Alas and alack, friends…

Today the Royal Shakespeare Company announced a new partnership with BP for its £5 ticket scheme for 16 – 25 year olds.

James Atherton, 23, who acted in one of of our on-stage protests last autumn, sums up our feelings today:

‘I am outraged that BP is targeting young people through this sponsorship deal. This company is responsible for massive carbon emissions and the devastation of ecosystems in the Gulf Coast and the Canadian tar sands. The RSC is essentially forcing young people like me to choose between having access to subsidised theatre and staying true to our commitment to a future with a stable climate and a healthy planet. Big oil should not be allowed to fund the arts, it’s as simple as that.’

We were hoping that the new Artistic Director Greg Doran would listen to the concerns of theatre-goers and actors and end the RSC’s relationship with BP. We are deeply disappointed to learn that this is not the case. We believe that BP is an immoral choice of sponsor, and we will continue to pop up unexpectedly at the RSC to make this point in creative and attention-grabbing ways for as long as the sponsorship deal continues. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Now, where was that ruff…?

Meanwhile, we have launched a petition for RSC-lovers to sign, calling on the theatre company to drop BP as a sponsor. Please sign, and share!

UPDATE: The Stage covered our wailings of distress! Next stop, an actual stage…

 

Photo by Kristian Buus

On stage. Without permission. In iambic pentameter. The Reclaim Shakespeare Company had a dramatic 2012. Where will our guerilla thespianism take us in 2013, asks founding player Richard Howlett?

My boyfriend got some theatre vouchers for Christmas this year. If we wanted to go and see a Shakespeare production that was not sponsored by an oil company, we could. That was not the case this time last year.

Back in January 2012 BP were proclaiming their sponsorship of the year-long World Shakespeare Festival, part of the arts bit of the Olympics, so pretty much every professional Shakespeare production in the land was in some way also acting as an advert for one of the most destructive companies in the world.

BP like sponsoring the arts. It’s an easy way to distract the public from their massive contribution to climate change and increasingly terrifying activities in the Canadian tar sands, Gulf of Mexico, Russian Arctic etc. And they like to do it for the long-haul. They already have five-year sponsorship deals with the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and the Tate. Quite a collection, eh? Following the Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company (at which BP was directly sponsoring a series of plays) could have been a further gem in their clutch of British cultural jewels. But this has not happened. I think the Reclaim Shakespeare Company is at least partly responsible for this. So, how did we do it?

It was exactly this time a year ago when my friends, Jess and Danny, came to my house for a post-Christmas meal. I explained to them one of my New Year’s resolutions was to get back into acting. It was ten years since I had finished a Drama degree and I yearned to be back on the stage. They had a brilliant idea that could combine my pursuit of a return to performing with the need to challenge the oil companies’ increasingly tight sponsorship stranglehold on the UK arts scene.

The concept was simple: BP was trying to colonise our playhouses. As people who love theatre and hate BP’s insanely damaging practices, we would carry out mini-rebellions – direct actions against their PR – in the very theatres they sought to conquer. On stage. Without permission. In iambic pentameter.

Once we started talking to others about the idea we found our enthusiasm for taking on the oil giant through the novel form of renaissance drama was shared. Some wanted to write scripts; others to make props; many were nervous but excited at the prospect of acting on RSC stages. Thus, the Reclaim Shakespeare Company came into being.

We gathered to read The Tempest. Our first ‘performance intervention’ was to take place at the RSC’s production of the play in their Stratford-upon-Avon base that April. A couple of us carried out a reconnaissance mission – surely the most civilised in direct action history. We went to see the play one evening, checking out possible entry points to the stage, how many staff were around, what the lighting was like etc. Inspired by the play, a two-minute speech was created for two performers. Costumes were hired, props made, rehearsals carried out.

On the big night we casually wandered into the auditorium, showed the usher our tickets, and at around ten minutes before curtain-up, as most of the audience were already seated, we dropped our long coats, revealed our Jacobean finery and took to the stage. Our performance received much laughter, much applause and the odd boo. We wanted to spark a debate – and we had succeeded!

We left the theatre, thanking the stunned ushers, who in turn, perhaps more from habit than gratitude, thanked us. I headed off for an interview on local TV in doublet and hose whilst the rest of the group talked to the audience as they left the show, handing out leaflets explaining the reason for the unexpected addition to their night’s entertainment. They even collected BP logos which audience members had ripped from their programmes following our on-stage battle-cry of ‘Out damn logo!’

