stimulate the drama and provided a forum for audiences to express their thoughts through dialogue and action.  Freire believes, “[k]nowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other” (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 53).  

 

Invisible Theatre allows people to make their own decision about the issue at hand.  My script provides people with several issues delivered in way that remains neutral, and also provides them an opportunity to offer their own interpretation about the “sign”.  Many used the response, “No. Nothing” which allowed me to plant another seed of social consciousness, but many also give creative and informative responses.  Such as, “The meaning of things come from within”; “We have to think before we talk”;  “You have way too much free time”; “We must think outside of the box”; “You’re a college student, oh no.”; “There so much you can say without words”; “Tempe has sold out to corporate America”; “Do we really have freedom of speech”; “I like recycling”; “Get a life”; etc.  The entire episode and process reminded me Freire’s understanding of dialogue.  He states, 

As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word.  But the word is more than just an instrument which makes dialogue possible: according, we must seek its constitutive elements.  Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one sacrificed—even impart—the other immediately suffers.  There is no true word that is not at the same time praxis, thus to speak a true work is to transform the world. […] And since dialogue is the encounter in which the united reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s “depositing” ides to be “consumed” by the discussants. (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 68-70)  

 

There was a new relationship between the performer and the audience.  We were listening and talking to one another.  Ideas were being passed and communication was being established.  The world was changing through reflection and action.  What started out as a protest against a particular power group transformed itself through the democracy of theatre and critical pedagogy into praxis.  Like Freire, I believe, “Hope […] does not consist in crossing one’s arms and waiting.  As long as [we] fight, [we are] moved by hope; and if [we] fight with hope, then [we] can wait.  […] If the dialoguers expect nothing to come of their efforts, their encounters will be empty and sterile, bureaucratic and tedious” (Freire, PO 73).  The artist/activist must always remember to promote critical thinking whether on the “boards’ or in the streets, even it seems like “nothing.”  

 

 

Notes

¹           The Universal Protest Sign’s final script and performance has been performed in Tempe several times in different areas since its November development. A performance last for an hour to an hour and a half.  It can been seen on the Internet:  www.notbored.org/arizona-scp.html.

 

 

 

Work Cited

 

Banaszewski, Charles D.  “Lunch Period Drama: An Invisible Theatre Performance using 

High School Students.”  Stage of the Art.  Fall 2001.

---.       “Invisible and ‘Instant’ Action.”  PTO Newsletter. 2002.

Boal, Augusto.  Theatre of the Oppressed.  Trans.  Charles A. and Maria-Odilita Leal

McBride New York:  Theatre Communications Group, 1985.

Freire, Paulo.  Education for Critical Consciousness.  Continuum:  New York, 1999. 

 

---.       Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  Trans.  Myra Bergman Ramos Continuum:

 

New York, 1998.