How to Occupy An Oil Rig @ Northern Stage at St Stephens

When six Greenpeace members recently scaled The Shard, it wasn’t because of a lack of climbing centres in London; their aim was to bring the subject of Arctic drilling into the public sphere. Daniel Bye’s How to Occupy an Oil Rig is a show, (part theatre, part lecture) which instructs even novice protesters in how to campaign for their passionately held convictions.

The loose narrative sees two characters meeting while cleaning oil off birds and follows them as they scale up their movements, leading to their ascent of an offshore platform. The three multi-roling performers break down each depicted action in a manual-esque 'how to' approach.

The informal structure, taking information from audience members to shape their protagonists’ journey from concerned members of the public to hardened activists, enforces the normality of the people who actually execute these deeds. It also keeps the tone light and jovial, with good-natured mockery balancing out the severity of the issues being discussed. The colourful, over-sized Lego set, allowing for numerous locations to be easily created, suits the deconstructed format of direct addresses intersected with short scenes. For people with an environmentalism streak, and even those without, this is a comic and educative piece of theatre that explores the boundaries of conventional performance. [Callum Madge]