What A Riot - Siranudh Scott

Methodlogy, Reflections, Wonderings:

I liked her methodology, I've always appreciated the inclusitivioty of theatre of the Oppressed; due to its direct to audience contact methodology of the play- ensuring most people embrace and understand and have a stronger take away of the theaters message. This is what she did, she had the students get involved and chose real life figures they were inspired by, and re-enacted real life scenes that happened to those figures. The scenes were intersected with audience interactions and opinions on how to change the scene intersecting the play to reflect the audiences preferences for how the situation could or opinion on how the scene is played out.

I think it's a fantastic approach for the students to block in a play through this method, as it reveals how they feel about certain events and evidently the social/ racial scene they are faced with- but how things were back then and potentially how they could bring about change in the future. This sort of takeaway is dependent on the investment of the audience- their decision to replace certain characters or the way in which the character is presented (for example Claudette Colvin; having her being a strong protagonist portrayed as a sort of hero with Rodney King being portrayed as a tag along) makes their minds aware of how they feel about those issues and those figures. In the making of the play, the students also mentioned how they didn't want to be cast as Poor Latinos, in the process of acting out who they want to be and how they fit in with the scenario presented on stage can help them brainstorm how to realize their dreams; but also makes them aware of restrictions they can face- and what they want might want to change about that in the future.
By having the methodology be socially/ community based it can reaffirm the common paradigms one community may have/ wether that be a bad or a good one, to itself- which will make everyone feel closer and more prone to open up and talk about issues which the openness will result in a more success in fixing those issues.