Friday, September 3, 2004

But can satiric "counter-protest" move people to change? In thinking about how Ladies Against Women worked at the 1980 through 1988 conventions, I'm struck by how unusual our experience was then, and how may more protests have irony and satire as an element now. Our huge advantage over many demonstrators was the advantage that is shared by performers in a long improvisational run and by candidates on a campaign trail. We appeared before people who had not seen us, while we had the advantage of having done our act, our speeches and our slogans many times before, we'd honed speeches based on responses, and heard the same questions many times. We often conducted theatrical rallies where at some point we made the whole audience into the press, and called for pesky questions. This was great practice for actual media events. It means that your speeches -- or jokes, as it were -- are ultimately directed and edited by the people. Nothing else does so much for timing and timeliness. The Billionaraires have all of that same huge advantage we had, and the additional power of the Web and serious fundraising. The one thing that may decline due to success is the power of novelty, but when you have a good body of material and multi-level humor, and the ability to make the personalities and interplay between characters compelling, the novelty of the "one joke show" stops mattering. I hope they test their possble radio spots in front of live audiences... I think the collective response of a group is different than the same people one by one alone. The internal quality issues for a satire group at that made tension for us were those of being performers who had quality control, and the open call of a "movement" where performance ability and degree of practice are all over the map. We kind of skirted this by being open to participation on the street, setting rules, guidelines and dress codes, but protecting our material and reputation for our more polishd stage show, The tension around controling art versus unleashing an idea and lettinng it mutate was fascinating. A book, movie or (now) Web site could have helped with that tension, since there would have been a way for anyone to determine the original or "official" version. Still, it's a bold thing to enable performing, improvising satiric grassroots chapters, and probably always will be. 8:30:55 AM     comment []

Ladies Against Women oneliners as buttons Buttons from 1980 (REAGAN FOR SHAH) through later theatrical tours such as the run of our show in Toronto (CLAW - Canadian Ladies Against Women, and CLAW versions of others such as CLOSE YOUR EYES AND DO YOUR DUTY). The buttons were fun for press packets, trading and selling to fans, and use on costumes, but the satiric statements were a bit peculiar looking if used on civilian, out of costume outfits. Some slogans we used on picket signs included BAN THE POOR, SAVE THE STOLES (worked only with particular costuming), MILLIONAIRE MOMMIES WITH NANNIES AGAINST STATE SPONSORED DAYCARE, KEEP THE FEDS IN YOUR BEDROOM, SPERMS ARE PEOPLE TOO... plus all kinds of ephermeral reversals of protest slogans. Street cheers were fun in that the tempo and choreography evolved. Some I remember included MOMMIES, MOMMIES, DON'T BE COMMIES; STAY AT HOME AND FOLD PAJAMIES... WHAT DO WE WANT? NOTHING! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW! ... INTO THE KITCHENS AND OUT OF THE STREETS... and my favorite for marches and parades: KEEP OUR NATION ON THE TRACK, ONE STEP FORWARD, THREE STEPS BACK. We did get slogans and cheers back from the far flung chapters now and then, and repurposed them for our stage production and for demonstrations, too. 12:26:45 AM     comment []