L.M. Bogad
– Artist’s Website –
Now, Bogad has released Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play, a complete how-to guide and comprehensive study of creative nonviolence, pranksterism, subvertisement and cultural sabotage for activists, performers and anyone who is ready to take the streets. He also recently released a second edition of his landmark Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements, which explains how to run for office as a gnome and actually get elected.
Here Bogad discusses the role of theater in protest, how the Civil Rights Movement used “tactical performance” and his role in some of the most unforgettable street theater.
Lorna Garano: You’ve appeared on picket lines in roles such as Ronald McDonald, Saint Francis, Sam Walton and an Angry Banker. Why do you think picket lines are such important “play spaces” for serious play and dramatization?
L.M. Bogad: Picket lines are one of those key, everyday points of confrontation in protest. There’s something real and important at stake — will people cross the picket line? Will the strike or boycott succeed? But a lot of the time this space is haunted by cliché and is too easily ignored. We march in circles with signs repeating the same chants over and over — and it’s a good cause, but it’s bad theater. People ignore you, or resent you, too easily.
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The Clown Army, of which Bogad was a cofounder, in action creating an “irresistible image” at the G-8 protests in Edinburgh, 2005. (Credit: Peter Morison)