Theatre Uncut Research

The Theatre Uncut website says that 'Theatre Uncut was created to encourage debate and galvanise action around political issues that affect all of our lives. Anyone can get involved, anywhere.'
They began through a reaction to the cuts happening in the UK after the ecomomic downturn. They launched 8 new plays in March 2011which anyone could download and perform. These were performed in schools, universities, pubs, in the streets and front rooms. The playwrights for 2011 were Clara Brennan, David Greig, Dennis Kelly, Lucy Kirkwood, Anders Lustgarten, Laura Lomas, Mark Ravenhill and Jack Thorne.
The movement also wants to allows dramatists to experiment with theatre and different ways of producing theatre.
In order to get one of the plays, you can send an email to the company saying where you want to perform the piece, your plans, permission and agree to the terms and conditions. I think this is an interesting way of spreading the plays and globally because almost anyone can put it on anywhere. This means they'll be different performances of the piece all over the world.

Occupy - Noam Chomsky Book

I read Occupy by Noam Chomsky, which is a series of lectures that he gave between 2011 and 2012. The videos above are from the first lecture in the book, which he gave in Howard Zinn's Memorial, an American activist and historian.
Noam Chomsky is a Professor at MIT in America, but he actively supports movements like this an gives talks expressing his ideas.
He did not start the Occupy movement, nobody specifically did, but his Lectures have been used by many people in the Occupy movement as a source of motivation. He talks in his lectures about what changes need to be made and how.

However, a like many people in the Occupy movement, he's not entirely concrete in his knowledge of how. He leaves this for the masses to decide. But is this a strong enough base for the masses to make a difference? In the past change has come about as a result of having a strong leader - Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Although Occupy's way of working is democratic because there is no leader, what way are they going to get their ideas for change heard if they're all saying different things at the same time. The Occupy movement talks about all the things that are wrong with society but there's been no say of how we can change them. Even Noam Chomsky can't answer it and that's what I think makes this movement weak - until it has something or someone that can embody the force of the changes wanted. But, I think that also makes the movement interesting - to see what change arises from it.

From reading this book, I feel like I understand my character's confusion, anger and desperate defensiveness at the child going out to the protest because this protest isn't concrete. They're fighting for many things but don't know how they want those things to be changed.

Neil Labute Research

Neil Labute is an American film director, screenwriter and playwright. He is described as 'famous for his brutal characters and shocking plotlines' in an Independant report. I think, in a way the ending of his play, is quite shocking because the parent gives in very quickly and it feels almost sarcastic and comical in this way. His work is also described as work with 'bad behavior with a twist', so he works with challenging issues.

Some of the concepts he has looked at has been beauty and the way body shape is percieved in society in works such as 'Fat Pig' and 'reasons to be pretty'. He specialises in Black Comedy, one example of this sort of work is 'In the Company of Men'. 

Initial Thoughts on the Occupy Movement and Occupy Wall Street from Research

From what I've looked into the Occupy movement, it seems like it has arisen from a global feeling of dissatisfaction with capitalism, the economy and lack of equality in money. But what's interesting about it is that it has been difficult to pin exactly where it has started because people have been protesting and being actively involved in these sorts of ideas around the same time.

It has had a collective start up across the world but the first Occupy movement was Wall Street. From this, other Occupy movements have happened in London, Spain, around Europe and more recently an Occupy Sandy Movement has arisen due to the slow relief effort for people who're victims of the Hurricane's devastating effects. Volunteers are giving aid to help with basic needs.

A lot of what the people were saying in the interviews were differing but had similar themes like money and equality. It was interesting to see how all these people just wanted to get out to Wall Street and protest about what they believe in and I think there's an undeniable strength in that. But I also think, what change will come of this? A lot of the people who spoke were angry about the financial situation their country was in but they had no ideas as to how they could solve it, which I think is the only way that change will ever happen. But I think this movement is definitely a large representation of the dissatisfaction and anger that these people have against the way their government is running their country and a way to get the government to begin creating some action.

