OTL has learned that agents of the Department of Homeland Insecurity along with the FBI will be in Montreal on Saturday, November 7th to track illegal aliens.  They need to be stopped and the aliens need to be protected at all costs.  You can help us by infiltrating the bureau.

In a secret communiqué obtained by OTL, the bureau is recruiting locals and offering a pay-what-you-can training session to give you the tools to help them track and apprehend aliens like this one:

We feel that this is a blatant attempt at discrimination and scapegoating.  After all, these supposed aliens aren’t evil.  They aren’t harming anyone.  They’re just trying to get by and aren’t even a drain.  They eat the food that the rest of us throw away or don’t even consider to be food in the first place as this photo suggests:

If you want to help us, here’s the plan.  Sign up for the bureau’s “training sessions” by phoning 514-699-3378.  You’ll need to have the password, which we have learned is “sparrowdove.”  These sessions are for three people at a time and leaving every 30 minutes or so between 3pm and 8pm on Saturday, November 7th, so you’ll need to reserve a spot in advance.

Then, at the appropriate time, go to the bureau’s Montreal headquarters which, due to budget cuts, are located inside Bar Bifteck, 3702 St-Laurent and look for this man:

Tell him you want to help, but always remember your mission.  You may get some help along the way from other more high-placed infiltrators in the bureau.  It’s a tough job, but please remember why you’re doing it, so the “aliens” can live free.

We’re counting on you, but more importantly, they’re counting on you

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Car Stories: Alien Invasion continues a tradition that has been described as “the most fun you might ever have in the backseat of a car” (Ottawa Citizen).  Three spect-actors at a time are invited to witness and take part in Montreal’s longest-running theatrical experiment by going on a guided theatrical joyride through the Urban Wonderland and its alleyways, cars and parking lots.

The 2009 edition won six Iffy awards at this year’s Buffalo infringement Festival where it premiered and now returns to Montreal for one day only.  Please call 514-699-3378 or e-mail carstories@optative.net to see the show or check out our site for more info.

If you saw us in June at the 2009 Montreal infringement Festival, this is a completely different show but it is still PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN at the end, so hop in and enjoy the ride!

*** Please FWD widely and re-post

From May 28th – 31st the Société de Développement du Boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL) hosted a four day party known as the Mainfest. Despite bad weather reports, the sun shone radiantly throughout most of the festival. This was wonderful for local merchants, musicians, performers, and pedestrians who converged at the Mainfest to participate in a multitude of activities. This was also fantastic for the Schering-Plough Corporation because their brand Coppertone set up a promotional stand at the festival to distribute sunscreen and inform pedestrians about Coppertone products as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign. An entire weekend of rain would have put a damper on Coppertone’s sunscreen publicity.

Under the bright sun, Coppertone promoters gave pedestrians free samples of sunscreen while warning them about the problems caused by the sun’s ultra violet rays. They also invited people to have a free evaluation of their facial skin to test for existing sun damage. The test was administered by a man in a white laboratory coat in the shade beneath a Coppertone branded umbrella. He performed his test with a “diagnostic camera” which took one picture, developed it in two different ways laid out side by side. On the left, the picture appeared overexposed and hid any skin blemish and on the right, the picture was underexposed revealing every wrinkle and spot on one’s face. The diagnosis was performed by comparing the two pictures. The man pointed out skin abnormalities from the underexposed picture. If he found skin problems participants were told that they could prevent further harm by using Coppertone products. If he found no damage, people were told to use Coppertone to prevent future skin problems.

Instead of thanking Coppertone for caring so much about my well being, I approached the Coppertone display to ask some very important questions. Why was Coppertone so concerned about my skin? Do they truly care or is this another marketing ploy to brand the Coppertone name? Is their diagnosis real or is it a sales tactic? How qualified is the man giving the diagnosis? I know that sun exposure can cause skin damage, but can Coppertone really protect me? Does Coppertone contain any ingredients which cause skin damage? These questions induced a little panic in the Coppertone promotion team. I guess the presence of my camera man didn’t help. Though, I didn’t get to the bottom of all these questions, I did discover some awful truths about their campaign.