That performance was the first of nine that the group went on to carry out during the World Shakespeare Festival. We performed in London’s West End, at the famous Roundhouse theatre (to an audience that coincidentally included many BP staff on a work outing!), at the Shakespeare exhibition in the British Museum, and twice more in Stratford. We did monologues, duologues, casts of three; comedy, tragedy; verse and prose. We made a giant ruff to look like BP’s famous logo and wore feathered caps at every possible opportunity. It was great fun and it was working.

Our audience stretched from those in the theatres themselves to the world beyond, via videos shared on facebook and twitter and media articles describing the events. The Independent newspaper ran a prominent article, and accompanying editorial suggesting Shakespeare would have supported our campaign; the Channel 5 chat-show The Wright Stuff held a debate entitled ‘Should BP back the Bard?’ In the theatre world high-profile actors and directors were giving us support: Mark Ravenhill and Mark Rylance spoke out against corporate sponsorship and some high-profile figures even met us to discuss an ethical code for theatres.

Our strategy of an inside-track of discussions with theatre people; and an outside-track of daring, creative interventions that made people laugh as well as think and existed both in the place of conflict – the sponsored theatres – as well as online and in the media seemed to be getting us somewhere. We had hit upon a tactic that was directly disrupting our target’s attempts at positive publicity but which they found it almost impossible to stop. Aside from barricading the stage, what could they do? An early announcement from the RSC’s artistic director explained they would allow the protests to carry on. In reality, this wasn’t strictly the case…

Another crucial element of our success seemed to be the pure pleasure we gained from what we were doing. Whereas some campaigning can feel like a drudge and often lead to burn-out, this was enjoyable in and of itself. We were part campaign group, part theatre troupe, enjoying ourselves creatively in a cause we knew to be important.

In our penultimate performance at the Noel Coward theatre in London the story of the campaign took a new twist. As the theatre’s heavies attempted to manhandle our actors off the stage, a member of the cast stepped in to stop them, as her fellow performers watched from the wings. Afterwards at the stage door we spoke to the actors and were heartened to hear of their support for what we were doing. One of them had even tweeted praise for us from backstage during the second-half!

As the Festival neared its end, it seemed we may have had a victory. The RSC made a statement confirming there had no further sponsorship plans with BP! Although they haven’t ruled out a future sponsorship relationship altogether, it seems they may have taken this opportunity to back away gracefully. We will be watching carefully to ensure the RSC stays free from the oily rogue’s clutches.

Meanwhile, we were planning a grand finale at the British Museum. This time we wanted to give all those that had followed us online through the year an opportunity to perform in our adaptation of a scene from Macbeth. As the BP ‘executive-witches’ danced in a circle the chorus would chant:

Double, double: oil is trouble,
Tar sands burn, as greenwash bubbles

We hoped fifty people would turn up. Incredibly, around 200 came, and chanted and chanted, filling the Great Hall with cries of ‘Out, damned logo!’. We finished the performance by symbolically banishing BP from the museum. It was a dramatic end to a dramatic year of creative, courageous and successful activism.

What does 2013 hold for the Reclaim Shakespeare Company when it seems we may have reclaimed our Bard – at least for now – from the clutches of Big Oil? A gradual retirement via bit parts in Soaps? Amateur dramatics in our nearest village hall? Whilst BP continue to manipulate our country’s cultural institutions in order to greenwash their image?! We thinketh not!

We will not allow oil companies to continue despoiling our beloved galleries, museums and theatres. The Reclaim Shakespeare Company have some new tricks up our frilly sleeves for 2013. We would love you to join us in our japes.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

To join our email update list and get involved in future performance interventions, drop us a line at info@bp-or-not-bp.org.

 

 

200 members of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company took over the British Museum’s Great Court and performed a series of anti-BP plays yesterday.

The flashmob of ‘actor-vists’ performed a re-interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the British Museum’s Great Court. The performance — which included 200 people chanting “double, double, oil is trouble; tar sands burn as greenwash bubbles” – was followed by three more Shakespeare-inspired playlets.

