Studio Series

23 24

Death to the Prometheans

Written by Camille Intson
Directed & Dramaturged by 郝邦宇 Steven Hao

Winter, 2024

Five internationally selected young artists are indoctrinated into a training program at world-leading performing arts conservatory, navigating as best they can the perils of young adulthood, institutional demands, and finding purpose in making art in a world on fire. Taught by Charity, their rigorous and eccentric leader, the students — including Zinnie, a biracial dancer; Hannah, a bumbling playwright; John, a conceptual body artist; Thea, a climate activist; and Yannis, a video game enthusiast — move through a series of creative prompts and exercises, grappling with the program’s contradictory teachings as well as their own will to create. Death to the Prometheans! is a play about institutional resistance and the quest for knowledge and truth in educational systems that promise young people agency and freedom just as they foreclose it. Can authority really be challenged from within? How can young people imagine systems of education, governance, and political power outside of that which they were taught? What does it mean to break the shackles of tradition? And, at the end of the world, how much is art really worth?

PGC Tom Hendry Award-winning playwright, and one of this year’s RBC Emerging Playwrights, Camille Intson joins IN DEVELOPMENT with her newest play, Death to the Prometheans. The reading will be directed by 2022/23 RBC Emerging Director 郝邦宇 Steven Hao.

Camille Intson

Playwright

Camille Intson (she/her) is an award-winning Tkaronto-based writer, interdisciplinary theatre maker, and new media artist. Her work frequently explores the nature of queer femme identity and spirituality, emerging technology and intimacy, intergenerational power relations, and institutionalized whiteness, often pandering to new generation performers and audiences. Recent projects include JANE (Tarragon Theatre Greenhouse Festival/in development with Pantheon Projects; 2023 Equity Showcase Cayle Chernin Development Award Finalist), CLICK BUSH TRAIN BUG: A Fable for Twelve (Tarragon Theatre/TMU Creative School), WALSH: A New Musical (with Jake Schindler), troubadour (2023 Canadian Folk Music Award Nominee/2022 Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award), We All Got Lost (2021 Playwrights’ Guild of Canada Tom Hendry Award Winner; 2019 Hamilton Fringe Best in Fringe/Best in Venue/New Play Contest Winner), and Road (2017 NNPF National Playwriting Competition Winner). She can be found at camilleintson.com or @thecamiliad.

Additional Credits