Since the promoters didn’t work for Coppertone it was hard to find out anything about their products. Coppertone paid actors and event organizers from New Ad, a marketing company who delivers young people to corporations, and a nurse from Quality Health Services LTD. The nurse alleged that he could not make any formal diagnoses because he was not a doctor. In fact, none of the promotional staff could not answer any questions about how the product worked, how it was made, what ingredients were in the sunscreen or if any ingredients used in the sunscreen were harmful.

Like the glare of the sun, light shed on the true intentions of Coppertone’s promotional spectacle. Coppertone’s campaign was not designed to help people but to scare them.  If someone is told that they may develop skin cancer because they are not well protected from the sun, they should be more likely to take advice from the street promoters and apply Coppertone sunscreen. Furthermore, if people are told they have skin problems from someone that resembles a doctor, they may be scared enough to use Coppertone more frequently so the ‘damage’ doesn’t escalate, especially if the Coppertone name is associated with cancer prevention. If Coppertone was really concerned about people’s skin, they would have hired real doctors to make real medical assessments instead of contracting a nurse from Quality Health Services LTD who can only provide an unprofessional opinion. He only told me he was a nurse and that he was not making an actual diagnosis after I inquired. Those who didn’t ask may have assumed he was a doctor giving valid evaluations, prescribing Coppertone to prevent skin cancer.

If Coppertone sunscreen really prevented skin cancer, my argument could be moot. Maybe a little scare for something healthy wouldn’t be so bad after all. These tactics are commonly used in anti-smoking and anti-drinking and driving commercials. The main problem is that Coppertone sunscreen does not do very well in research conducted by independent sources.

In 2008, the Environmental Working Group conducted an investigation of nearly 1 000 brand name sunscreens. This report concluded that none of Coppertone’s 41 sunscreens met the Environmental Working Group’s criteria for safety and effectiveness. Coppertone was accused of using dangerous ingredients including Oxybenzone, which is reported to be a possible cancer causing agent (for a comprehensive list of harmful ingredients used by Coppertone, follow this link).

The other sources of research on Coppertone products are conducted and/ or  sponsored by Coppertone themselves. The Coppertone Solar Research Center is responsible for testing Coppertone’s sunscreen for safety and effectiveness. This center was opened in 1971 and is described by Coppertone as the world’s largest state of the art facility for testing the quality of their sun-care products. In addition, the Coppertone Research Fund was established to provide financial support for dermatology research in Canada. Research on Coppertone sunscreen is mainly conducted by their research center through their charity fund, a blatant conflict of interest. In addition, they hire promoters, like those at the Mainfest, who cannot answer basic questions regarding the safety or effectiveness of their sunscreen.

Coppertone’s Mainfest masquerade came to an end when members of the Optative Theatrical Laboratories drew attention to the hypocrisy of associating Coppertone sunscreen to cancer prevention, especially by promoters who know nothing about the product. Since Coppertone paid actors to promote their sunscreen at the Mainfest, we intervened by sending in actors of our own. Because of the insincerity of their campaign, they were culture jammed. Here is what transpired:

In 1971, Augusto Boal started what he called Newspaper Theatre to theatrically deal with current social issues in Brazil.  The concept soon blossomed into a tree of theatrical techniques including Forum Theatre and Image Theatre called Theatre of the Oppressed.  The concept soon spread to other countries in South America and eventually around the world.

Inspired by this model, Canadian teacher Jessica Bleuer hopes to use this model to help people with theatre skills supplement their salaries by finding non-theatre gigs while creating meaningful social changes in their communities.  In this vein, she is giving an intensive workshop called Making Theatre Work For Change this weekend in Montreal.

She has been offering this concept as a course to students at the University of Toronto since 2004 and has facilitated theatre for change workshops in various community centres, high schools, universities and peace camps around the world including places like Northern Ireland, South Korea and Argentina.

She hopes to show how theatre-of-the-oppressed techniques and narrative theatre skills can be used to educate, create public awareness or public dialogue on various issues, mediate conflict and create meaningful social change.

This weekend’s Montreal edition costs $150 to participate and runs tonight from 6-9pm, tomorrow from 10am to 5pm and Sunday from 9am to 1pm with an optional showcasing of skills from 5:30-9pm.  Please contact jessicableuer@gmail.com to get involved.

