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Arrest For Attempted Street Theatre1
Arrest For Attempted Street Theatre1
On a beautiful May Day morning – that day picked on; as did the pair of us. By a stroke of ties and gaffer tape? Had they let fall to their
of the year when pagan, anarchist and socialist fortune, a Channel 4 documentary team and an inner cabal, they would not be amused by any
hope springs eternal – we were wondering independent filmmaker were on hand to film rival spectacle? The police, smarting from the
whether to join the festivities on London’s his- the episode. A friend commented later that anarchist breach of Charles and Camilla’s body
toric Clerkenwell Green. Step onto the Green more police officers had been needed to arrest politic, would have scrambled into action.
and we’d be liable to arrest under bail condi- us than to arrest the Krays!2
tions which had been imposed on us following The police, who had been able to gather One myth only
25 hours detention at Lewisham Police Station, evidence from TV interviews,3 suspected that The police’s main source about our alleged
southeast London. we were conspiring to dress up for the wed- conspiracy, we discovered during our inter-
What had we done to be banished from the ding (Fig. 1). Chris had been going to wear views, was an article in the Sun newspaper
sacred Mayday space? Nothing . . . yet. We had his Mister Mayhem costume, with top hat, on 31 January 2011, splashed over the front
been picked up in one of the pre-emptive raids dark glasses, and trickling vampire blood; page as ‘Hate-filled anarchists are plotting to
during what activists call the ‘Great Royal Camilla, as Queen Marie Antoinette with wreck royal wedding’ (Francis 2011: 1). Inside,
Wedding Purge’. Britain’s police were busy pompadour wig and zombie make-up neck- if you flicked past the page three beauty, you
arresting people whom they suspected wound, had intended to hand out ‘tombstone’ came across an unusually highbrow concoction
of thinking about doing something. cake to zombies gathered on Central London’s for a tabloid. It began with an epigram from
Journalists have covered this story in terms Soho Square while haunting the precincts of a Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his world and
of the right to free speech. But we had no 12-foot wooden guillotine in an urban guerrilla continued with a colour reproduction of detail
intention of making speeches – surely, the parody of the divine kingship ritual of Nemi from Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of earthly
wedding day was time for ritual celebra- grove (Frazer 1994: 11). The police wanted delights taken from activist leaflets. Top-hatted
tion and participation? As anthropologists, help with their enquiries about the superbly Mister Mayhem lurched over a two-inch-high
we combine Darwinian and Durkheimian crafted guillotine, which was decked with red headline that read ‘WEDDING TRASHERS’,
models on the evolution of ritual; joint ritual and black flags either side of the legend ‘Some the latter word spelt with a lurid red anarchist
action in Durkheim’s view being a necessary Cuts Are Necessary’. This they had found in ‘A’ (see Fig. 2). If you read on for some light-
condition for language to work. Performative the van with a caricature dummy of Prince hearted entertainment, you’d have learnt of an
deeds precede and provide the necessary scaf- Andrew, who was adorned with cardboard cut- astonishingly ambitious plot. For a period of
folding for speech. In activist mode, we put out insignia of the Knight Grand Cross of the one mad moon – from the TUC’s 26 March
such theories to empirical test, staging street Royal Victorian Order. demo to the 29 April wedding – hordes of
theatre in order to move into and around politi- This august decoration had in fact been anarchists would lay siege to the capital, occu-
cally contested spaces during ritually charged pinned onto the flesh-and-blood Andrew by pying police stations and barracks, erecting
cracks in time. With a motley crew known as his mum in an investiture on 26 March. That road-blocks, forcing the cancellation of the
the Government of the Dead, we’ve worn silly Saturday, Central London had been taken royal nuptials and precipitating the monarchy’s
costumes, devised ways to hang and decapi- over by a giant Trades Union Congress (TUC) imminent collapse. The main prong of the
tate effigies, spilt fake body fluids, committed march; no one had noticed the goings-on at attack would be led by an 18-foot Trojan horse
mock cannibalism, cast spells, bodypainted, court. Some royal rituals are best kept under flanked by balaclava’d unionized sex workers
sung and danced badly. On this occasion, the wraps, it seems. orchestrating a ‘right royal orgy’ in Parliament
ritual we felt most comfortable with involved a After the drama on the street, the procedural Square (Francis 2011).
guillotine. boredom of the booking-in at the police sta-
On 28 April 2011, the eve of Prince tion, and then, the royal dungeon: the perpetual
William’s wedding, several police vehicles fluorescent glare which never acknowledges
swooped down on a south London street corner circadian rhythm, the hard and sticky plastic
to arrest this theatrical troupe.1 Suddenly we mattress, the steel loo, the ‘cushion’ on the
were in the midst of the most extraordinary ledge which cannot be angled right to rest your
street theatre yet. What’s so exciting is that neck comfortably…even a numb doze is rudely
you never know who is going to turn up and disturbed by random clattering checks through
take part. The police were in costume, apart the cell door aperture and call-outs for inedible
from the detective and shifty undercover sur- meals. Complete with the demeaning require-
veillance; we were distinctly underdressed ment to ask humbly for every petty comfort,
in moth-eaten jumpers and scruffy T-shirts. the experience had the special character of
We’d been moving theatrical props – some intermingling ‘monarchical’ and ‘disciplinary
ANDREW COOPER / JOHN CUSSANS
quite heavy. The police seemed well rehearsed, punishment’ (Foucault 1995).
stringing themselves into a line, backing us Writing on such liminal states of sensory
steadily against a London brick wall. Slyly, deprivation, Victor Turner (1967: 106) speaks
they encircled a white van towards which they of ‘the realm of primitive hypothesis’, in which
suspected we were walking. one has the power to juggle with factors of
We waited to be auditioned as the suited existence. Could it be that the royal household,
detective flashed his badge and pointed to amid all the Kate/Wills mania, felt threatened?
some of us, rebuffing others – ‘no, he’s alright’ Could they really have thought their own pag-
– as if casting us for roles. One comrade who eantry challenged by our cardboard cut-out, Fig. 1. Government of the Dead’s invitation to the Zombie
happened to be already in fancy dress got straw-stuffed creations held together with cable Wedding on 29 April 2011.