We all like to think that, if it really mattered, we would stand up and be counted. We’d take a stand against injustice, fight for what we really believe in, defend the defenceless. Chris Goode’s gentle and gently optimistic verbatim piece offers us six people who have done just that. Not in the kinds of ways that make the news headlines, but quietly and unassumingly. Just like this show, which is performed with a self-effacing grace.
When there is such disaffection with party politics and a sense that individual voices can’t be heard or make a difference, this is a reminder that small gestures matter. Even if it’s standing once a week outside an animal-testing laboratory for years without knowing for sure whether you are changing anything, or fighting hard to save an Oxford boatyard from being redeveloped, and failing. Stand is not about triumphantly successful campaigns, it’s about people uniting and being stronger together. The constant refrain is: “I didn’t do this on my own.”
The setup, six actors sitting in a row, reminds us of recent election debates. However, these people are not trying to win our votes, but demonstrating the possibilities of direct action. Individual stories curl around each other: the actor who took a stand against BP’s sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the climate-change activist who glued herself to the London headquarters of fracking company’s PR agency.
These people are no saints: they unwittingly reveal themselves. There are moments when passion becomes obsession, when you catch a glimpse of pride. But it only underlines activists’ humanity, and the suggestion that these unlikely everyday heroes and heroines are just like us, except that they got off their backsides and did something to try to change the world.
• At Battersea Arts Centre, London, until 9 May. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