If you’re new to this blog, this site or OTL in general, you may have noticed the frequent use of pairs of coloured sunglasses in photos, videos and even in the graphics on our homepage. These serve one main purpose and it’s not to block bright sunshine from the eyes (though that function is helpful, too, because many of our performances take place outdoors in the daytime). The Optative Glasses (or OGs) serve, above all, as a licence to play.

We’re not suggesting that someone needs permission to play ever. Rather, we all have the right and some might argue the duty to, from time to time, see the world through theatrical eyes. This allows us to create our own scene or change the script of one that’s already been established.

In a more conventional sense, they can be used as a theatrical device, as they are in Car Stories, that lets the audience know when the show, which is staged in actual streets, alleys, parked cars and bars, starts and stops. Glasses down, glasses up becomes a replacement for curtain up, curtain down.

Car Stories players wearing Optative Glasses

In a socio-cultural sense, Optative Glasses allow us to change our perception of some of the corporate and cultural theatrics we are exposed to daily such as billboard ads, reality advertising and symbols of authority such as “officials” of corporate street fairs operating on public space, store security during a culture jam and even the police. Instead of seeing them as entities in fixed natural roles, they become theatrical players working with a script written by others for a specific purpose.

By wearing the Optative Glasses, we get the symbolic permission to interject ourselves into the scene as any character we wish and alter the script. They are not designed to change reality, but rather to allow us to re-interpret it and see it as it really is. Oppressive structures rely heavily on perception for their authority and by altering this perception, we take the authority, or authorship, of the scene back.

The corporate players play their part and we, as activist players play ours. Thanks to the Optative Glasses it becomes perfectly clear to us what is happening as it’s happening. Rather than level the playing field, OGs equalize the playing space.

Of all the projects OTL has created, Car Stories is most certainly the longest-running, at times has been the most controversial and if it wasn’t for the infringement Festival, a true viral phenomenon, it would undoubtedly be the best known.

In a nutshell, Car Stories is a play containing several shorter plays, a piece of street performance that is at the same time visible and invisible and a challenge to how we see both theatre and the cityscape we walk through every day.  While a good chunk of any given show will be improvised, either along the lines of a story outline or completely out of the blue, parts of it can be and frequently have been scripted as well.

Car Stories '04: Obstruction of Justice

An audience, usually three spect-actors at a time, assembles in front of the show opener in a public place (a bar, a park, etc).  When that actor lowers his or her Optative Glasses (just a pair of ordinary sunglasses) over their eyes, it’s like the curtain going up.  The show begins and the audience is now in a different, theatrical world.  The opener establishes the show’s theme and sends the audience off on a mission with an Urban Guide who walks them, in character, down a street or an alleyway to a parked car.  There are more actors waiting in the front seat of the parked car with a 10-15 minute scene.  The audience sits in the back, watches and sometimes partakes.  Afterwards, another guide picks them up and usually brings them to another car.  The show continues until the audience is brought to the closer who finishes off the story and removes their Optative Glasses, sending the audience back to the world they recognize.

The individual car stories are self-contained pieces as are some of the guide routes, but they are generally incorporated into, add to or at the very least are related to the overall theme of the show.  The theme stays the same for a run of the show, while the individual parts of it will inevitably vary.  No two shows are ever the same. We will frequently keep a theme alive for an entire season but occasionally we will have a spur-of-the-moment theme for a particular run adopted to respond to something that is happening and very prevalent, as we did for our Buffalo run in 2007.

Car Stories '07 promo shot

We generally perform the show several times in a day for different groups of spect-actors who not only experience watching a show, but are also part of an invisible performance for everyone else on the street.  In fact, one of the thrills for the audience is not knowing who is part of the show and who isn’t.  Performers in the show get to experience dealing with unpredictable players such as the audience and people passing by who don’t know that there’s a show on.

In addition to being a jam on what is considered theatre and our perception of the often corporate-branded public space in a general context, Car Stories has also included some more specifically-targeted jams into it’s story’s matrix.  In Montreal, we have sent the show through the Pharmaprix on St-Laurent Boulevard on more than one occasion as a challenge to their violation of the historic character of the street with their glaring corporate signage.  In 2006, the Montreal opening of our show had the spect-actors play PartyPoker partiers in a jam on PartyPoker.net’s temporary ownership of the lower half of the Main.

