Delivering Democracy

During the climax of the 2020 electoral struggle, I and my colleagues created Delivering Democracy: A troupe of dancing mailboxes and ballot boxes that performed around Pennsylvania (including two stilt-walking mailboxes—our “air-mail” contingent, and an accordion-playing mailbox).  

Pennsylvania was one of the “battleground” states in the election, where Trump and the Republicans tried to delegitimize the (mostly-Democratic) ballots that were cast by mail, and to prevent those hundreds of thousands of votes from being counted.  

I envisioned this troupe of dancing mail/ballot boxes as an irresistible image, an image so compelling in some strange and ineffable way that even our political opponents would reproduce it. A playful, dream-image that would surf widely on the collective anxiety surrounding the issue of mail-in ballots, and the fear that the authoritarians would steal the election by force or fiat.  

The goal was to entertain and uplift, disseminate useful voter information in a nonpartisan way, be mediagenic to introduce a cheerfully pro-democratic meme into the culture, and defuse violent tension and be disarmingly charming in the face of aggressive authoritarians. Our soundtrack was a version of the old song Please Mr. Postman with pro-voting lyrics.  Our choreography was deliberately hokey and playful.  Our costumes were cute and absurd.  We were eye-catching, cheerful…and made anyone hurling vitriol at us look absolutely ridiculous.  We gave flyers to onlookers with practical, local how-and-where-to-vote information for their county.  I led us in rehearsals for how to speak to the media, and passersby, both in and out of character, about the importance and legitimacy of the vote.  

We performed in small towns, the city of Scranton, and, in the epic days before and after Election Day, in Philadelphia itself. 

We struck a chord—across social media, on late-night comedy shows, in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Philadephia Inquirer, and many other newspapers, and on television from the USA to Chile, Australia, Brazil, France, Canada, the Netherlands, the UK and elsewhere.  We were in an activist viral video that Taylor Swift provided the music for. More importantly, in the streets, at rallies and demonstrations, we embodied what I like to think of as weaponized surrealism or mobilized Dada, becoming cheerful, popular mascots of the resistance, and of the very concept that every vote, and every voter, counts. With the fascist assault on the Capitol on 1/6/2021, I feel this message is all the more vital.

This project was funded by the Center for Artistic Activism as part of the Unstoppable Voters Project.

Credits:

L.M. Bogad, Creator/Artistic Director/Producer
Leese Walker/Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble, Theatrical Director
Rolf Sturm, Music Director
Tannis Kowalchuk, Artistic Director, Farm Arts Collective
Andrea Ariel, Choreographer
Jennifer Varbalow, Costume Designer
Mary Workman and Ed Smit, Vocals