The flashmob provoked a major police and security presence inside the museum. The BP-sponsored “Shakespeare: Staging The World” exhibition was closed and the museum’s giant iron gates were bolted shut for the duration. This comes in the same week as BP accepted criminal responsibility, including manslaughter, for the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster. It has been hit with a fine of $4.5 billion, making it the biggest convicted corporate criminal in US history.

This was the ninth and final pop-up performance this season by the Reclaim Shakespeare Company, a group who have come together in opposition to BP’s sponsorship of the World Shakespeare Festival. They have been particularly critical of BP’s branding of several plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), and the British Museum’s ‘Shakespeare: Staging the World’ exhibition.

During their season of theatrical protests, the Reclaim Shakespeare Company have invaded the stage three times at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, and once each at the Roundhouse, Noel Coward Theatre and Riverside Studios in London. They have also performed uninvited twice before at BP-branded Shakespeare events at the British Museum. Performances have attracted support and applause from audiences, staff and even RSC performers.

The protests at the RSC appear to have been successful. Following these interventions, the RSC last week stated that: “We have no further sponsorship [with BP] confirmed”. Next year’s programme of plays has been announced, and none are sponsored by BP.

This season finale, entitled ‘Out, damned logo!’, was the first to be openly advertised. The actor-vists are concerned by the British Museum’s decision to accept sponsorship from BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, the company’s decision to start extracting highly polluting and destructive tar sands oil in Canada, its enormous contribution towards climate change, and its recently-announced partnership with Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft in order to exploit the hazardous and vulnerable Arctic. Pressure on cultural institutions to consider the ethics of their sponsorship deals is currently high following the sudden ending of the National Gallery’s long-running sponsorship deal with an arms company last month.

Jess Worth, one of the performers, said: “BP is officially the world’s biggest corporate criminal, following the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Its activities in the tar sands, the Arctic, and elsewhere are locking us into a future of disastrous runaway climate change. The British Museum should sever all ties with BP, because this sponsorship deal is giving the company a veneer of respectability that it does not deserve.”

Richard Howlett, another performer, said: “As the reality of climate change becomes ever clearer, the case for ending oil sponsorship of the arts is gathering momentum. The RSC seem to have seen sense, and decided to no longer act as a figleaf to hide BP’s destructive activities. The British Museum, Tate, National Portrait Gallery and others must now do the right thing and follow suit. We need decent public funding for the arts that doesn’t allow unscrupulous companies like BP to buy themselves such a dangerous level of public credibility.”

This flashmob was organised by the Reclaim Shakespeare Company, UK Tar Sands Network, Liberate Tate, Art Not Oil, Rising Tide UK and London Rising Tide.

The script :

The British Museum: A Tale of Corruption

Dramatis Personae

First BP Executive
Second BP Executive
Third BP Executive
Chorus of Exhibition Viewers

The Scene: The Great Court

Chanting begins from somewhere. Soon a few more voices join in, quietly and relatively unobtrusively but growing to a crescendo.

Double, double: oil is trouble,
Tar sands burn, as greenwash bubbles

Three BP Executives are circulating/circling the room. They shriek and begin to speak, joining together in the centre, and the chanting stops.

 First BP Executive
When shall BP meet again
In oil spills, tar sands, toxic rain?

 Second BP Executive
When the sponsorship is done,
PR battle fought and won.

Third BP Executive
That will be ere: 2012.

First BP Executive
Where the place?

Second BP Executive
The British Museum.

Third BP Executive
Here to meet with…

ALL BP Executives
Our good friend, the Museum Director!
Oily ambassador, artefact collector

First BP Executive
To help us banish remembrance
of crude-oiled-turtles!

Second BP Executive
Pelican coughs!

Third BP Executive
11 Deepwater workers’ lives

First BP Executive
-snuffed!

Second BP Executive
-out!

Third BP Executive
-in a flash!

ALL BP Executives
A drum, a drum!
The museum doth come!

Enter Museum Director, elegant, cultured, calm.

All BP Executives
All hail, Museum! Hail to thee, thane of Great Russell Street!

Director:
I bid you welcome, corporate queens and kings
Come throw your parties ‘midst our priceless things!

The BP Executives begin to surround the Director, covering him in BP logos.

