{"id":4524,"date":"2024-04-27T22:55:43","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T22:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?page_id=4524"},"modified":"2026-04-07T01:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:02:12","slug":"performance-in-the-halls","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/true-life\/1985-1989\/performance-in-the-halls\/","title":{"rendered":"Performance in the halls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In my Foundation year, I witnessed the cleverness and bravery of other students, who enacted challenging performance pieces in the hallways during lunch hour.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In one striking protest piece, a young naked woman rolled around on a tarp covered in inches of bright brown mud. I cannot remember what her piece could have been protesting or been in aid of, but she was quite committed to her performance. It was brave to say the least.<\/p>\n<p>A Scottish student named Andrew did a memorable political parody, aimed at taking the piss out of the American political scene and consumer culture. He was dressed up as a version of Mickey Mouse, with a collection of cardboard cut-out limbs attached, resembling a cartoony puppet version of the famous mouse. In character, he spoke to the little hallway audience that had formed, asking them to love him. Next to him was a cardboard cut-out of a television with an image of Ronald Reagan with a wide open mouth on the screen. It was a great moment when the song &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/tcpelLe8oHo?si=4O0tAAyrg1vUQVF3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Happy Organ<\/a>&#8221; started playing, and a hidden air popper behind the TV Reagan face made popcorn start spewing out of his mouth. To me, it was a pitch-perfect comment on immediate gratification and two-dimensional pop-political culture, using cheap cardboard construction and fun cartoon imagery.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pdfprnt-buttons pdfprnt-buttons-page pdfprnt-bottom-right\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4524?print=pdf\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-pdf\" target=\"_blank\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/pdf.png\" alt=\"image_pdf\" title=\"View PDF\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4524?print=print\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-print\" target=\"_blank\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/print.png\" alt=\"image_print\" title=\"Print Content\" \/><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my Foundation year, I witnessed the cleverness and bravery of other students, who enacted challenging performance pieces in the hallways during lunch hour. In one striking protest piece, a young naked woman rolled around on a tarp covered in inches of bright brown mud. I cannot remember what her piece could have been protesting &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/true-life\/1985-1989\/performance-in-the-halls\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Performance in the halls<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4638,"parent":1743,"menu_order":25,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4524","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4524"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5162,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4524\/revisions\/5162"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}