Billed as ‘documentary theatre’
An intriguing and bold piece of theatre
Its abnormality starts at the ticket check, when greeted with something along the lines of, “There are a lot of parts in this play and the cast would like your help by reading out loud some lines. If you’d like to do that I’ll place a sticker on you and then they will know they can approach you.” The seating is also unconventional. In addition to the usual chairs there is also the option of a cushion on the floor.
Once inside Gabriele Uboldi and Sam Rees provide a warm welcome in their room made homely by a large pink carpet. They greet us and offer tea and biscuits as they circle the table that has loose pages of script on it and an overhead projector, looking like a relic of 20th century classroom furniture, entirely appropriate for a play rooted in the 60s. Probably pre-dating even that is the record player, located on the tea trolley, complete with an LP that will scratch away during various scenes. Projections and set courtesy of Ella Dale with lighting by Laurel Marks see us through various events and moods.
Period established, the metatheatrical show continues with some information about themselves and then, ingeniously, both the story and the process of writing and researching it unfold hand-in-hand. The play is inspired by events at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1968 when 3000 students occupied parts of the building in protest at the appointment of Walter Adams as Director in 1966. As principal of University College of Rhodesia his affiliation to members of the white majority government of Ian Smith, that had made a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) from the UK, made him a target for those opposed to the regime there.
This is the start of a complex interweaving of multiple events during that period that led to years of protests on many fronts. Uboldi and Rees do a laudable job in establishing connections between banks, oil companies, the Nigerian Civil War and Adams. Into the melting pot of campaigns are then thrown the Prague Spring, protests against the war in Vietnam, the civil rights campaign in the USA and the death of Martin Luther King and the Paris riots. It’s an activist's dream and captures the heady days when hopes of revolution and overturning the system filled the air. Linking them all together is a tribute to the detailed research they carried out in archives, photos and first-hand accounts. Making it accessible in such a short running time through the medium of this play is a triumph of writing and performance.
However, it demands full attention, otherwise it’s possible to miss a key point and wonder how we got from A to B. And it’s not over yet. The guys also add the personal dimension of events and people in their own lives raising issues of suicide, homophobia and racism; situations that ask what radical change means today in an age of inequality and injustice and if there is anything to be gained from listening to voices from the past
Lessons on Revolution is an intriguing and bold piece of theatre that stands out for the way it crafts a swathe of material into a coherent performance piece that incorporates the methodology that created it.
