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
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.
