Calpurnia

Julie, a young Jamaican Canadian screenwriter, is passionately working on an adaptation of one of the most beloved American novels of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird, telling the story from the perspective of the Finch family’s Black maid, Calpurnia. But within the safe confines of her wealthy father’s home, and besides all the encouragement from their Filipina housekeeper Precy, Julie struggles with writer’s block and numerous distractions as her family prepares for an important dinner party. When her brother challenges her, saying she’s appropriating a culture she doesn’t belong to, she goes to dramatic lengths to prove her point, only to find she has much to learn.

Calpurnia is a witty and highly charged look at the complicated entanglements of intersectionality and allyship, exposing motives and biases that are clear as a bell one moment, and drowning in ambiguity the next.

• The play had its worldwide premiere in 2018, but Audrey rewrote it after the murder of George Floyd before a production in April 2022.
• The play is a great resource for examining classics under a modern lens and a learning tool for anti-oppression, asking “how are we in the world today?”
• First produced by Nightwood Theatre and Sulong Theatre at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, in January 2018