First BP Executive
Round about the globe we go;
Into the ocean oil we throw.
Tar, that lurks beneath the ground,
Uproots and kills without a sound.
Fish lie dead, nothing survives
While back in London our brand thrives

ALL BP Executives
Double, double: oil is trouble,
Tar sands burn, as greenwash bubbles.

Second BP Executive
Mountains of our filthy cash
In bank accounts: an awesome stash;
Greenhouse gas, a Gulf in grief,
We’re always lurking there, beneath.
Dodgy dealings give us pounds
Towards the champagne/caviar rounds.

ALL BP Executives
Double, double: oil is trouble,
Tar sands burn, as greenwash bubbles.

Other chorus members, placed at different parts of the room, begin to join in the BP Executives chant. During the chant the Director becomes fully lured and joins in.
Chorus members chant changes and they begin to turn on the witches:

Double, double: oil is trouble,
Let’s reduce BP to rubble!

The chanting intensifies and the chorus closes in around the witches who begin to shrink back with fear. The chorus lift the witches up in the air and, still chanting, physically carry them to the entrance and eject them from the building.

‘Twould seem that the Royal Shakespeare Company has seen sense. At the end of a season of plays sponsored by BP that has seen us invade the RSC’s stage five times: here, here, here, here and here; huge audience support for our anti-BP soliloquising; and even RSC actors and staff taking a stand, the RSC has finally made clear its future intentions.

In this Independent article about our forthcoming Shakespearean flashmob in the British Museum, Liz Thompson, the RSC’s Director of Communications, says: “We have no further sponsorship [with BP] confirmed and we don’t discuss approaches to potential funders because of commercial confidentiality”.

This is fantastic news. It means that the RSC’s relationship with BP is to all intents and purposes over, at least for the time being. Of course we cannot know what has been going on behind closed doors, but our fear has always been that this sponsorship relationship would follow a similar pattern to BP’s others. The company likes to make long-term deals with iconic British cultural institutions. It has rolling 5 year contracts with the British Museum, the Tate, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery, and had appeared to have set its sights on the Royal Shakespeare Company to add to this venerable collection.

The RSC has now confirmed that this is not the case. It will be very difficult for them to associate themselves again with BP considering the uproar caused by this recent dalliance.

The timing of this extrication is fortuitous for the RSC, given that yesterday BP officially became the world’s biggest corporate criminal. It admitted its guilt and responsibility for the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon spill, as well as the manslaughter of the 11 rig workers who were killed, and has been slapped with a $4.5bn fine – the biggest in US history. Meanwhile, the company continues to deepen its involvement in tar sands extraction in Canada – an industry so polluting that it has been described as having the equivalent devastating effect on the environment and local communities as a Deepwater Horizon spill every month.

But what of the institutions who are locked into long-term relationships with the lawbreaking oil giant? It is high time they took a stand. The longer the British Museum, Tate et al remain silent and uncritical about the dirty and illegal deeds of their most notorious sponsor, the more damage they do to their own reputations, as well as sending a powerful message that corporate murder and ecocide are perfectly acceptible practices. They should end their relationships with BP now – as the National Gallery recently did with arms company Finmeccanica, despite the contract still having a year left to run. Indeed, the Tate’s own ethics policy states: ‘Tate will not accept funds in circumstances when… the donor has acted, or is believed to have acted, illegally in the acquisition of funds, for example when funds are tainted through being the proceeds of criminal conduct.‘

On Sunday, we will challenge the British Museum on this directly, with a theatrical flashmob. Please join us in demanding that oil companies are kicked out of our cultural institutions before any more damage is done.

This film provides a peek behind the curtains of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company and our successful, creative campaign to kick BP out of UK theatres. Hear why the group was formed, how we have organised the stunts and what it feels like to jump on an RSC stage. Essential viewing for anyone with an interest in creative protest.

The documentary was filmed half-way through our season of performance interventions challenging the World Shakespeare Festival’s decision to accept BP as a sponsor despite the company’s devastating environmental record in the tar sands, the Gulf Coast and the Arctic, as well as its huge contribution towards climate change.

Since this was filmed we have gone on to intervene in two more BP-sponsored RSC productions. The first was in Stratford-upon-Avon at Twelfth Night, which received national media coverage. Then most recently we jumped on stage at Much Ado About Nothing in London’s West End. This performance gained support from members of the cast itself, both in the theatre and on Twitter, a breakthrough for the campaign and a sign of the unease about BP sponsorship within the theatre world.

