ABSTRACT
Entertainers are deferential to the status quo-they just want to do their job and please people. Animators want to break down the barriers between people and get them to loosen up individually. There are other performers, however, who are more concerned with loosening up society as a whole. They are not concerned with simply amusing the public and may actually disdain such an empty exercise. They may play with the audience but it is a game with the audience’s fears and expectations. They ask questions of society by going to the limits of conventionally acceptable behaviour. By occasionally stepping over the mark they confront the spectators with their own taboos. On a personal level they may hold specific moral or political positions but they choose not to preach a message, rather these provocateurs stick their tongues out at society, poking fun at it and challenging its comfortable beliefs, much like images from religious art in which small devils torment saints with their horrid little forks.
