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Ground Zero First Amendment Theater Festival!
Submit ideas for plays, bits, or whatever to be performed at Ground Zero. We must keep our calcified sentimentality towards 9/11 from paralyzing us while that spot gets turned into a supermall/advertising spot.
A Call For Submissions:
Here is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, a part of what is known as the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
We of THE INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT INSIDE GROUND ZERO invite citizens to submit ideas for a bit, a play, a monologue, a song that you or someone you love will perform on the sidewalks and ramps which encircle Ground Zero.
To Submit: Go to the Stop Shopping Monitor, or email Michael(no spam)revbilly.com if you have technical troubles
The only rule for this festival is that you use the 1st Amendment as the material for your performance. Here is an example of a play in the proper submission form:
1) The title: "A FLASH MOB OF CONSCIENCE, starring the 1st Amendment"
2) The name of your group: "The Church of Stop Shopping"
3) The script of the action: "Thirty of us meet at the Burrito Bar on Walker and Church in Tribeca on Tuesday night the 16th, in the back room, at about 6 PM, and we have a drink. All 30 of us have cell phones. Then, at about 6:30 PM, the 30 of us walk down to Ground Zero. Near the holy site, we split the group in two, 15 going to Church Street side of Ground Zero, between the Path train and the subway. The other group fans out around Ground Zero, down each side and on the walk ways out to West Side Highway. -This is a "buddy system" action. The 15 people on Church Street call their 15 counterparts who are at various points encircling Ground Zero. Contact is established. Now the people who are walking around the GZ all have sheets of paper with the First Amendment (printed above) before them, and they read it to the caller on the Church Street again and again. The Church Street person now has a "script." The Church Street 15 can go anywhere in that area, down into the subway or into the Path as far as the phone signal remains, across the street to Trinity Church. They can perform alone or in groups, shouting through the fence in a line, for instance. As their phone partners recite the amendment, the Church Street people are shouting, or singing, or stop and starting with laughter, or crying the words, or preaching the words - as if the person on the other end of the line doesn't know what the 1st Amendment is, or has forgotten, or doesn't want to believe that it exists. "You mean, we have the right to peaceably assemble? Really? But, well, the NYPD sure doesn't want us to.. I wonder if they know that we already have this right." However much improvising the actor at Church Street does, the script is slowly coming into the cell phone all the time, so even those inexperienced with free-form acting can't go wrong.
At the conclusion of the performance, the Flash Mob of Conscience people walk back to the Burrito Bar for the evening's concluding drink.
Additional Note: Your performance will take from 9 to 11 minutes. These outings should have legal observers, but the idea is to have performed, taped, recorded and applauded before the police arrive. We are not seeking arrests. But with our recordings the image/sound will be pumped out under the Creative Commons License via IndyMedia, Pacifica and may be collected by hipsters as ART.
Our hope is that Peace will come from breaking the automatic and sentimental responses we now have to the 9/11 events. The calcification of 9/11 into a kind of supermall of behaviors, surveillance, prison-like fences and humorless plaques of history -- has produced so much violence. Above all, by the time George Bush comes to bask in 9/11, searching for the firefighter Bob Beckwith for his cheerleader pose -- we who live here will have broken the false gravitas of that stage.
Change-a-luia!
Here is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, a part of what is known as the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
We of THE INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT INSIDE GROUND ZERO invite citizens to submit ideas for a bit, a play, a monologue, a song that you or someone you love will perform on the sidewalks and ramps which encircle Ground Zero.
To Submit: Go to the Stop Shopping Monitor, or email Michael(no spam)revbilly.com if you have technical troubles
The only rule for this festival is that you use the 1st Amendment as the material for your performance. Here is an example of a play in the proper submission form:
1) The title: "A FLASH MOB OF CONSCIENCE, starring the 1st Amendment"
2) The name of your group: "The Church of Stop Shopping"
3) The script of the action: "Thirty of us meet at the Burrito Bar on Walker and Church in Tribeca on Tuesday night the 16th, in the back room, at about 6 PM, and we have a drink. All 30 of us have cell phones. Then, at about 6:30 PM, the 30 of us walk down to Ground Zero. Near the holy site, we split the group in two, 15 going to Church Street side of Ground Zero, between the Path train and the subway. The other group fans out around Ground Zero, down each side and on the walk ways out to West Side Highway. -This is a "buddy system" action. The 15 people on Church Street call their 15 counterparts who are at various points encircling Ground Zero. Contact is established. Now the people who are walking around the GZ all have sheets of paper with the First Amendment (printed above) before them, and they read it to the caller on the Church Street again and again. The Church Street person now has a "script." The Church Street 15 can go anywhere in that area, down into the subway or into the Path as far as the phone signal remains, across the street to Trinity Church. They can perform alone or in groups, shouting through the fence in a line, for instance. As their phone partners recite the amendment, the Church Street people are shouting, or singing, or stop and starting with laughter, or crying the words, or preaching the words - as if the person on the other end of the line doesn't know what the 1st Amendment is, or has forgotten, or doesn't want to believe that it exists. "You mean, we have the right to peaceably assemble? Really? But, well, the NYPD sure doesn't want us to.. I wonder if they know that we already have this right." However much improvising the actor at Church Street does, the script is slowly coming into the cell phone all the time, so even those inexperienced with free-form acting can't go wrong.
At the conclusion of the performance, the Flash Mob of Conscience people walk back to the Burrito Bar for the evening's concluding drink.
Additional Note: Your performance will take from 9 to 11 minutes. These outings should have legal observers, but the idea is to have performed, taped, recorded and applauded before the police arrive. We are not seeking arrests. But with our recordings the image/sound will be pumped out under the Creative Commons License via IndyMedia, Pacifica and may be collected by hipsters as ART.
Our hope is that Peace will come from breaking the automatic and sentimental responses we now have to the 9/11 events. The calcification of 9/11 into a kind of supermall of behaviors, surveillance, prison-like fences and humorless plaques of history -- has produced so much violence. Above all, by the time George Bush comes to bask in 9/11, searching for the firefighter Bob Beckwith for his cheerleader pose -- we who live here will have broken the false gravitas of that stage.
Change-a-luia!
For more information:
http://www.revbilly.com
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