Break the Dishes by Arlene Brown

Disruptive guerrilla actions became a big part of the work on tour. Disrupting a faculty meeting at Keuka College, disrupting Plimpton speaking to students at Amherst, disrupting classrooms, etc. Each action had basically the same two-fold purpose: To advertise our evening performance and to interrupt the bullshit of the moment, whether it be the President’s speech, or a class in Western Thought.

We did these actions with no hostility towards the students. Successful disruption is when you don’t alienate the kids you want to reach, but manage to point out to them the bullshit of what you are interrupting, the bullshit they are participating in. And pointing it out is sometimes just the act of being irreverent to something they’ve been taught to value, like a College President. It will make some students angry-we try and rap with them. They are our potential brothers and sisters and we have to get them to fight the man.

At Amherst College all the dishes have as their design
pictures of Lord Amherst killing Indians-which he did, in
real life, by smallpox infestation. During one meal we started
singing, very loudly, with guitar accompaniment, Have you
looked at the pictures on your dishes? We riffed until we
got to Break the dishes. Which we did, and some students
joined us. The action worked because we were so obviously
correct to break those ugly genocide dishes. Although our
action was violent, it was done with a sense of humor too-
we had a ball. But most important, it prompted political discussions all over the cafeteria. Arlene Brown

Source: The Pageant Players Guerrilla Theatre;
Liberation News Service, 5/3/69

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