Occupy Wall Street Interviews by David Perkins

Transcription from beginning:

Jason: Hi, I’m Jason Ivy and we’re here at Occupy Wall Street, it’s Saturday October 22^nd, 4pm, we’re here to talk to the protestors, we’re gonna find out who they are, what their views on capitalism are, socialism.

_________________________________________________________________________________

(What does ‘House Elves’ mean)

Woman 1: Erm, it’s a Harry Potter reference. House Elves are slaves that have to like, literally everything their masters tell them and if they go against their masters they have to punish themselves. And that’s the relationship our government has with big corperations.

Jason: So you want to get the Government out of Private Industry, is that right?

Woman 1: Other way around, I wanna get private industry out of our government: no more of their money in our politics.

Man 1: The goals in the Tea party and the Occupy Wall Street Movements are really at their heart, if you come from the rhetoric, their really the same. So, what I’m trying to send, is that if we can get behind the issue of the Fed, the Fed reserve is a private bank it’s the way that Wall Street controls the government. It’s actually two sections, there’s a private bank which is the Federal Reserve system, and then there’s the Regulatory Agency, which the Federal board of governors. So the board of Governers are supposed to regulate the banking system. They stack with Member executives from the member banks. So they don’t actually regulate themselves, they regulate the 99%, so they regulate their competition, so Goldman Sachs and Chase deny their Sermons and Brothers bailout money using their political influence to put their competition out of business and they regulate the rest of the economy, but they never actually really regulate themselves.

Jason: So you do think that all people that make up the 1% are really bad people?

Man 1: Oh no, not at all. I think individually it almost doesn’t matter, I think many of them are people of conscience, they’re good people, they may even care about social justice, the environment and given their massive amount of resources, they may even dedicate some percentage of that towards those goals, but individually that doesn’t matter. Institutionally, it’s monstrous and destroying this country and the planet, so…

Jason: So you’re not against, say, individual entrepreneurs -

Man 1: No not at all

Jason: Getting rich –

Man 1: No, I’m not against corporations or capitalism in the abstract. What I’m against is sort of a… is sort of corporate capitalism as it’s currently practiced in this country and exemplified specifically by the financial institutions and the banks in this country have gone completely out of hand – their corrupt, their fraudulent, their felons, eluded the American economy to the tune of several trillion dollars and they should be prosecuted.

Jason: What percentage of the Federal Budget consists of military spending?

Woman 2: You can see it right here (holding a sign) 60% - it’s huge – it is true.

Jason: According to the Federal Budget, it’s in it’s 20s. They said it’s about 23%.

Woman 2: Well that’s because you’ve included the social security. If you take it – Oh yeah, if you take social security, take it in put it out for social security.

Jason: But social security and military spending, how do they relate?

Woman 2: The discretionary budget, this is our tax payer’s dollars and we’re spending well over half of them on the military.

Jason: But that’s purely discretionary spending

Woman 2: Right, that’s the way it should be. The social security, we pay it in in order to get it out later – it’s not to pay it in –

We’re not paying it in to spend it on the military or anything else.

Jason: So, but I think you’re wanting to count that as a separate budget almost –

Woman 2: Of course it is.

Jason: But I don’t think our federal government count it as –

Woman 2: No, because they don’t want it to look as if were spending this enormous amount on the military. They wanna hide that behind the social security.

Jason: But the Fed has played a role in stabilizing the currency over the years?

Man 2: No, they have played a role in destabilizing. Intentionally destabilizing the currency, absolutely.

Jason: Why would they intentionally do it then?

Man 2: Because the top percent of Wall Street makes money, whether you’re in up or down market. They don’t care about market cycles, they create the market cycles, but what they do is during down cycles, they suck the wealth out of the middle class through bailouts. All year, no matter what cycle it is, it’s sucking wealth out through crony capitalism through contracts, sweetheart deals, five hundred dollar hammers, etc. And then in down markets, they get bailouts and subsidies and tax credits and all that. They use the Federal reserve system to socialise loss and then they privatize their gains, sending off for sure.

