Hannah Viederman

Immersive theater brings John Ford’s horror opus to life, following a doomed, incestuous love affair through a corrupt medical institution.

On May 21st, 2023, ‘Tis Pity premiered as a semi-immersive workshop reading at Gymnopedie in Brooklyn, New York. Video to come. 

Betrayal. Poison. Incest.

‘Tis Pity introduces audiences to a rehabilitation center for psychologically-disordered and sexually- deviant adults, inviting them into the tortured, lust-ridden confinement of its patients and implicating them in the corrupt sovereignty of the staff.

Drawn to the grand and gory in Jacobean theatre, Hannah Viederman and Dillon Miller aim to confront audiences with the brutal reality of the power structures that haunt our world. Through visceral theatrical immersion, ‘Tis Pity grapples with questions of deviance, sickness, and inherent humanity, asking who decides (and enforces) what is considered deviant? How ought we treat those deemed to be deviant? How has deviance been weaponized (principally against women and queer people), and is there a point at which the deconstruction of deviance becomes problematic in itself?