The Hoedown, Edmonton July 2024

bared bones from hunger or blunt force trauma

you love me when i’m strong enough to give you everything you want

accepting as little as i’m tossed

you only love me when i’m spoon-fed

bursting full of you

so full it leaks out to warn others away

because otherwise they’d never know

When I was 16 I took part in a program by my local theatre where a bunch of teens worked with adult theatre workers. In my case, I was part of a group who got to write a wholeass play about the rising violence in our city (Edmonton). The play was called "Are We Safe Yet?" and was named after a graffiti our light/sound tech had recently seen (we were going to pose in front of it for our poster but they'd cleaned it out already).

^ Our Jets vs Sharks opening number

We opted to make it a play without an overarching story, but rather snapshots of various approaches and styles that were tied together by the theme of rising violence.

Some highlights from that play include:

A play opening that was a Sharks vs Jets-style fight complete with the finger snaps and choreography by a fight choreographer our playwright mentor (Mieko Ouchi, 10/10 recommend her work) brought in to help us

A monologue where I, a Brazilian immigrant, talked about how funny it was to me that Edmontonians thought the city's violence was getting out of control when compared to what I had left behind

A Love Actually-style scene where one of my co-stars/authors and I held up signs that we'd throw on the ground

Another co-star dressed in a fuzzy pink elephant costume "sneaking" across the stage while we picked up the signs at the end of the previous scene

A scene about two parents coping with the fact their kid got behind the wheel of a car while drunk and was now in the ICU

A scene that started with a girl and a boy getting out of bed in their undies and monologuing about how they're really not okay as they put on their clothes like they're putting on armour

A scene contrasting what elder abuse looks like vs a loving relationship where two people are sitting at a cafe and their phone convos are opposites of each other