Loosely inspired by Car Show, a production from the Corn Exchange in Dublin, which has the plays in cars element but not the guided tour through the Urban Wonderland or much of the ontological jolting our show is known for, Car Stories was first staged in 2001 at the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival, where it was promptly ejected for theatrically playing with a theatre critic who didn’t quite get the joke.  The critic worked for a corporate sponsor of the festival, the festival got nervous and the rest, as they say, is history.

Car Stories ran for the next few years on its own and in 2004 helped to spark and took part in the first infringement Festival in Montreal.  That summer, it toured to Ottawa and Toronto.  In 2005, it played the Montreal infringement again, the first edition of the Buffalo infringement Festival as well as in New York City’s infringement.  The next year, it played in the first Regina infringement and inspired a version in Denmark.

Car Stories Denmark

In 2006, it also returned to play the Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Buffalo infringement Festivals with its “Church of Capitalism” theme.  The Toronto edition of this show was turned into a 30-minute video from Guerilla Video Productions that follows one group of spect-actors from start to finish.  Car Stories isn’t a stranger to video.  The close quarters of performers and audience make this theatre show a nice fit for film and our shows have been caught on camera since 2004.

Three other shows have been given similar video treatments as the Church of Capitalism, still following the story from start to finish but flipping between different groups of spect-actors.  They are 2007’s les journées de la culture outing entitled The Last Greenspace, dealing with the real causes and effects of construction on boulevard St-Laurent, the Halloween-themed sCARe Stories of the same year and 2008’s JDLC show entitled The Search for Pure Water.  The latter was staged the end of September and the video version premiers online tomorrow night as part of the infringement TV launch which begins at 7pm eastern time.

Car Stories doesn’t show signs of being put into park anytime soon.  While our Montreal group will surely mount it again for this year’s infringement Festival, there is no reason why other groups in different communities around the world can’t do the same thing.

To watch The Search for Pure Water on infringement TV, tune into www.infringementfestival.com/tv on Thursday, January 22nd at 7pm eastern.

For more on the show and to find out how to get involved, keep checking www.optative.net/carstories or contact carstories@optative.net

From the OTL archive, this article was written in 2003 by Donovan King about a workshop given by Augusto Boal, founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, that he took part in:

Apparently Billboard Trucks, giant commercial television screens on buildings, and advertising panels in public washrooms are not enough to satisfy corporate desires to capture our “mindshare” any more. Stealth Marketing is a disturbing new phenomenon, whereby corporations cast live actors to covertly market their products in a “real world” setting. Whether it’s a flirtatious girl buying the boys a round of the latest brand of vodka at the bar, a pair of tourists asking passers-by to take their photo with a Sony digital recorder, or any number of invasive “reality-advertising” scenarios, Stealth Marketing is an ontologically upsetting next step in what Naomi Klein calls “an evolution from experiential shopping to living the fully branded experience.“ Upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that this new form of so-called marketing is nothing short of a corporate attempt to co-opt an activist theatre technique: Augusto Boal’s Invisible Theatre.

In May, Boal, arguably the world’s most influential living theatrical theorist today, delivered a much-anticipated workshop on Invisible Theatre in New York City. Hosted by the Theatre of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) and the Brecht Forum, this workshop is rarely given, the previous one having being cancelled after the 9/11 terror incident. Lasting three days and involving an extremely diverse group comprised of educators, theatre artists, health care workers, and anti-oppression activists, 39 participants came from all over the world to learn the secrets of Boal’s technique, and to apply the Invisible Theatre in a series of direct actions in the heart of NYC.

The Optative Theatrical Laboratories sent two delegates, myself included. We hoped (in addition to clarifying some theoretical concepts) to be inspired by Boal, and the charismatic and good-humoured Brazilian theatrician did not disappoint. Augusto took the time to address our concerns about the corporate Stealth Marketing phenomenon, explained the goals and mechanics of Invisible Theatre in intricate detail, and contextualized the technique into the overall Theatre of the Oppressed matrix. It was one of the best experiences I have ever encountered in education, activism, and theatre.

