Activism and Theatre - Festival d'Avignon
As a Canadian artist, I believe that activism gives art value--this is not to disparage aesthetically-driven theatre, but merely to explain my own drive to create theatre. I create theatre with the goal of examining the choices and actions of people through a theatrical lens (playwriting, acting, direction), and to examine how and why different social interactions take place. When I create theatre, I try to take into account classism, sexism, and racism as my main focuses for activism. I do my best to portray issues truthfully, to put a spotlight on these issues and to use my knowledge of them to inform my artistic creation. This, I believe, is how activism takes place in my theatre.
In both the Fringe and Avignon festivals I learned from watching shows that made attempts at activism and failed. They failed at their attempts to engage with social and political power dynamics because they chose talk over actual engagement. This is especially relevant to “‘the politics of the question’: a politics that interrogates the very basis on which a system rests rather than offering a quick solution that leaves the system unquestioned” (Fuentes, 35). For example, in Avignon we watched Les Parisiens (Py 2017), which seemed to have been created for the sole purpose of discussing issues affecting sex workers and queer people in Paris, but failed to actually question the systems which create those issues. It discussed those issues--in debatably masturbatory and inaccurate ways--but failed at “‘acting up’” in ways that “disrupt the status quo” (Fuentes, 34). Similarly, De Meiden (Mitchell 2017), an adaptation of The Maids which claimed to shake things up by engaging with gender and immigration but ultimately created an oppressive, heterosexist show which engaged with and affected nothing in a progressive way.
When faced with these sorts of do-nothing plays, it is important to remember the relevance that systems have upon people, and how activism does not end on the stage. For a play to be an activist play, I believe that it must have a drive for engagement on and off the stage; the action on stage must encourage engagement within their audience. It’s possible, too, that a play can give their audiences a venue to be activist. This might be an affiliation with an organisation associated with that brand of activism (women’s shelter’s, resources for sex workers, etc.) or something similar. As artists, we must think beyond the stage.
Works Cited
De Meiden. By Jean Genet, directed by Katie Mitchell, 16 July 2017, L’Autre Scène du Grand-Avignon - Vedène, Avignon, Provence. Performance.
Fuentes, Marcela A. “Zooming in and Out: Tactical Media Performance in Transnational Contexts.” Performance, Politics, and Activism. Ed. Peter Lichtenfels and John Rouse. International Federation of Theatre Research. 32-55.
Les Parisiens. By Olivier Py, directed by Olivier Py, 14 July 2017, La Fabrica, Avignon, Provence. Performance.
