The Petition- Workshop
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 in 2023.
WRITTEN BY RADHA S. MENON
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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 Betty 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 Betty Theatre feels the urgent need to share the story; there is no time to waste.
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