Gotham Gossipist: Occupiers Get Entertaining
Tired of those run-of-the-mill occupiers? Looking for an occupier with a star quality? Some rhythm maybe? A good singing voice? You're in luck, the Occupy Wall Street movement now comes complete with an entertainment department, and they've created their own movement called Occupy Broadway.
Occupy Broadway's debut protest took place on Friday night's Manhattan's Paramount Plaza and featured live performances for the following 24-hours. According to The Huffington Post, the protest included over 60 performances from some of New York's most celebrated (albeit apparently disgruntled) actors, musicians, playwrights, puppeteers, and performance artists.
The movement was organized by members of the Occupy Wall Street Performance Guild. Yes, they have a Performance Guild, and it includes such noted acts the New York Neo-Futurists, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Bread and Puppet Theater, the Living Theatre and the Civilians, as well as a plethora of individual artists.
So what's the point of this 24-hour public performance? Movement leader Ben Shepard told The Huffington post that, "The whole point is that if you kick us out of the park, we're going to take it to the city, everywhere, and that's part of what we've been doing with this thing," said Shepard. "I mean, [New York Mayor Michael] Bloomberg has been trying to tell us that the show's over. But he's not really a very good stage manager, because we're all still on the stage. And at this point you can't tell the difference between the performers and the spectators, and everyone's joining in and there are occupations around the world."
Co-organizer Benjamin Cerf, attested that Occupy Broadway is another example of how vibrant and sustainable the Occupier movement is, "This is really an experiment on the mobility of this movement, because we have brought all the working groups here. We had sustainability, we had the kitchen, the lawyers guild, we had medics -- we had everything that a civilization needs, really," Cerf said. "So we show that we can mobilize this kind of thing in an instant, in a day, and we can respond to any necessity. Here, there was a need to make theater for the people. Tomorrow it will be to support a foreclosure, or any other thing you can imagine."
Theme protests, I like it. Maybe they can have more, like Occupy Cupcakes, or Occupy Massages. There have got to be some disgruntled bakers out there, right?
