Sounds Siren Red

Sounds Siren Red, written and performed by Anna Camilleri and directed by Tristan R. Whiston, is an adaptation of a memoir published by Camilleri in 2004 entitled I Am a Red Dress: Incantations on a Grandmother, a Mother, and a Daughter. This one-woman play was the first of three components in a larger project - The Acting Out Against Violence Project, ReDefine Arts’s first large-scale Ontario-wide touring project. The Acting Out Against Violence Project featured Sounds Siren Red performances, community forums, and community art making workshops to foster dialogue about gender-based violence in Pembroke, Ottawa, Toronto, Belleville, Sarnia, Kitchener, Sudbury, Timmins, Kenora, Simcoe, Hamilton and Brantford.

The play explores generational violence through a personal lens, and one woman’s journey away from, and back to, herself — a journey inspired not by evidence, or proof, but by imagination — a journey guided by the figure of a woman in a red dress evoked from fantasy and born of necessity.

Sounds Siren Red premiered at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2004, and was followed by a full production at Toronto’s Alchemy Theatre in 2006, and a national tour to Canadian cities including Vancouver, Kingston and Victoria.