Creating a revolution onstage

 

Comrades will know that creating a theatrical revolution takes careful planning, dedication and adherence to  a strict manifesto.  And so it has been with these revolutionaries. 

 

Revolutionary Stages is pleased to produce this 3 week step by step guide to help you in future uprisings. 

 

Week 1

It is most important at this point to discover what Comrades would like to change about the world.   Gather comrades together in small Collectives. 

 

Introduce revolutionary activities: games involving reactions, teamwork (and, if possible, shooting).  Start developing the co-operative through exercises involving the chorus.  Ask comrades to walk together, stop together, talk together.   

 

Ask 3 questions:

Can theatre change the course of history?

 

What would you like to change about the world … but do not think you are able to?

 

What would you like to change about the world … and DO think you are able to?

 

Share ideas for change, knowledge of each others’ past and the events which have shaped Comrades’ lives.  Comrades should be encouraged to share their education. Read newspapers, select those stories which stir their revolutionary zeal, find a new consciousness with which to present them. 

 

Use technology to enlighten parts of theatre that would otherwise remain dark. Explore classic revolutionary texts through shadow play and music.  Explore alternative means to  achieve onstage revolution.  Comrades should gather the means of communication for themselves and try speaking in new, unheard languages. 

 

Week 2

Unite the small Collectives with their Comrades in other groups.  Ask them to focus on The People, their audience; how they move, what they want, where they will go. 

 

The Comrades should travel to the scene of an adjudged theatrical revolution and consider its potential for uprising.  Encourage Comrades to develop their personal ideas for change, to begin to speak their thoughts, to share the things they wish to see overturned.  Returning to their communes, Comrades should consider their ideas for a theatrical revolution in relation to their People (audience), their Manifesto and their stories.    

 

Week 3

The final steps to theatrical revolution.  Discard the trappings of bourgeois theatre (chairs, a single staging area, ice cream in small tubs).  Work in small collective groups, within larger communes and as a creative proletarian mass.  

 

Practice each step of the uprising with revolutionary zeal.  Gather together The People: those most open to progressive theatrical class action.   

 

At this final stage, muster all your revolutionary energy and rise up against convention and conservatism in theatre.