Environmental protests since the 1970s, in Australia particularly, have provided a colourful stage for the theatre of protest. The activities of radical environmental organisations such as the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) in north eastern NSW have done much to stretch the envelope of politically acceptable direct action protest. NEFA successfully highlighted the extent of old growth logging in north eastern NSW by conducting a decade-long and politically highly successful guerrilla-style1 campaign of direct action. NEFA achieved particular notoriety in 1992 when a group of activists travelled to Sydney to stage a series of controversial direct actions at the parliament, and later at the offices of the NSW Forestry Commission. These actions were as bold as they were theatrical, and as such provide excellent case studies for analysis.

Theatrical and imaginative portrayals of physical protests can produce a kind of paradigmatic theatre that has the capacity not only to magnify the political message, but also to empower protesters and, more subtly, to decentre ‘protestees’.2 The important but sometimes subtle inter-subjective aspects of such experiences will be examined by reference to the accounts of individuals involved in the depicted events.