- Home
- Commentary
- Preserving our sanity amidst the consuming madness of the times
- Removing the mask of the insecure babyman
- The internet: from digital democracy to digital dementia
- Doubt as an asset, certainty as an affliction
- Fascism, collective insanity and ourselves
- Navigating disinformation, uncertainty, individualism and the poison apple of conspiracy
- If nothing changes nothing will change: the Voice referendum
- What can we learn from disaster communities?
- New year, a time to embrace the uncertainty of it all
- We could be non-binary
- Adaptive resilience vs safety paternalism
- Left wing, right wing? What just happened to politics?
- Covid, class and the addiction to certainty
- Neoliberalism, the Life World and the Psychopathic Corporation
- Democracy is about our bodies, not just our minds
- What’s your motivation: is it yourself or the change you’re making?
- Mind over matter: The world of abstraction is driving us to destruction
- The real threats to our liberty and survival
- Avoiding the abyss of conspiracy theories
- The difference between a legal system and a fantasy novel
- What’s a conspiracy and what’s just common garden variety corruption?
- Unpredictability, humility and an emerging anthropandemic
- The trilemma – climate change, economic collapse, and rising fascism
- Happy New Normal for the decade ahead
- The race to the bottom in australian politics
- Fires, liars and climate deniers
- Talking about lock-on devices – an article in ‘The Conversation’
- The Ponzi scheme is teetering
- Regenerative culture a key part of the blockade experience
- Staying sane in the late Anthropocene
- Extinction Rebellion
- Major parties have failed on climate, it’s time to rebel.
- Elections In The Late Anthropocene
- It is the Greens that are defeating the Nats and it’s all about your preferences
- Australia’s powerhouse of democracy and innovation is in the Northern Rivers
- Is identity politics a problem for the left?
- The climate emergency and the awful state of Australian politics
- Democracy and rights under threat in corporate police state
- Liberty, freedom and civil rights? Do any of us understand these things anymore.
- The forest wars are back, time to mobilise
- …more commentary
- Workshops
- News & Events
- Media
- A Flood of Emotions – Sydney Ideas Event
- Participatory democracy in the COVID era – SCU podcast
- Activism educator Aidan Ricketts explains how and why protests can be peaceful
- Bob Brown Is Taking “Shocking” Anti-Protest Laws To The High Court
- Anti protest laws could arrest nannas, seize tractors
- “They blinked first”
- Colin Barnett quick to protest against ‘activism degrees’ – The Australian, 16/10/2014
- ‘Degrees in activism’ put brake on growth – The Australian, 15/10/2014
- Magistrate throws out vexatious police case against CSG protesters
- Outrage over school PR ‘by stealth’- The Northern Star
- CSG clash a certainty
- Communities use new tactics
- Gas group attacks lecturer
- …more media
- Activist Resources
- Reviews
- Menu Item
Theatre of protest: the magnifying effects of theatre in direct action

The first act of imagination required of any social change activist is the vision of a better world. The next challenge is to imagine ways to convey this vision to others. In its broadest sense, political theatre is the act of conveying this imagined better world to the everyday onlooker. Understood in this way, theatre is not just a technique that ‘may’ be used in protests but is indispensable. Theatre in protest can range from spontaneous street theatre through to entirely serious (even unlawful) acts of defiance embellished by the use of subtle psychological tools intended to manipulate meaning. This understanding of theatre is deliberately broad and it is intended to encapsulate a whole range of psychological devices associated with protest that can be intricately woven into the fabric of the experience. Devices such as imagination, ritual, ceremony, romance and symbolism, when combined with bold physical acts of protest, disobedience and defiance produce a powerful medium for asserting dissent.
Environmental protests since the 1970s, in Australia particularly, have provided a colourful stage for the theatre of protest. The activities of radical environmental organisations such as the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) in north eastern NSW have done much to stretch the envelope of politically acceptable direct action protest. NEFA successfully highlighted the extent of old growth logging in north eastern NSW by conducting a decade-long and politically highly successful guerrilla-style1 campaign of direct action. NEFA achieved particular notoriety in 1992 when a group of activists travelled to Sydney to stage a series of controversial direct actions at the parliament, and later at the offices of the NSW Forestry Commission. These actions were as bold as they were theatrical, and as such provide excellent case studies for analysis.
Theatrical and imaginative portrayals of physical protests can produce a kind of paradigmatic theatre that has the capacity not only to magnify the political message, but also to empower protesters and, more subtly, to decentre ‘protestees’. The important but sometimes subtle inter-subjective aspects of such experiences will be examined by reference to the accounts of individuals involved in the depicted events.
Suggested Citation
Ricketts, A 2006, ‘Theatre of protest: the magnifying effects of theatre in direct action’, Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 89, pp. 75-87.
The publisher’s version of this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14443050609388094
This article is also available to purchase from Amazon here
I like these sites
Community Organisations
- Code Green Tasmania
- CSG Free Northern Rivers
- Friends of the Earth Melbourne
- Generation Alpha
- Huon Valley Environment Centre
- Lock the Gate Alliance
- Nature Conservation Council NSW
- North Coast Environment Council
- North East Forest Alliance
- Plan to Win
- Rainforest Information Centre
- Save our Foreshore
- Still Wild Still Threatened
- The Change Agency
- The Wilderness Society