Like what we’re doing? Then we’d love you to get involved in ‘Out, damned logo!’, our Shakespearean flashmob in the British Museum this coming Sunday.

Join our theatrical flashmob: British Museum, 3pm, November 18th

On Sunday November 18th, the Reclaim Shakespeare Company is leaving the theatre through the stage door… and marching straight into the British Museum’s Great Court, for a theatrical flashmob with our friends from Liberate Tate, UK Tar Sands Network, Art Not Oil, Rising Tide UK and London Rising Tide.

We want you to join us in the grand finale of our highly-acclaimed season of performance protests. This will be an epic re-staging of one of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes, in one of the country’s most awe-inspiring buildings. We aim to fill this two-acre, glass-domed arena with our own version of some of the Bard’s best-known words. We’ll send you the short script. You learn your lines and show up on the day. At 3pm the performance will commence.

The occasion will also mark the 12th birthday of international climate action network Rising Tide!

BP has a long-running financial relationship with the British Museum. The oil giant even has a lecture theatre named after it. The museum’s current ‘Shakespeare: Staging the World’ exhibition is sponsored by BP. All this in the wake of the the company’s decision to go into the ‘world’s most destructive project’ – the Tar Sands, the devastating Deepwater Horizon spill, and its greedy eyeing-up of the vulnerable Arctic. BP is one of the UK’s biggest contributors to climate change. And let its sponsorship helps redefine it as socially acceptable.

Enough! No more…

In the past few years some of the UK’s major cultural institutions have been rocked by protests from anti-oil sponsorship activists. We have used art to challenge power. Live art installations at BP-sponsored exhibitions, guerilla ballet at BP-sponsored screenings, on-stage prologues to BP-sponsored plays. From the Tate to the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Opera House to the National Portrait Gallery, BP’s oily manipulation of our country’s cultural icons will continue to be challenged until we’ve successfully kicked oil out of the arts for good.

To join us in this performance, email info@bp-or-not-bp.org.

Thou can’st also join th’Facebook group.

RSC at the British Museum from rikki indymedia on Vimeo.

Much Ado About BP from Zoe Broughton on Vimeo.

Tonight, members of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company jumped on stage at the Noël Coward theatre to deliver another surprise anti-BP performance. Just before the second half of a BP-sponsored Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) performance of Much Ado About Nothing was due to begin, the three actor-vists performed a short Shakespeare-inspired piece. They challenged the RSC over its decision to accept sponsorship from BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, the company’s decision to start extracting highly polluting and destructive tar sands oil in Canada, and its enormous contribution towards climate change. Yesterday it was announced that BP has entered a partnership with Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft in order to exploit the hazardous and vulnerable Arctic.

This was the eighth intervention by the Reclaim Shakespeare Company, the most recent taking place at Stratford-upon-Avon last month. In the two-minute sketch, ‘BP’, sporting a huge logo as a ruff, sidles up to ‘RSC’, and offers ‘a thousand ducats’ for her help in ‘seeming virtuous’ . They shake hands on the deal as ‘BP’ proclaims ‘By your reputation, I shall mine own mend’. ‘RSC’ eventually recognises the error of her ways, bellowing ‘I want not your dirty ducats’ and asking ‘Did’st not Formula One live on without tobacco sponsorship?’ before ripping the BP logo from her chest. The audience responded with laughter and applause. The full script can be found below.

One actor applauded the performance and thanked the performers personally straight afterwards. Another cast member, Muzz Khan, sent a series of supportive tweets, beginning with: ‘They did it! I didn’t think they WOULD but they did! Fair play to @ReclaimOurBard – glad you were able to… #protest’.

This comes in the wake of a wave of controversy around BP’s sponsorship of the arts and the London 2012 Olympics. Mark Rylance, one of the UK’s leading actors, has publicly expressed his concerns about BP sponsorship and RSC Playwright in Residence Mark Ravenhill revealed during a talk at the Latitude Festival that there was now a huge debate going on within the RSC about BP. As the BP-sponsored season draws to a close this month, all eyes are on new RSC Artistic Director, Gregory Doran – who also directed this production of Much Ado About Nothing – to see if he continues the relationship beyond the World Shakespeare Festival. Pressure on cultural institutions to consider the ethics of their sponsorship deals is currently high following the National Gallery’s decision to end a long-running sponsorship deal with an arms company earlier this month.

