Award-winning play is based on one citizen’s experience after being swept up by the Toronto police response to G20 protests—which constituted the largest peacetime mass arrest in Canadian history
You Should Have Stayed Home (aka #G20Romp) is a play about Tommy Taylor’s experience over 48 hours at the 2010 G20 weekend in Toronto. While trying to return home from his first ever protest as a law-abiding citizen at the “Free Speech Zone” at Queen’s Park, Taylor was swept up in a mass arrest, caged with 40 other people in a ten foot by twenty foot cage and denied drinking water until he passed out from dehydration.
The play is an adaptation of Tommy’s Facebook note, How I Got Arrested and Abused at G20 in Toronto. The note went viral and has been translated into seven languages and appeared in twenty-one countries – a detailed, frightening and often funny account of the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Tommy’s story has been covered by national and international media, including a Gemini-nominated CBC documentary named after the production.
Play on tour across Canada
After winning the largest cash award at the 2011 SummerWorks Festival, and becoming one of the festival’s highest grossing shows, Praxis Theatre, in association with The Original Norwegian, is about to embark on its largest project ever—a cross-Canada tour to:
- Whitehorse, Yukon: Yukon Arts Centre, Sept 12-15 2013
- Vancouver, British Columbia: Firehall Arts Centre, Sept 24 -Oct 5, 2013
- Toronto, Ontario: Aki Theatre, Oct 16 -27, 2013
- Montreal, Quebec: Mainline Theatre, Oct 30 – Nov 2, 2013
- Ottawa, Ontario: Arts Court Theatre, November 13-16, 2013.
You Should Have Stayed Home is a one-man piece of storytelling in the tradition of Spalding Gray, with Taylor moving around a replica Eastern Avenue Detention Centre cage as he recounts 48 hours in his life as a citizen on the streets and eventually incarcerated.
Part-way through the narrative, there is a scene that incorporates twenty-six participants that can be played by actors and non-actors when the action arrives at a cell in the Eastern Avenue Detention Centre. As the show tours cities across Canada, the company will work with community members in each city as Tommy’s fellow detainees.
Canadian Civil Liberties Association comments on the conviction of a police officer
On September 12, 2013, Toronto Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani became the first police officer convicted of criminal charges stemming from the 2010 G20. Const. Andalib-Goortani had been caught on video by a bystander, beating protestor Adam Nobody at the demonstration three years ago. Nobody was already on the ground, restrained by several other officers.
As a leading voice on police accountability in Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has spoken to several media outlets about Andalib-Goortani’s conviction.
“[Charges against police] are a fundamental part of the accountability process,” CCLA Public Safety Program Director Abby Deshman told The Toronto Star. “They are oftentimes the only response to police misconduct, so disciplinary charges are the meat of where police discipline happens.” Abby also appeared in a TV interview with CTV News to comment on the story.
The 2010 G20 was a major turning point in the way Canadians perceive their relationship with police. The police response to protests constituted the largest peacetime mass arrest in Canadian history. In the years since, CCLA has worked tirelessly to bring to light, and learn from, police conduct during the G20 Summit which we have determined was, at times, disproportionate, arbitrary and excessive.
In 2010, CCLA released a preliminary report on policing and security at the G20, based on first-hand observations from more than 50 human rights monitors. CCLA also broke down the events of the G20 protests, arrests, and aftermath in an awesome infographic that you can check out right here. For a comprehensive collection of CCLA’s work on the G20, click here.
We speak with Tommy Taylor.
504_september_26_2013_sm.mp3 Left-click to listen; right-click to save.