Man 3: For me, the mere exsistance of a central bank suggests that the government feels that it has the right to meddle in the market. That it has the right to pick winners and losers.

Yeah, I fundamentally believe in the capitalist system, except for the idea, I mean, it stops being capitalist once my tax dollars bailout a bank. The flip side of capitalism, the only thing that makes the market work, is that if you take too much risk, you might get rich, but then if you fail, you fail. I believe in property rights, I believe in freedom and free will and free markets, but it seems to me that the banks have sort of hand their cake and eaten it too in terms of picking the parts of capitalism they like, and then picking the parts of socialism that they like.

Jason: Then, why do you want to prosecute Ben Bernanke?

Man 3: At best his monetary policy is inflationary, at worst it may be hyper inflationary. We don’t know yet, we haven’t seen the full effects, sort of unfold, and I would argue that weakening the dollar, weakens the country, weakening the country strengthens our enemies and to me that’s close enough to be treason.

Jason: What do you hope this movement will accomplish?

Man 3: Either massive, from the ground up, political reform or revolution.

Jason: If Andrew Jackson were alive today, would you be a Republican or a Democrat?

Man 3: The thing is, I don’t even agree with that division ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat’. If I would pick the four or five politicians who I’d most support, we have Bernie Sanders, who is an Independent, we have Ron Paul who is a Libertarian, you have Alan Greyson who is a Democrat. What ties them all together is that they are all fundamentally moral people who really really care about their country. 

The World Tomorrow: Occupy

Short Transcription from beginning:

Julian Assange (interviewer)

Marissa Homes and Alexa O’Brien – Occupy New York

Aaron Peters – Occupy London

Naomi Coleman – Occupy London

David Greybor

Julian: I want to understand how Occupy came to be. Sort of, people who were involved and the political background for organizing it and conducting its affairs and spreading it. And then look into where it’s going to go. David, where do you think this movement came to eventually cause the Occupation of Zuccotti Park and spread out to the rest of the United States?

David: Well, I think there’s been a sort of global movement that, I mean, I guess it started in Tunisia and sort of swept across the Mediterranean, Greece, Spain so sorely the same movement but in America. There are a lot of people from Greece and Spain that were involved in the very early days and even before the Occupational Zuccotti Park, we were coming together. So I think there’s a global format.

Julian: Alexa, you were involved in this US day of rage, back in May 2010, but do you see that as the time of going into sort of this transition from cyberspace to meet space or is there some earlier analog?

Alexa: I think definitely, I mean, I look at Odd Bart and other smaller swarm activist activities. Social media and the transformation and the organisation of media also has played a role in the last year in Occupy Wall Street.

Julian: Clearly, there was a feeling emerging from the Arab Spring.

Brian: I mean, this is very rarely alluded to, 2008 Egypt gets the World Bank’s number one, kind of, reforming country in the developing world. And in terms of liberal reforms, Egypt was unbeatable in North Africa and the Middle East - from the World Bank and the IMF’s point of view. The bigger, kind of, phenomenon that’s gone on here is that after the Second World War, the nation state has broadly seen as a repository of democratic accountability. Now, since the late 1970s that has been going away.

In some places it never exsisted, right? but that now is a global phenomenon and we now recognize that public policy outcomes aren’t happening at the national level and that 'policy makers' aren’t actually the ones that are a national parliament, their elsewhere. And the ones who are are dictating policy aren't in any way accountable and their not democratic representatives and that's a global phenomenon, and that's in India, that's in China, that's in the US, that's in the UK. 

Alexa: We don't just have a global financial crisis, we have a global political crisis because our institution's no longer functional.

David: And this is one of the points of the Global Justice Movement, which is there are these newly created, administered, global, planetary mechanisms.