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This story helped with my enchantress idea, the concept of looking fearful or out of place, yet remaining untouchable and beautiful underneath. The performance was heavily based on audience reaction and participation. I decided that as my wolf character I would ask children to find me a flower so that I could become an enchantress again, as I was under a spell. I didn’t realise this until the day of the performance, because how it works in your head or in a classroom is completely different to when you actually perform it. Desperate men are a company who I have worked with, who use audience participation as one of the main factors within their performance. ‘The pig pen riots’ is a show that is audience participatory. In fact, it is the audience who become the show itself. It encloses a personal protest for whoever wishes to be involved.

“So I came up with the idea of the Pigpen Riots – a kind of rioting for the Coalition generation, where we approached people on the street and asked them what was bothering them. They’d write it on a board, then we’d give them a riot helmet, air horn and whistle, tape their mouth up and put them in a pen where they’d riot for five minutes before we hosed them down with a water cannon. There was a range of stuff, from ‘legalize cannabis’ to ‘no more bedtimes’. We’d made polystyrene bricks for them to lob out. We’re never going to get booked for shopping centres, let’s face it!” (Desperate men, www.venue.co.uk, 2010).

The difference between the style I chose to work with compared to Desperate men’s style, was that I used no comedy. My performance became a visual performance, and in the end was aimed towards children. I intended for it to be a mute piece, transforming from wolf to enchantress when people weren’t looking, yet as the day went on it made more sense to include the children in the ‘game’. They would approach me, waiting for me to take the hood down and only have a fur cloak instead of a disguise, yet I played with them for a while, telling them stories of the spell I was under. The children loved it, and would come and find me with daisies in hand, already knowing what was in store, and running away excitedly when the enchantress appeared again.