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‘Activist’ is one of those tricky words that, more often than not, make people think ‘troublemaker’. In his new verbatim play ‘Stand’, Chris Goode reclaims the word, repositioning it as a complex, aspirational label, and a force for good that doesn’t necessarily mean a person who stages protests in the middle of Trafalgar Square stark bollock naked.
Goode is a master of making real people’s voices come out of actor’s mouths, and here he yet again comes up trumps with the verbatim format. He has interviewed six people who have all chosen to act – to make a stand, to do something they believe in – and edited these interviews into this play. For the entire piece, six actors sit on stools in a line with their scripts on music stands in front of them. Occasionally they read the script, occasionally they don’t, and together they embody the voices of six ordinary people who are all remarkable in their own way.
We hear from a woman who stuck herself to the floor of Bell Pottinger – the notorious PR company that counts troubled governments, fracking companies and post-phone hacking Rebekah Brooks among their clients. There’s an 82-year-old man who stands outside an animal testing laboratory with a placard once a week (he’s prevented by law from being there any more than that). Another is a mother who adopted an eight-year-old child from Russia, and is trying to teach her to be a responsible, practical and independent woman.
It’s a very simple format, but the stories are subtle, poignant and enlightening. Each person is very different, but each has a disarming modesty and is realistic about what they are doing. Most – the environmental campaigners in particular – think it’s too late to fundamentally change the world. But that won’t stop them from doing what they think is right.
Goode’s play is a beautifully woven, inspiring call on people to do. Not to sit and make excuses, but to take part: to go and listen to a council meeting, to read the manifesto for social change, to act. And in the lead up to this election, there’s no message more relevant or vital than that.