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Ladies Against Women, 1980-1983
Reagan For Shah Committee
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REAGEN FOR SHAH COMMITTEE 1600 Woolsey St. Box 7 Berkeley, CA 94703 MANDATORY PRESS RELEASE - That's sick! are you kidding! what? THAT'S NOT FUNNY! what do you mean ? '80 CAMPAIGN GIVE WAR A CHANCE At the time of Reagan's election, we did a press release on this letterhead. Several reporters took us seriously, and were offended by our use of the word "mandatory"... we though everyone would understand, but "SOME THINGS JUST AREN'T FUNNY..." especially when you are tired, pressured, etc. Or are they? Political humor is a touchy business. When the Plutonium Players, a stand-up comedy and satirical theater troupe specializing in "living political cartoons" for anti- nuclear rallies and benefits, started the Reagan for Shah campaign, we had a lot to learn. It started innocently enough: an outdoor show on the Berkeley campus with one limitation, the necessity to get the whole cast on one mic. So we decided to do a parody of a Berkeley noon rally. We invented a coalition, coming up with groups like Students For War, and the SubUrban League, and including the name of one of the darkhorse Republican candidates, the bane of Berkeley, RR, in the Reagan for Shah Committee. It was almost accidental that the letterhead we made up the night before the rally said REAGAN FOR SHAH rather than one of the other groups, and it was a whim that made us send out 40 press releases to news desks, but the response, especially from radio stations, was amazing. The phone rang like crazy, and we were forced to invent characters and platforms at 7 am, while being taped on a longdistance call... Wow! We soon found out that while most audiences, including reporters, "got" the joke and many actually appreciated it, a few were baffled. We made our costumes whackier, and made sure to include a few absolutely absurd groups in our coalition, like Mutants for a Radioactive Environment, and the Coalition Against Comic Agitators, (CACA), to provide a clue. On radio interviews, when asked if this was tongue-in-cheek we would sass back something like "surely you know a lady doesn't have a sense of humor!" "Don't you know everything you hear on the radio is absolutely true?" or "I don't care to speak about sure-fire perversions like movements of the tongue. Tongue-in-cheek indeed! Whose tongue? Whose cheek? You have a very filthy mind." We soon learned that while wonderful for entertaining the committed, subtle irony could be disastrous on the streets. There are simply times when one of the gang should produce a card with dictionary definition of satire on it, or take off a pair of glasses or a funny hat and try to explain the thing. SOME HINTS: Know your audience, What do they laugh at ? What seems to make them uncomfortable? Pay attention while you are "onstage" and ask questions later. A good question is, "was there anything confusing or not quite as sharp?" Drawing a crowd on the street is not easy. To hold passersby, you must be both entertaining, (good material and delivery), and legible, (good costuming and projection, or volume). Guerilla (or girl-illa) actions can give us performers a sense of savage glee while failing to move the audience. Check it out: will this convince anyone? GOOD LUCK! over
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REAGEN FOR SHAH COMMITTEE 1600 Woolsey St. Box 7 Berkeley, CA 94703 MANDATORY PRESS RELEASE - That's sick! are you kidding! what? THAT'S NOT FUNNY! what do you mean ? '80 CAMPAIGN GIVE WAR A CHANCE At the time of Reagan's election, we did a press release on this letterhead. Several reporters took us seriously, and were offended by our use of the word "mandatory"... we though everyone would understand, but "SOME THINGS JUST AREN'T FUNNY..." especially when you are tired, pressured, etc. Or are they? Political humor is a touchy business. When the Plutonium Players, a stand-up comedy and satirical theater troupe specializing in "living political cartoons" for anti- nuclear rallies and benefits, started the Reagan for Shah campaign, we had a lot to learn. It started innocently enough: an outdoor show on the Berkeley campus with one limitation, the necessity to get the whole cast on one mic. So we decided to do a parody of a Berkeley noon rally. We invented a coalition, coming up with groups like Students For War, and the SubUrban League, and including the name of one of the darkhorse Republican candidates, the bane of Berkeley, RR, in the Reagan for Shah Committee. It was almost accidental that the letterhead we made up the night before the rally said REAGAN FOR SHAH rather than one of the other groups, and it was a whim that made us send out 40 press releases to news desks, but the response, especially from radio stations, was amazing. The phone rang like crazy, and we were forced to invent characters and platforms at 7 am, while being taped on a longdistance call... Wow! We soon found out that while most audiences, including reporters, "got" the joke and many actually appreciated it, a few were baffled. We made our costumes whackier, and made sure to include a few absolutely absurd groups in our coalition, like Mutants for a Radioactive Environment, and the Coalition Against Comic Agitators, (CACA), to provide a clue. On radio interviews, when asked if this was tongue-in-cheek we would sass back something like "surely you know a lady doesn't have a sense of humor!" "Don't you know everything you hear on the radio is absolutely true?" or "I don't care to speak about sure-fire perversions like movements of the tongue. Tongue-in-cheek indeed! Whose tongue? Whose cheek? You have a very filthy mind." We soon learned that while wonderful for entertaining the committed, subtle irony could be disastrous on the streets. There are simply times when one of the gang should produce a card with dictionary definition of satire on it, or take off a pair of glasses or a funny hat and try to explain the thing. SOME HINTS: Know your audience, What do they laugh at ? What seems to make them uncomfortable? Pay attention while you are "onstage" and ask questions later. A good question is, "was there anything confusing or not quite as sharp?" Drawing a crowd on the street is not easy. To hold passersby, you must be both entertaining, (good material and delivery), and legible, (good costuming and projection, or volume). Guerilla (or girl-illa) actions can give us performers a sense of savage glee while failing to move the audience. Check it out: will this convince anyone? GOOD LUCK! over
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