The Red Tent

Created for LaSerre Vivants creative residency with Theatre Aux Ecuries

The Red Tent is a novel by Anita Diamant. It explores a space where women once  gathered during their menstrual cycle and to perform rituals surrounding childbirth. This project with the same name draws from Diamant`s novel to explore the personal journey of healing among women and trans people. 

I began my project,  The Red Tent by asking women, non-binary and trans people in my community to bring me an object which they associated with healing. I had conversations with these individuals about that object and recorded our conversations. Objects varied from a toaster to a baby bottle to their own hair. 

For the installation at Theatre Aux Ecuries I created a set which referenced a messy bedroom. An unmade bed stood in the centre of the space on a small area rug  next to two standing lamps. I recreated the objects I had explored in my recorded interviews and scattered them across the bed and onto the floor. Audience members were invited to gather around the bed as clips of the recorded conversations played over music. The only instruction given to the audience was to move freely around the space.