:: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 ::

Saturday April 26 – Workshop 2

We take the stories from Tuesday night and flesh them out…. they unfold quickly and I’m struggling to keep up… it’s intense… Here’s one story that stood out for the whole group…

STORY 1 – Performed by Matuse, Susan, Elissar, Ahmad
ISSUES – Police Racism, Media representation of young Arabs, Public Space

The Scene - a bunch of mates at a Bulldogs football match
The Characters – Matuse, a footy cheering crowd, three police officers, and an impromptu journalist and cameraman.
A description as it’s performed – Matuse stands in front of a guy of Anglo appearance, both cheering their team on, "Go doggy’s, Go". The anglo looking boy throws his hand down in disappointment because of the way the footy match is going. As he throws his hand down something falls out and hits Matuse on the back of the foot. Matuse turns around in anger and says, "What did you throw that at me for"… the other guy immediately apologises and Matuse realizes it was an accident. Things are immediately cool between them. However, before they even have the chance to talk to one another, three police officers approach. Two of them jump on Matuse, pushing him to the ground, and the other police officer merely stands beside the ‘other’ guy. The audience is left questioning here…who is the ‘other’ guy? Matuse makes every effort to explain that there was no trouble and the scuffle the police may have seen between him and the ‘other’ guy was all a misunderstanding that has been sorted. The police refuse to listen to him, repeatedly saying, "shut your mouth, we don’t want to hear a word from you".

After holding him down with force, hands held behind his back for a prolonged period of time, they escorted him out of the football stadium. Why? Matuse is bewildered as to why he gets pinned down, verbally abused and humiliated in front of an entire stadium of people for doing absolutely nothing wrong… and the ‘other’ guy who initiated the whole saga is left standing and untouched…. Matuse feels that it’s all about appearances… What do you think?

When the rest of the group joins the performance to re-enact it, Ahmad and Hashem, play out the roles of a journalist and cameraman, sending up the way they are reporting on the incident…like it’s major news! Ahmad and Hashem are not prompted to do this…it’s their idea and it’s hilarious. It’s obvious now there’s a big anti- media sentiment amongst us as a group. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this one in coming weeks!

I’ll leave you with some words of wisdom from Matuse (and believe me, they are words of wisdom – this young man actually lives this!)

"When the police pull us over, like a car full of me and my mates and there is only one copper he won’t act. If there’s two coppers, forget it, they’ll pull us out of the car, harrass us and even possibly try so hard to find a reason to arrest us".

Until next week…
Salam
:: Patrick 6:54 PM [+] ::
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