Saturday, September 25, 2004

Satiric protest in the 1980s -- Ladies Against Women greet the Queen You can only imagine how excited we Plutonium Players -- Ladies Against Women and our men's auxilliary --plus our extensive network of drop-in ladies were at the prospect of a state visit of Ronald Reagan and the Queen of England to San Francisco. I wish I had the press clips from this. Was it fun? Yes. Did it cheer up those with criticisms of Reagan (or England for that matter?) Yes, nearly uninimously. Was it politically effective? That's the big question. In that case, I would say yes, because we played to a mostly if not totally sympathetic crowd. For these demos we used our set material, did improv, and generally created a few new slogans and demands. I notice that Jeff Thompson is there as his redneck right wing character. I would argue against this today in terms of the political message, but we were a coalition of characters and at our street events we tended to welcome or sometimes to tolerate a huge range of individual creativity. Again, you see the possibility for tensions between being a tight and coherent ensemble and a loose, broad coalition of activists. Fortunately we figured out how to let our standards shift from street to stage. 1:40:24 PM     comment []