Serious Play: The Role of Performance in Contemporary Nonviolent Activism

Can creative street theatre give voice to marginalized social movements, providing an efficacious alternative to the violence of desperation? This study will examine the advantages and limitations of absurdist, satirical, and/or solemn performance art as an activist tactic. It will also document how current groups draw inspiration from, and innovate upon, the techniques of nonviolent civil disobedience pioneered by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serious Play will comparatively critique three performance activist groups—the Clown Army (www.clownarmy.org), the Oil Enforcement Agency (www.oilenforcementagency.org), and 1000 Coffins—with which I have earned the unique position of critical observer. This election season provides a precious opportunity to analyze these groups through the lens of social movement and performance theory. All three groups use nonviolent street performance to spark political dialogue because they lack the resources to hire lobbyists or buy commercial airtime. Does their mixture of Gandhi, King, and Harpo Marx work to surprise, entertain, and provoke citizenry, politicians, and the media, or is it an unwelcome and bizarre distraction?  Serious Play will put activist theatrics in the context of the historical lineage of passive resistance to give us a more complicated understanding of the role of performance in the history of social change in the United States.