Kill Your Father begins by announcing its message with a striking visual act. Before a word is spoken, a white dress becomes a screen: projections flicker across its surface with fragments of speeches and headlines. References to American figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump flash into view, highlighting a landscape of sexual violence and entrenched misogyny. In this immediate creative collision of body and image, the show declares its feminist urgency … loudly. Kill Your Father is immersed in two seemingly contradictory, yet deeply connected concerns: global geopolitics, and the violated rights of women in locations from the Far East to the Middle East to America.
Written by Grace Passô and directed with intimate and thoughtful precision by Marcio Beauclair, this one-woman show draws on the myth of the norm-defying and vengeful queen Medea, but departs from the traditional storyline to explore new perspectives. Instead, it transfers Medea into a contemporary, multicultural context, showcasing modernized versions of her struggles and approaching them with a non-linear perspective. Early in the performance, the protagonist (Maria Paula Carreño-Martinez) situates herself within an invisible neighbourhood populated by Syrian, Brazilian, Cuban, American, and Chinese neighbours, none of whom we see, yet all of whom we come to know through her voice. She becomes the conduit for their lives, weaving powerful observations about migration, belonging, and resilience into a broader feminist and, at times, anti-war meditation.
The production’s design is minimal but impressive. A small chair anchors the space, while behind it looms a large, textured, vulva-like form: an image that is at once controversial and generative. The performer’s costume is the purest form of visual symbolism: a white dress marked by hanging red threads across the breasts, which are suggestive of both nourishment and wounding. When she intones, “My breast is exploded, full of milk and pain,” the metaphor becomes a lived experience, linking her body to the complex emotional and social realities of femininity.
Sound and lighting are among the strengths of this show, for the way they make the space tangible. Pulses of high-beat music, crafted by sound designer Julián Nenao, begin or end with sound effects such as gunshots, explosions, and heartbeats. These create an oscillating rhythm of vitality and threat that reflects women’s lives in our modern patriarchal world. The lighting, designed by Brandon Gonçalves, is mostly red and blue, which sometimes overlap to create a subtle shade of purple — reflecting the protagonist’s conflicting emotions of anger and sorrow, joy and love.
At the centre of it all is Maria Paula Carreño-Martinez, whose performance is the production’s most compelling and powerful element. She establishes a remarkable rapport with the audience, addressing them directly and drawing them into the world of the play as witnesses and receptive participants, whom she goes so far as to reframe as . her “daughters” – a shift that transforms the theatrical space into something deeply intimate..
Her performance moves smoothly between narration and embodiment. She speaks in images and declarations: of “a father who is always presenting absence,” of how “I am decisive of love,” and how “the land belongs to those who do not have the land.” These lines and more pull the audience into a kind of poetic logic that privileges emotional truth over linear storytelling. What stands out most for me is her metaphorical description of immigrant women, whose lives are “packed into bags” that begin to feel like extensions of their own bodies: a metaphor that resonates with the play’s broader thought about women’s lives in this modern world. In keeping with this, there are extraordinarily vivid moments of performance, such as in a childbirth-evoking scene, which is executed with such convincing intensity that it sent shivers down my spine.
Interestingly, the classical Medea myth, on which the show is based, can be said to be both present and absent in Kill Your Father. We witness Medea’s rage and quest for justice, as well as her love and acts of selflessness for her husband and children. But the concerns of this modern Medea feel much less self-focused, and more concerned with larger challenges to patriarchal structures. Thus, since her anger is directed at patriarchal power rather than any single act of betrayal, she believes it is always the husband and father who deserve death, not the woman with whom a partner has been cheating. Seeking to reframe the story’s moral center, she frequently insists, “Change this narrative”. And iIn pursuing her own violated rights and those of the women around her, she seeks not personal revenge, but to spark an intellectual movement.
The performance and concept are undeniably strong, but at times, the show veers close to sloganeering. The clarity of its message is striking, but Passô could perhaps leave more room for the audience to explore the ideas organically, rather than consistently delivering them so directly. And while this contemporary reimagining of Medea is compelling, the play drifts quite far from the original narrative. Audiences aware of the show’s origins may find themselves hunting a deeper connection to the classical storyline and its differently inflected moral complexity.
Of necessity, Kill Your Father avoids superficial and easy solutions. As noted, the play ultimately shows less interest in retelling the classic myth of Medea and more in examining its underlying ideological roots. And by hauling its narrative bodily into a modern context, it illuminates how the passage of time and surface-level solutions may appear to have addressed Medea’s problems, but their roots remain just as corrupt and misogynistic. Our myths and the power structures that govern our world continue to function as one integrated and repressive patriarchal system.
Especially in the light of its truly original, highly interactive ending, Kill Your Father is deeply unsettling and thought-provoking. It leaves its audience under the gun of its story: caught between inherited systems and the possibility of imagining them otherwise.
And I can promise you that this tension and these ideas linger long after the final shocking moment.
Expandido Theatre Group’s Kill Your Father runs through April 4, 2026 at Theatre Passe Muraille. Tickets are available here.
© Paria Azarmehan, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