Sarah Shoraka, who played ‘the RSC’ in the guerilla Shakespeare performance, said: “With a new Artistic Director in Gregory Doran I hope the RSC will tackle head-on the issue of controversial corporate sponsorship and adopt an ethical code that clearly marks highly-polluting oil companies like BP as beyond the pale”.

David Shakespeare, who played the part of ‘BP’, said “As one of our country’s most respected cultural institutions, the RSC should not allow itself to be used by such a destructive and dangerous company as BP. I feel it’s improper that they can gain positive publicity through associating their brand with our cultural heritage.”

========================================================

The script

BP: Good Sir, most reverend Royal Shakespeare Company
Stay a while and hear my plan.
I have of late been much maligned
For my oil-seeking exploits in the Arctic,
Canada and the Gulf of Mexico.
People think me a plain-dealing villain.
It must needs be remedied.

RSC: You seek my help in being virtuous?

BP: Nay, I seek your help in seeming virtuous.
For a thousand ducats, thou shall proclaim
My innocence to these simple people,
To wash away the memories of my misdeeds,
Distract them from the destruction of the earth.

RSC: A thousand ducats: tis a fine price! (aside)

BP: By your reputation, I will mine own mend

RSC: Let’s unite our logos in a bond without end!

BP: Here are thy words. [handing her a script and pinning a logo to her chest]

[RSC steps forward to read BP’s words]

RSC: Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to this performance sponsored by BP.
We are proud to be sponsored by BP and we feel that this in no way compromises our integrity!
BP has been undeservedly maligned in the public imagination,
Yet they are stuffed with all honourable virtues.
They sponsor us for their love of the arts, not for cheap publicity!
Sustainability is obviously at the heart of what they do
And burning fossil fuels helps improve the world for the next generation…

[breaking off from the script]

RSC: What is this? I want not thy dirty ducats!

[Thrusts back the script to BP]

RSC: Did’st not Formula One live without tobacco sponsorship? I must apply a moral medicine to this mortifying mischief. Out damned logo! [rips logo from chest]

The story of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company and our most honourable quest to kick BP out of the theatre world is here presented in three acts. Tis a tale of greed, desperation and courage, in which the pencil is mightier than the sword.

 

Theatre staff failed to stop members of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company jumping on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon and delivering a surprise anti-BP performance in front of a full house.

On Saturday (29th September 2012), a group of merry players known as the “Reclaim Shakespeare Company” took unexpectedly to the stage at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Five minutes before a BP-sponsored Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) performance of Twelfth Night was due to begin, the three actor-vists performed a short Twelfth Night-inspired piece. They challenged the RSC over its decision to accept sponsorship from BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster and the company’s decision to start extracting highly polluting and destructive tar sands oil in Canada.

This was the seventh intervention by the Reclaim Shakespeare Company, and the third on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage. In the two-minute sketch, ‘BP’ swaggers on to the stage, sporting a huge logo as a ruff and yellow stockings cross-gartered with green, and proclaims: ‘If oil be the fuel for us, drill on! / Give us excess of it that, surfeiting, / the planet may sicken, and so die…’ The ‘RSC’ then declares her love for ‘BP’: ‘British Petrolio! By the roses of the spring, / by branding, sponsorship and everything, / I love thee so…’ Feste interrupts, appalled at the tableau: ‘Alas, poor RSC, how hath BP baffled thee?’, pointing out that ‘some are born green. Some achieve greenness, / And SOME purchase a semblance of greenness by sponsoring cultural events.’ ‘RSC’ soon realises the error of her ways, finally announcing ‘I would I were well rid of this knavery. / Out damned logo!’ with which she rips the BP logo from the RSC programme as ‘BP’ falls to his knees. The audience responded with laughter and applause. The full script can be found below, and lots of photos are in our gallery.

The RSC has stated publicly several times that it will allow these performances to take place. However, on the night RSC staff tried hard to stop the protest, telling the performers it was dangerous to be up on stage because there was an area of open water. The actor-vists were of course aware of this and carefully stayed well away from the water, as they had done twice before. Despite the RSC’s protestations, the performance went ahead as planned.

