Project for Tuesday

What are we trying to get out of this experience, and what do we want the audience to leave with?

It seems to me that most people only start to grasp historical occurrences once you parallel the event to one of the present day; Arthur Miller did it with the Crucible, T.S. Eliot did it with poetry, etc. I believe Jacob shared an article relating the Hastings fire to the BP Oil spill. While I worry about the scope of this comparison, I'm always interested in exposing the inability of mankind to learn from its mistakes.

If a strike of this magnitude were to occur today... well let's just stop right there. Too obvious.

I would like to engage in some sort of discourse with the audience. I attended a piece by Mitch Dickman called Mediamockracy following the Democratic National Convention. It discussed the role of media, twisting and bending truth beyond recognition. Actors broke the 4th wall and had elevated discussion and debate amongst audience members, ripping participants out of observance and into engagement.

This sort of discourse could be beneficial in evaluating the act of dissent in the 21st century, compared to the start of the 21st century.  The point of addressing the massacre of 1914 to me is to state the true "freedom" we have of dissent in the 21st century. I would go further to state that we have a much better appearance of freedom, a veil draping the Patriot Act.

The group splits into 2 teams, one representing the miners of 1914, and the other as the working class of 2014. Honestly, theatrical antics aside, I just want to have a debate about the pros and cons involving the two groups, ranging from the pros and cons of mass media, to the ease of silencing dissent depending on the era. I want to see if we can come up with a strong set of values/concerns/improvements in worker relations, job quality, as well as discuss if it would not only be easier to organize support in the modern world, but at what cost? In short, my project for this week pulls away from the experiential, and steers towards the connection which can be easily digestible.