As a quick show of hands verifies at the beginning, not many of us have ever occupied anything - not even a measly shop or office building and especially not an oil rig. So what are us fledgling activists in the audience to do? Luckily, the cast of How to Occupy an Oil Rig is ready to explain.
The show is set up mainly as a series of instructional lectures with a story running through them. Two activists, played on rotation by the three cast members, meet while cleaning birds in the wake of an oil spill. Their characters are flushed out using some details from a couple of audience members.
The more the characters are involved in environmental activism, the more advanced the lessons the audience learns. Starting with ‘how to clean oil off a bird,’ the lectures escalate through protest marches and occupying small shops and end with ‘how to occupy an oil rig.’
Despite how this might make it sound, How to Occupy and Oil Rig is charming, hilarious and enlightening. It moves through the escalating demonstrations with wonderful pace and confidence, suggesting that it more than likely that some of the cast members have some experience in the realm of protesting. This sense of knowledge on their part makes the demonstrations captivating and you might find yourself hanging on every instruction.
However, the most brilliant thing about How to Occupy an Oil Rig is its ability to remind everyone in the audience how much they have a stake in the problem the characters are seeking to solve. Inserting details from the lives of audience members into the characters’ personalities is only one of the ways that the cast subtly reminds us that there is nothing extreme about activism. By the end of the show, the progression towards occupying an oil rig seem hilariously plausible for any one of us.
Crucially, though, we are not being asked to occupy an oil rig. Ultimately, the show seeks to remind us that nothing transformational is required to make you want to do something about the problems you see in the world. It reminds us that every giant act to change things for the better starts with small acts to change small things and that every change begins as nothing more than hope, which is something we can all relate to.
