Stand

“This is not just about me,” says one of the cast at the start and close of Chris Goode’s Stand. The six actors, sat on a line of stools, each on its own isolated platform, with their script on a stand in front, perform the words of six activists – or at least “people who act”. The aim, it would seem, is to use the words of real people to explore and share (and perhaps even explain) what it is that inspires “ordinary people” to “act” – whether it’s by making a stand against BP’s sponsorship of Shakespeare, animal experiments, or just speaking up against the selfish cruelty of other bus passengers.

Stand has something of interest to say, certainly; but as a theatrical experience it’s radio.

The six activists who are at the heart of this piece are a diverse lot, in terms of age, gender, race and class; yet there are suggestions that they were non-conformist from the start – standing out from their peers by reading a lot, or arguing against any authority from early childhood – generally, they were considered “an oddity”. Sooner or later, they picked on some cause, some injustice which inspired them to engage more actively with the world, and sooth the rage they’d increasingly felt – simply through the act of doing something. It might be just putting warning stickers on the windscreens of cars parked on the pavement, but the sense of empowerment was, we’re told, amazing.

As a witness to the world of activism, Stand does offer some interesting points; that it’s all too easy to become obsessed by the wrongness you’re fighting; that, even if the change you want happens, you can't be sure it was your efforts which did it. “You have to take the issues seriously, but not yourself seriously,” one activist says. “You just have to start something and hope it works out,” says another.

All food for thought, but what isn’t at all clear is why any of this is in a theatre. Stand fails to justify how staged performance is a better medium for such reportage than, say, a montage of the actual activists’ own recorded voices, which would likely reach far more people if broadcast on radio or YouTube. “When you’re playing me, be passionate,” says one of the activists, via an actor whose portrayal, while warm, is hardly energetic. Earlier, in a rare attempt at some theatrical staging, one interviewee suddenly has to pop off to “check (her) puddings”, and so the actress walks off stage – a device so mannered, unnatural and poorly lit to be annoying. Even worse, another cast member fails to naturally portray an activist’s clear reliance on “like” as a verbal tick – in her mouth, it not only sounds forced, but condescending.

Stand has something of interest to say, certainly; but as a theatrical experience it’s radio.