‘Out, Damned Logo!’ Shakespearean flashmob

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.

Reclaim Shakespeare Company protest against BP at the British Museum.London July 22, 2012 — BP ‘executive witches’ being escorted out of the British Museum by security, after our first performance there in July. Photo by David Hoffman

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.