Theatricalising protest : the chorus of the commons

This essay considers five instances of costumed political protest between 2008--19, by way of the Red Rebel Brigade, the Guy Fawkes mask, the Handmaid’s Tale costume, the pussyhat and the yellow jacket (gilet jaune). It explores the cultural resonances and significance of the costumes and accoutrements involved, and in particular how they draw upon a domain of fiction, symbolism and representation in order to perform resistance in the public sphere. It argues that a ‘chorus of the commons’, where costumed individuals operate as a group, presents both an aesthetic mode of political intervention and an oppositional theatre of the real