operation rhubarb * by Flick Ruby

L: To me OR is more than just a street theatre group because its so
intertwined with being political and I think that the effect that street
theatre has during demonstrations is to give some sort of focus for people
because people are often confused and disempowered and wondering what to do
and walking around bored.

F: I started getting involved with OR during the Gulf War and for me OR was
a really empowering thing because I was able to unleash some of the drama
and terror that I felt internally in an external way and for me that was
the most appropriate response to what was happening.  It was also a good
way to shock people and bring the message of blood home to the streets of
Melbourne.

G: I also joined OR during the Gulf War when it first started.  I was sick
of boring protests where there was one leader who was seen as the be all
and end all.  I though than many messages were missing, one of them was
war=death and as part of OR I think we achieved that message by splattering
blood on the pavement.

F:  The thing for me that is most attractive about OR is its looseness of
definition.  There is no meaning essentially to the term OR.  We are not
screaming slogans or apocalyptic scenarios which is what is happening at a
lot of demos.  We are begging questions, placing questions in people's
minds, we are not even asking a specific question, we are getting people to
ask their own questions, stimulating some kind of response in them.  We
don't have a line or a message all the time.  A lot of what we do is quite
obvious, at the George Bush demo, we carried around a coffin and had a
person personifying death and another personifying the corporate monsterism
and that is all easy to understand.  At the same time there is scope there
for people to place their own meaning and that is an important act to me.

L: Another good thing about OR is that we have no definate membership,
therefore a lot of people are able to join in and get involved on specific
issues that they are interested in and  they don't have to be involved in
everyting we are inolved in and that means we have a variety of input at
different stages.

F: Using mediums of humour is going to be more empowering to people at
demos than more empassioned speeches.  I think you can say a lot more in
the cloak of a joke at the moment.  I also think that laughter is what is
needed.  We need to be at least appearing to be having fun while being
politically committed, feeling good about ourselves, being strong and
determined but not depressed and nagging all the time.

L: One of the good things about OR is that things seem to come together
really easily and we don't get bogged down.  We are also committed very
strongly to feminism.  Womens voices are often lost in the arena of
politics which is dominated by men.  The gender relations in OR are really
good and we work to keep them that way.

G: I think one of the important things about OR is that we don't have a
definition so therefore it enables us to do a variety of things, one of
them was the stickers which we produced with slogans like 'stop racism',
'stop sexism', 'stop hetrosexism' and with our logo on it and the important
thing with that was to stick them up over offensive posters and stickers
and although the quality of the stickers was not that good the message was
there and hopefully the messatge got back to people like national action
with their revolting racist stickers.

F: Turning up the Heat, OR's magazine is about giving voice to the
different groups in Melbourne that are working politically and creatively.
It is also to further the feminst and anarchist analysis of things that are
going on right now.  We feel as though we have our own political
perspectives and encourage people to express theirs  It will be a forum for
anarchist and feminst news and reviews.

G: Turning up the Heat will replicate what OR is about, it  is creative, it
is interesting, it is not a boring revolutionary magazine.

G; Another thing with OR is that we don't wait for invitations.  We attend
things like the Myer Christmas parade and we produce a message that is not
produced there, that is denies there ,like "CONSUMERISM KILLS", like
"WAR=DEATH" like "AIDEX KILLS" and they are images that mainstream
carnivials and mainstream media have denied access to.

F: It is good media wise to be some sort of bridgeing gap between scuffles
and police lies to have images of people being creative in a symbolic sense
or talking about issues in a different way.

F: I think it is high time that activists got into affinity groups and
actually did things that impowered them.  So many times people are saying
'oh we need to join a big revolutionary organisation' and their whole
energy gets absorbed into that and they don't form their own actions where
they exhcange their reading into idea tools that can be taken into actions.
That is what OR is all about.  It is a group of like minded people not
waiting around for the revolution.
L:The good thing about OR is that it sparks off other peoples imaginations
when they see us doing simple and efffective street theatre.  We don't have
to have a lot of props, we don't have to spend a lot of time and money
putting energy into it and it is a really effective way of getting messages
across and also it encourages other people to do the same thing, acting up
in new ways.
