Political protest analysis
On the day of our performance we decided on setting up the space to create the atmosphere before doing a dress rehearsal. We printed out posters of real life images of child soldiers and advertising campaign posters. Our target slogans to the audience was "Child Soldiers. Two words shouldn't be put together." and "Did you forget?"
Throughout the research process we discovered that the political issue of child soldiers were somewhat forgotten and shadowed by issues such as ISIS. However doing more research we discovered that 250,000 child soldiers were in the world today and 40% of those were women used as sex slaves. This is how we came up with incorporating child soldiers and sex exploitation as one and they are under the same umbrella theme. It was important to know the facts of the issue we were covering in case we were approached on it during the protest.
The setting we used mirrored the theme of child soldiering being hidden in peoples minds, therefore we chose to use a space hidden behind a popular area. This space was behind the canteen on the stage surrounded by trees and posts. On the posts we put posters up with slogans, real life images, child drawings and facts. All of which were relevant to the audience as not only did it create atmosphere but it was also informative.
Costume was a large part of our performance in order to make it clear to the audience who plays what character. We used a Bretchian technique of placards to highlight to the audience the position of the child soldiers and sex slaves including their ages. On the placards we wrote "Child Soldier #206 Age: 7" written in children's handwriting to propose the fact of under education.
The costumes were all uniform with one another as this replicated the severity and strictness of the world of child soldiering. The sex slave outfits included ripped tshirts and smudged make up to depict the theme of abuse. Other props were used to engage our audience more, these included ropes, toy guns and bandana's. All of which we associate with having fun growing up. This projects to our audience the lack of childhood the child soldiers have.
To improve our audience capacity we decided to march a route where the soldiers followed the commander as he dragged through the sex slaves tied on rope. The commander shouted facts. "250,000 CHILD SOLDIERS IN THE WORLD TODAY. DID YOU FORGET?" this allowed the audience to interpret what we were doing and also for us to provoke a response from them. Audience members followed us throughout the route and onto the main part of the protest where the sex slaves were tied to posts as the soldiers performed their training exercises.
The challenging part of the protest was staying in character as audience members tried to distract us. We had audience members take our props and come up in our faces, however the more we stayed in character the more serious our protest became to the audience where they realised what we were addressing was an important issue. Furthermore i'm glad we chose to march through a route in order to gain the audiences attention throughout the school and onto the stage where we would protest and what we were doing became more clear. Our posters and costume had bought our entire protest together where there was a high level of seriousness to the atmosphere we wanted to create.
To improve our performance if we were to do it again, i would choose to advertise what we were doing across the entire school so people were bombarded with the facts and harsh reality. During our research the most upsetting issue was finding out people had forgotten about this issue as it has been shadowed by other issues in the world. Although attacks by ISIS and other groups include child soldiers and females wrongly exploited to the sex trade. Furthermore we would make it even clearer to the audience that the guns were toy guns. The initial idea was to use water guns however we were unable to find some for the group therefore we resulted in using replicas to real guns. Using water guns would of showed the audience how the child soldiers are still children at heart however they have been deprived from their childhood.
Overall I think the protest went well as I believe we really incorporated the audience's up to date views on the issue. Despite using facts and real life images of child soldiers the routine we had created was affective as it showed the cruelty to the children and the reality of their ages. All of the work we done was reflective of real life stories and research we had done. I believe we attracted the audience's attention as much as possible and created a perfect, realistic atmosphere in order for the audience to understand the reality of child soldiers.
250,000 child soldiers in the world today. Did you forget?
