b'Short Essays Mo Johnsonothers (Zoob 2018: 73). Put simply, Gestus is an actingreality: there wasnt actually free stuff, but it felt like real technique used to reveal a characters social status throughlife was suspended and the normal rules of the world had gesture and movement. Although the riots were not staged,disappeared - they were now in a story. This is the power with those involved not hired and trained to perform,of street protest and violence; to make life feel like theatre.they had very clearly defined appearances, movements and actions, which reflected their social status. TheseUtilising Brechts work on Gestus leads to a new analysis of behaviors, sometimes referred to as habitus, were keyviolence. It reveals that theatre is reflective of life and vice features to the narrative of rioters vs. police, the peopleversa. For example, T.V. Reed writes about the twentieth vs. the establishment (Richardson & Skott-Myhre 2012: 9). century Situationists who inspired generations of French student revolutionaries. Their aim was to turn everyday Whilst the class of the individual police officers involvedlife into a form of artistic expression, or artistic enactment is unidentifiable, their status, as representatives of the(Reed 2016: 81). Although the 2011 protests werent powerful, was clear. The police chorus was made upnecessarily mindful of aestheticising and dramatising, of nameless, faceless figures, silhouetted in black andReeds theory reinforces history of protest as performance, blue uniforms, bulky with bulletproof padding acting asjust as life itself is performative. The 2011 riots were a armor. They clutched circular shields and were hiddenshow. The rioters were telling the story of the oppressed, under oppressive visas, covering their helmeted heads;fighting to be seen and heard. The police were telling a individually anonymous, they moved as a pack. Theirnarrative of strength, of organisation in the face of chaos: physical appearance, combined with the adrenaline ofa story spun by the government.performing a high stakes improvisation, transformed them from men and women to soldiers. As Mason claimsIn conclusion, although the riots were not a staged in his chapter on outdoor performance, the police uniformperformance, and therefore not theatre, they were a is only a costume and they are only acting the toughform of storytelling. They had their own aesthetic and an authoritarian role (Mason 1992: 103). Whether controllingaudience for the participants to perform to, making them a riot or policing the streets as usual, the police officer isa form of spectacle. It was Shakespeare that said, All the a role. In order to distance themselves from their actualworlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players identity and self, it remains necessary for them to inhabit(1995: 89). As put theoretically, all public action involves this role. A boss, a director, has given them their supera degree of performance on the social stage (Reed 2016: objective, costume, props and stage directions, all of which85). The rioters, police and media were not only individuals helped them to get into role. with unique experiences and objectives, but also symbols for the state of society. Each rioter added to the story of Conversely, it is possible to observe that the rioters weremarginalised oppression and neglect. Each police officer made up of all races, both women and men, but thesymbolised the oppressors and the violence inflicted upon majority of participants were young (Oppenheim 2014).the marginalised. The media represented the prejudiced They moved playfully, with swift, swaggering movements,fiction our society is built upon, with roots in colonial spurred on by the same level of adrenaline as the police.ideology. As such, viewing street violence as performance The unifying trait of these individuals was their class. Theyhelps us to understand the importance of creative diversity. were not, as the media initially tried to spin, membersBy turning the street into a space where social issues are of gangs, but rather ordinary people, who saw anraised, contested and fought for, it is giving a creative voice opportunity to express their outrage at large corporations,to those otherwise excluded from mainstream theatre and at the mistreatment of their communities by police, andsociety itself.also to load up on goods which would be otherwise unavailable to them. According to a Guardian article which references the in-depth Reading the Riots study, [m]any of those who took part described a sense of euphoria during the looting, combined with a disbelief that they were not being stopped as police struggled to cope (Topping and Bawdon 2011). This euphoria, or adrenaline, is similar to the rush of adrenaline an actor has when performing. In this instance, it acted to distance the rioters from 37'