This comes in the wake of a wave of controversy around BP’s sponsorship of the arts and the London 2012 Olympics. Mark Rylance, one of the UK’s leading actors, has publicly expressed his concerns about BP sponsorship and RSC Playwright in Residence Mark Ravenhill revealed during a talk at the Latitude Festival that there was now a huge debate going on within the RSC about BP. As the BP-sponsored season draws to a close this month, all eyes are on the RSC to see if they continue the relationship beyond the World Shakespeare Festival.

Sophia Rousseau, who played ‘the RSC’ in the guerilla Shakespeare performance, said: “I believe our arts institutions should have the integrity not to accept sponsorship money from companies that are ruining our planet for profit. I hope this will be the end of BP and the RSC’s ugly friendship.”

James Atherton, who played the part of BP, said “BP shouldn’t be allowed to project their dirty ideals into people’s minds. While BP’s activities around the world are some of the most destructive and dangerous to our climate, I feel it’s improper that they can gain positive publicity through associating their brand with our cultural heritage.”

The script :

Character 1 – BP:

If oil be the fuel for us, drill on;
Give us excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The planet may sicken, and so die.
Let’s drill again! And cast a dying pall,
O’er the tar sands of sweet Canada,
The Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico,
Stealing and screwing over.

Character 2 – RSC:

British Petrolio! By the roses of the spring,
by branding, sponsorship and everything,
I love thee so, that, discarding my pride,
nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
For I do love thee for thy patronage
With adorations, fertile tears, with groans
that thunder love, with sighs of fire…

Character 3 – Feste

[Interrupts RSC]
If this were played upon a stage now,
I would condemn’t as an improbable fiction!
Alas, poor RSC, how hath BP baffled thee?
Thou hast made contract of eternal bond
With a notable pirate, a deepwater thief!
Art thou mad, to profit from such a dissembler?
For some are born green, some achieve greenness,
And some purchase a semblance of greenness by sponsoring cultural events…
I prithee, RSC, direct thy feet
Where thou and BP henceforth may never meet!

Character 2 – RSC

Enough! No more!
Oil’s not as sweet now as it was before.
BP, thou villain! How was I beguiled?
Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the oily enemy does much.
[Points at BP] You spread a green and yellow melancholy,
Sitting without conscience in your offices,
Smiling at grief.

I would I were well rid of this knavery.
Out damned logo! [rips logo from programme]

Egad! Wilst they never learn? Last night, the British Museum (in partnership with the RSC) ran an event called “Shakespeare Late”, which featured such delights as musical performances, stage make-up workshops and sonnet-themed scavenger hunts around the galleries. Splendid stuff, except that they’d gone and ruined it by getting it sponsored by that artless flax-bellied swag-wench BP.

Of course, we couldn’t let them get away with that, so the Reclaim Shakespeare Company decided to add ourselves to the bill, with some pop-up anti-BP Shakespearean performances around the Great Court. We strolled in as normal punters, then got changed into our costumes in the toilets and emerged to seek our audience!

The milling crowds were all too happy to pause and watch as we launched into a few of our greatest Shakespearean hits. After all, this was just the sort of thing they were expecting to see…until it became clear that we were referring to the evening’s main sponsor as a “savage villain” who was trying to “turn our dreams to nightmares”, and then entreating them to rip the BP logo from their museum brochures. As realisation dawned, grins broke out amongst the crowd, followed by laughter and applause. It seems that many visitors to the gallery share our opinion of BP as a vain hasty-witted devil-monk.

Nonetheless, we did our best to blend in with the rest of the evening’s activities; we saw a number of confused museum-goers looking in vain for us in their programmes. We handed out reams of leaflets, and managed to pull off three successful performances before the security guards finally decided that we weren’t meant to be there and shunted us out of the building.

Twas most gratifying to hear one gallery-goer say “oh yeah, these are the people who get up on stage in Stratford” – our reputation precedes us! Hopefully, tonight’s shenanigans will act as a reminder to the British Museum and the RSC that they can’t expect to take sponsorship money from an odiferous earth-vexing foot-licker such as BP without sparking serious criticism. As the Arctic ice reaches its lowest-ever recorded level, it’s more important than ever that the arts should not be available as a mask for the oil industry to hide its dirty deeds.

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