According to playwright and founder of Red Beti Theatre, Radha Menon, Indigenous, Black and other racialized folk in Canada have been culturally invisible thanks to ongoing colonialism.

“Our music, visual arts, performing and media arts have been ignored by arts institutions. Our potential has been stymied by lack of access to educational institutions. We need to see the world we share through lenses other than Eurocentric, cis and hetero sexual,” Menon said.

That’s why Menon started Red Beti Theatre – formerly known as Red Betty Theatre. The name change in 2022 was an intentional act of decolonization. In Hindi, lal beti means red daughter. Red symbolizing rage, blood and love are the elements that Menon says fuel women.

“These are the forgotten women, shunned girls, outsiders daring to question patriarchal dominance while subverting beliefs that set up women and girls as accessories, impediments, or glorified servants,” said Menon.

Menon admits that while many playwrights have trouble producing work, but when you are an IBPOC woman the finish line is even more inaccessible.

She emphasized, “There are gatekeepers, until most recently, they were all white and mostly men. They decide who gets their foot in the door, who will work as a professional with the support of established and fully funded organisations and institutions and who won’t.”

Menon’s theatrical career started well. Her play The Washing Machine was a finalist of the Woodward Newman play writing contest and selected for the Next Stage Festival (2012).

“But it was trashed by ignorant critics who didn’t understand its cultural context; the Indian caste system and the stigma of being “untouchable,” said Menon. “Nevertheless, we had sold out crowds because word of mouth prevailed, but The Washing Machine never spun again because of the bad reviews. It was shot dead like a male calf in a dairy farm before it even had a chance to stand.”

Her next play, Ganga’s Ganja, was a finalist of the Voaden play writing contest and was performed at Hamilton Fringe Festival (2012). But, unless a play is developed within a specific theatre company, it’s difficult to find a company willing to produce it.

Menon tried to connect with various theatre companies including the Banff Centre and Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius. After five years of rejection, she stopped applying to the Banff Centre. As for Theatre Aquarius, artistic director Ron Ulrich didn’t even reply to a single letter or phone call from Menon in more than eight years. Mary Francis Moore replaced Ulrich in 2021.

Menon points out that most Canadian plays have no pull and don’t interest IBPOC folk. Menon created Red Beti in order to provide space for the untold stories of Hamilton’s thriving IBPOC community.

The Decolonize Your Ears Festival, now in its second year, provides space specifically for IBPOC women playwrights to develop their own style and voice by connecting them with incredible racialized Canadian dramaturgs.

“The reading of these plays at our festival also moves them forward in their development journey’” says Menon. “Plays really are like babies; gestation is crucial to be viable; labour can be painful but once delivered, we break out the bubbly and celebrate. I truly love all my literary babies because they were birthed from my soul.”

This year’s festival features the works of First Nation, Indo-East African-Canadian and Turkish women playwrights.

Blood Sport featuring Jordan M. Burns, Chanin Lee, Riley Assinewai and Cheyenne Scott opens the festival on November 4. The play takes a deep dive, as well as a light look, at why ‘pretendians’ make false claims of Indigenous cultural identity and the myriad of ways imposters traffic their false identity to the world for personal gain.

“Through Blood Sport, we are offering an insider perspective on the very divisive topic of pretendians reeking havoc on the integrity of our cultural practices and the take over of Indigenous targeted positions in the education and arts sectors,” said playwright January Rogers via email. “This very real, very current reality along with the humorous script provides audiences a glimpse of one of the ways we, as Indigenous communities, address something which is affecting our collective cultures in crisis numbers.”

Simultaneously, Blood Sport explores the complexities involved when someone who has lost their true Indigenous identity makes honest efforts to return to their culture and community.

Rogers is a Mohawk/Tuscarora poet, media producer, performance artist, and Writer in Residence at Western University.

On November 5, playwright Mlika Daya will premier her play Maana Ke Hum Yaar Nahin.

A second generation, Indo-East African-Canadian, Daya is fascinated by stories of the diaspora and how living between cultures produces its own set of values, challenges, and narratives.

Maana Ke Hum Yaar Nahin translates from Hindi to ‘I admit that we are not lovers any more.’ The plot follows the trajectory of Firdaus and Ali’s relationship revolving around independent lives existing on parallel plains that intersect occasionally.

Featuring Asha Ponnachan, Kiru Corner, Rishab Kalara, Rami Kahn and Reese Cowley, the tale of love and friendship evolves into story of aging and dementia which Daya claims begs the question, “What do we become, if not a home for each other’s memory?”

Closing out the festival is Fertility Slippers featuring Aida Keykhaii and Parnian Pourzahed. Written by Ece Aydin, a first-generation immigrant from Turkey, the multi-disciplinary artist began her journey on stage through movement and dance. But her love of storytelling along with a deep commitment to community and innovation directed her energy to the world of theatre.

Aydin believes, “As a society, we are deeply divided, now more than ever before. We don’t know how to process information that we don’t agree with.”

She says this work explores the question, “What will it take to build tolerance for one another and find a way to work together?”

Fertility Slippers is the story of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. As the pair struggle with embracing contradiction, they are also trying to bridge the cultural and generational gap between them.

Facing one of their toughest challenges yet, there’s always the chance of a picture-perfect finish . . . unless too many pieces have been lost in transition.

Menon is very excited about each production because, “All the plays we start on their development journey will be able to move up the ladder with us, with other companies or by themselves because at the end of a four-month journey, these playwrights now have solid fully developed scripts that hold their important voices and will provide eclectic entertainment in the future.”

Decolonize Your Ears Festival tickets are available on a sliding scale here. The one to one-and-a-half hour plays are performed at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton, ON.

Doreen Nicoll

Doreen Nicoll is weary of the perpetual misinformation and skewed facts that continue to concentrate wealth, power and decision making in the hands of a few to the detriment of the many. As a freelance...