Packaged food, coffee and cops, no water

Buy Nothing Day 2006, Montreal

Buy Nothing Day is always a great chance to make a statement against the monoculture in its core.  This year, though, consumer culture fought back with force and the powers that be exposed themselves for the thugs that they are.  For members of Uberculture Concordia and Optative Theatrical Laboratories, Buy Nothing Day '06 started with applause and ended with the Montreal police and various corporate bouncers and managers shoving us around and ending our performance.

"Dealing with the police isn't very enjoyable, especially when they are irrational and hostile" commented Emily Tetreault, Uberculture's Internal Coordinator, who got a cut on her hand after being shoved by a Mikes Restaurant employee at the end of our series of jams.

When the police arrived, called presumably by over-reacting employees at the Starbucks across the street, Tetreault tried to tell her story to one of the officers:

"I walked up to the police officer with my bleeding hand and told him the man pushed me.  He didn't care and pushed me out of the way hard enough for me to stumble a few feet back.  I demanded his badge number, which he refused to give me.  I started to write his name down off his name tag, and he took it and shoved it into my face so I couldn't read it saying things like 'Oh, you want to see my name tag?  Is this good?  Can you see it?'  He was extremely rude and unprofessional." 

According to more than one source, the nametag, in fact, said R. Miville.

While it doesn't always end in altercations with cops, culture-jamming, theatre activism, or guerilla theatre, whatever you want to call it, always causes people to reflect.

This year, we had planned two performances, the first inside Chartwells in Concordia University's downtown campus.  Chartwells is the exclusive food service provider for Concordia and uses that authority to limit student's choice and serve up an overpriced menu of substandard grub (more can be found here). 

Our players entered separately, then one by one started asking for items not on the Chartwells menu and complaining that there wasn't more choice.  Pro-Chartwells players started entering the discussion and as voices started raising in walked "Ketih Pruden, Dean of Students" accompanied by "Chartwells security agents" who checked the ID of offending patrons then had them sent to detention or put on a no-fly list, or worse - sent to Guantanamo Bay.

The scene went very well and considering many Concordia students didn't like Chartwells either, got a round of applause.

"I definitely feel that we made a positive effect," commented OTL organizer and player Jay Lemieux, "this was one of the best received jams I have ever been apart of."

"Everyone hates Chartwells," Tetreault, also pleased with the performance, observed, "so we were just preaching to the choir.  Hopefully we motivated people to actually do something about the fact that they hate Chartwells."

Next up was Starbucks and our version of Death by Latté by Bill Talen (aka Reverend Billy).  In this play, actors enter in small groups a minute apart, each one talking about one of the problems with Starbucks such as clusterbombing, use of unfairly traded coffee and milk that may contain an unsafe hormone (more details can be found here).

"Believers" (believing there's something wrong with Starbucks) in the group aren't drinking a "Starbucks latté" (actually water in a Starbucks cup) and "non-believers" are.  When the last group enters, the volume of conversations escalate until all the "non-believers" start dying in an over-the-top manner.  Then we get up, bow, explain what we did and leave.

OTL had already performed this jam before on Buy Nothing Day (2004) and this year we decided to perform it twice.  The first version in a Starbucks on Guy drew confused reactions from the crowd and the second, at the Starbucks in Chapters bookstore got a favorable (though still somewhat confused) reaction and security at the end of the performance.

Essentially, people got what we were doing, and regardless of whether or not they agreed with what we were saying, they allowed us to finish our performance, and some even clapped.  Bolstered by our sofar successful run, we decided to try an encore - at the Starbucks on Crescent and Ste-Catherine.

The scene went really well, but after all the non-believers had died and before we had time for a bow, the shrill voice of (probaby) the manager screamed:  "I just called the cops, get out now !!!" and didn't let up or let us get a word in until security pushed us to the outside.  Despite having to talk over screaming, we managed to explain what we had done to the patrons, who didn't seem anywhere near as angry.

Before this performance, Jay Lemieux had needed more water in his Starbucks cup.

"I went into (nearby) Mikes (restaurant)  just to use the bathroom to fill up my cup with water," he recounted, "there was a large man who wouldn't let me by.  We argued a bit then I gave up and walked away.  As I was walking out I noticed a pitcher of water that was clearly not for anyone and I filled up my cup with it.  Got grabbed by the arm by someone who started yelling at me and I helped him make a big scene."

This gave us reason to hold just one more performance.

The script was simple:  we go in, one at a time, and ask for a glass of water.  Mikes had an easy way to get us to leave and not make a scene:  give us water, which is something they should have done in the first place.  Refusing to give water (which is free anyways) just like refusing to let someone go to the bathroom is immoral, if not illegal.

Instead, Mikes decided to make a scene.  After the first players entered, they has already threatened to call the cops, by the time half our group was in, they were shoving us out.  Soon, we were on the street and they were blocking the door.  Then the cops showed up, with one of the Starbucks employees in the back seat.

The next few minutes were a melee of our players demanding answers, Mikes and Starbucks staffers behaving like jerks with a "gotcha" attitude towards the police presence and the police behaving unprofessionally, especially considering all we had done was theatre and absolutely nothing illegal.

During this mess we learned that Starbucks was claiming that we were throwing chairs all around the place.  When we explained to the police that we were actors and doing nothing of the sort, they calmed down and eventually just told us to leave and that the theatre was over for the day.

OTL has had police presence at jams before and generally, as in our American Apparel  jam last Buy Nothing Day, they tell us that we are "free to demonstrate" but cannot block the sidewalk or entry way - very professional and by the book.  These cops, obviously hadn't read that book or chose to ignore it.

"This incident further proves what our police department values more," commented Tetreault, "the businesses, not the people."

Overall, we did achieve our goal - to cause people to reflect on the true nature of the corporate culture all around them.  It was a very successful Buy Nothing Day, and one to remember.