Invisible Theatre is an extremely powerful (and often overlooked) form of activist theatre, whereby players rehearse a scenario to be played out in the “real world.” It is “Invisible” because those who become entranced into the scene are not aware that theatre is taking place – people assume the theatrical situation that unfolds is “real.” However, unlike Stealth Marketing’s goal of capturing mindshare (and selling products), the goal of the Invisible Theatre is to sell the concept of anti-oppressive practice.  Boal calls it a “rehearsal for revolution.”

In the workshop five groups were formed, each dealing with different issues of Oppression (eg: sexism, classism, and racism).

INVISIBLE THEATRE #5: “Manufacturing Fear”

Location:  Madison Square Park, NYC
Players: 12 (2 TOURISTS, 2 MUSLIM WOMEN, 8 PARK-GOERS)

Action #1
Two REDNECK TOURISTS videotape their visit to Madison Square Park. In a loud and gaudy manner, they draw attention to themselves, filming statues, the Empire State Building, making speeches for friends back home, etc. TOURIST #1, with the video camera, is from some Midwestern state, and expresses concern and fear about potential terrorist danger in NYC: with the “Code Orange” alert, the government has advised people to be vigilant and report “suspicious activity” to the authorities. TOURIST #2, slightly more reasonable and currently living in NYC, attempts to assuage TOURIST #1’s   fears.

Action #2
Two MUSLIM WOMEN enter, wearing the hijab, and take photos of the Empire State Building. TOURIST #1, alarmed by this sight, begins filming the women with his video camera. TOURIST #1 speculates that the women might be connected to the “War on Terror” and that they might be photographing installations for terrorist groups.  He remarks that on the subway there are posters asking citizens to be alert and to report suspicious activity to the police. TOURIST #2 tries to assure #1 that Muslims are common in NYC, and suggests that he might be over-reacting.

Action #3
The MUSLIM WOMEN ask spect-actors (eg: people sitting on a bench) if they are being filmed, and exhibit fear over the situation. Several
PARK-GOERS begin generating interest in the situation by either confronting or supporting TOURIST #1, or by speaking with spect-actors about the situation and inviting them to take action.

Action #4
The MUSLIM WOMEN exit the scene. A crowd of PARK-GOERS and spect-actors gathers around the TOURISTS, engaging in a heated debate about the situation. TOURIST #1 insists that he is following government orders for everyone’s safety. A PARK-GOER counters the argument, pointing out that it is overt racism.

Action #5
The TOURISTS, feeling harassed, exit. Several PARK-GOERS stay on to debate the whole situation. Even after all the players have left, the theatre continues – in the minds (and eventually actions) of those who participated.

Given the “Code Orange” atmosphere of fear currently permeating NYC (eg: armed soldiers on the street), our group was careful in selecting the location. Ground Zero and the Staten Island Ferry were deemed too dangerous for the Muslim members of our group, so we decided on Madison Square Park. Our Invisible Theatre performance heated up very quickly until a large angry crowd had gathered around the TOURISTS, many of them demanding that the video cassette be erased or handed over for destruction. The question raised was whether or not it was acceptable for vigilante U.S. citizens to follow government suggestions to racially profile Muslim people. I am pleased to report that the answer from the public in this case was a resounding NO. The Arab-Americans in the group described the exercise as “therapeutic” (having witnessed so many people come to their defence) and are continuing their Invisible Theatre work in NYC to this day.

Boal applauded the scene, and suggested that if enough groups of people engaged in Invisible Theatre on a given day on a given topic, it might be possible to transform the mental environment of an entire city, provoking its citizens into rejecting oppressive submission by becoming politically active. The beauty of the Invisible Theatre is that, as with other techniques from the Theatre of the Oppressed arsenal, “the theatrical rituals are abolished, only the theatre exists, without its old, worn-out patterns. The theatrical energy is completely liberated, and the impact produced by this free theatre is much more powerful and longer lasting.” (Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, 141). Those who experienced the Invisible Theatre that day, both as players and spect-actors, will remember the oppression, the issues, and the political action that was taken.