This influenced us through design and movement, which we wanted to heavily feature within our performance. The way the Eggheads moved in unison at points was something we wanted to adapt, and also the visual aspect of the head shape intrigued us. We wanted to work with something that was almost human but slightly different or extended, such as our original stilt idea. Another street performance by The Natural Theatre Company is where they go about town stopping people on bicycles and waving signs such as ‘down with bicycles’ and holding mini protests outside bicycle shops.

“Although there is confrontation it is gentle, never verbal and as far as possible spread amongst a whole group rather than focused on a few individuals. What they seem to be trying to achieve is to make fun of self-righteous reactionary forces but also to provoke the spectators into expressing their opposition to these characters, safe in the knowledge that it is only a game’ (Mason, B. 1992:66).

What Bim Mason says above is almost exactly what I wanted to convey on the street through this performance; to play a game with the audience through interaction, entertainment and parody. We started to think of a character that could possibly send a message through their performance, but through comedy and satire. This is when we came up with The Naturists. We were not nude, quite the opposite in fact, we were covered in vegetation. Ashleigh and I adapted our original idea of being on stilts, keeping the ‘twin’ aspect, and wore large plant pots. We adapted Chloe’s design by placing her in a wheelbarrow surrounded by plants, as this would be easier to move over different terrain. “A big part of the celebration is experiencing the transformation of work space, or traffic space, or some kind of official space into a playfield” (Schechner, R. 1993:49)

Our concept was to spread the word about nature, generally babbling to whomever would listen about how fantastic plant life is and how awful cars are etc. Originally I was going to have the persona of someone who constantly ate, and therefore you couldn’t understand a word I was saying, yet Chloe would always seem to understand. Ashleigh’s persona was quite the opposite, to throw in wise words which would get dismissed by Chloe, who would chose to agree with me over her. My identity was slowly adapted, because of ethical issues. Through workshops we realised that talking with your mouth full of food can sound like you are trying to imitate someone with a disability and it was inappropriate and not necessary for the performance. Therefore we changed my role to a silent one, and Ashleigh followed suit, leaving Chloe to babble unstoppably to the audience. Her character was that of ‘the woman over the fence’ or your ‘annoying auntie’. She went on and on about how to plant the best turnips, or how to make bio fuel out of parsnips. Ashleigh and I had a small dance routine, performed with a duck whistle, to accentuate Chloe’s comment about “dancing round the potatoes at moonlight”. This type of comedy was quite ‘in your face’, and Chloe’s gibberish was almost subtle in its humour. The plan from then was to offer children, or whomever, a vegetable seed in a small pot which they could go home and plant. This was a way to get the audience to approach us without feeling threatened by the exuberant costume or dramatic dancing.