The Petition
Workshop Performance
The Petition is an immersive, site-specific, physical performance, part daydream and part nightmare; a downtrodden mother is forced to teach her children a harsh lesson. We intend to present this piece in an empty city lot or park.
Creative Team
Costume and Set Designer
Aurora Judge
Choreographer & Movement Director
Sid Ryan Eilers
Writer & Director
Radha S. Menon
Performer
Learie McNicolls
Composer & Sound Designer
Christopher Stanton
Rehearsal for The Petition Workshop. Pictured from Left to Right: Aurora Judge, Learie McNicolls, and Sid Ryan Eilers
The Petition
Over the past five years, the world has experienced such severe weather systems that would normally have been spread over a period of five hundred years. Menon wrote a first draft of The Petition as part of a group of poets protesting the proposed Northern Gateway Pipelines. Plays vs. Pipeline Poets engaged in a playwriting relay: each day one participant wrote a play responding to the proposed pipelines however they saw fit. The Petition was presented in Ottawa at Canada’s Magnetic North Theatre Festival 2015 as a pop-up show in the Ottawa School of Art performed by Menon and directed by Dia Gupta-Frid. The text was further developed as part of Theatre Direct’s Play Creation Unit 2018.
In January 2022, Red Beti produced a development workshop for The Petition which culminated in a workshop performance in front of a small, invited audience at Theatre Aquarius Studio.
Red Beti Theatre feels the urgent need to share the story; there is no time to waste.
This workshop was made possible due to the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Theatre Aquarius
Performer Learie McNicolls as Amma in The Petition Workshop Performance
