Help Peaches: The Play! Go Even Further!
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My name is Maarika Freund, and I need your help. :)
I’m trying to start a new conversation. Or maybe more accurately, I’m trying to redirect one that’s already in motion. I’m a thirty-five-year-old professionally trained actress and, like many others prior to the eruption of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in 2017, my career was negatively affected by sexual assault.
But despite everything I’ve been through, I don’t identify as a survivor, I’m surprisingly not that angry, and with my little buddy Peaches, I’m doing my best to make the yummiest organic lemonade you have ever tasted.
I’ve already begun my attempts at redirecting the current dialogue around all things #MeToo through my podcast peaches, which is about everything I learned while dedicating my life to never being r*ped again. Now, I’m working on a one-woman show that’s having its global debut at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in September 2023. It's going to be my triumphant return to the theatre, and I need your help getting there.
peaches: the play! is dark comedy about a young woman who is coming back to acting after an unwanted, seven-year hiatus. Only there’s a catch: she’s auditioning for the role of Harvey Weinstein.
This play is largely based on my real-life experience coming forward and inspired by one of my stand-up comedy sets.
I think that laughter is so important when it comes to healing. And if anybody has the authority to say: “You’re allowed to laugh about this incredibly sticky subject matter”, it’s me. Not because I think that this subject matter is funny, but because I believe we need to be able to laugh about how insane it was that so much of what happened to me was allowed to happen to me.
Like the fact that up until October 5th, 2021, it was completely illegal for me to do my podcast or produce my play due to an unwanted publication ban on my name.
FUN FACT: all things peaches actually began years prior to the launching of the podcast. This project picked up motion during its incubation at Artscape Daniels in Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic, five months before I learned I had an active publication ban on my name, meaning it was completely illegal for me to be sharing the work I had already started sharing.
So, little did I know, when I began to write the episodes of the podcast, that everything I shared in this project’s infancy could have landed me up to two years in prison. And, unfortunately, I’m not being dramatic when I say that!
Getting to this stage has been a huge labour of love, including a lot of effort to help change the law (criminal code s.486.4) so that publication bans no longer negatively affect people who both choose to come forward and decide that speaking about their experience is right for them (because while this was the right choice for me, I realize that it's not the right choice for everyone, and that's something I wholly respect).
FUN FACT #2: For those of you who don’t know or may not realize, I’m also one of the founding members of My Voice My Choice (the website was built by yours truly!), which is an initiative to amend criminal code s.486.4, and is fearlessly led by Morrell Andrews.
I’m not going to explain what a publication ban is now, but if you’re curious, I break it all down in a very accessible, non-triggery way in Chapter One The Handbook of peaches, the podcast!
Lastly, I didn’t put donation tiers on this campaign for a reason. I believe that this is a subject matter that is incredibly important to a lot of people, so I don’t believe that one donation is more worthy than another.
So whether you can donate $5 or $1000 doesn’t mean you will receive any more or less gratitude or recognition. Every contribution is meaningful.
Expenses your donations will help to cover:
- Festival Participation Fees
- Airfare from Tel Aviv to Vancouver
- Meals & Accommodation in Vancouver for 2.5 weeks
- Press Materials (programs, posters, & advertising)
- Costume & Set (including Peaches!)
- Rehearsal Space, Theatre Rentals for Test Runs
- Food for Performers During Rehearsals and Recordings
- Studio Time for Recording
Thank you so much for your support, and wishing you only the best as we all continue navigating this incredibly intense planet that we're all living on. :)
Listen to peaches: the podcast! here:
ONLINE: www.maarikafreund.com/peaches
APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/peaches/id1648353759
Follow peaches on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peaches.thepodcast/
Follow Maarika on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maarikafreund
Organizer
Maarika Freund
Organizer
Toronto, ON