SHOW INFO PACKAGE (available for download)
Created and performed by Morgan Brie Johnson and Alexandra Simpson
Directed by Justin Miller
Stage Management by Caitlin Farley
Mask by Alexandra Simpson
Photography by Kathryn Hanson, ShutteredEye.ca
“This 75-minute horror-comedy is a riot of animal-human conflict”
– Apartment 613
Lock your trash bins and oil your drain pipes. Raccoon is QUEEN in the city. Pest Me Pet Me follows two raccoons who face off with two human roommates undergoing a suspicious renoviction from their downtown apartment. United by ongoing compost bin wars and raccoon Instagram funerals, the two species find themselves with more in common than previously thought. Pest Me Pet Me is a horror-comedy that explores themes of displacement, female rage, and housing and work precarity in urban cities through a unique raccoon-human relationship. Through a mixture of mask, clown, and magic realism, the show reflects on what ‘home’ means in cities that increasingly create immense challenges to sustainable and long term residence and explores the pressures a capitalist system puts on femme bodies and relationships.
The show is written and performed by Alexandra Simpson and Morgan Brie Johnson with dramaturgy and direction by Justin Miller.
Pest Me Pet Me had a workshop performance in February 2020 at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace as well as three performances at Undercurrents Festival in 2023. We are currently seeking further development and performance opportunities.
Special thanks to Brian Quirt for dramaturgical support, Heather Marie Annis for directing our 2020 workshop of this show, and Caitlin Farley for stage management and technical design support at Undercurrents
Animacy Theatre Collective graciously acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and the Artscape Backstage Program.
