Welcome to this special holiday presentation of Sanctuary: A Radio Play, an annual Thanksgiving tradition at Our Hen House! This performance marked the world premiere of John Yunker’s Sanctuary at New York City’s Symphony Space during the Culture & Animals Foundation’s Compassion Arts Festival. We were thrilled to have been a part of this witty, engaging, and incisive production that portrays the different journeys we embark on when we begin to open our eyes to animal exploitation. Here at Our Hen House, we are longtime proponents of the arts, including theater, as a tool for animal advocacy; this funny, and moving, play serves as a lens into human behavior and motivation and encourages the audience to safely explore their feelings around why they choose to eat (or not to eat) animals.

A dark comedy, Sanctuary tells the story of Richard (John Frusciante) and Lisa (Mariann Sullivan), a happily married couple whose blissful retirement to small-town Oregon is thrown into disarray when Lisa suddenly decides to go vegan and insists on celebrating Thanksgiving without a turkey AND alongside her new friend and animal activist, Meg (Jasmin Singer). Husband Richard invites his unsuspecting buddy Charley (Michael Harren), who also happens to be the local exterminator, in the hopes of getting Lisa to stick with the traditional meal. The resulting tensions soon push relationships over the edge. Sanctuary tells the story behind the struggles and joys of navigating vegan ethics around loved ones who don’t quite understand. (Sound effects are by Emmy winner Eric Milano.)

Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoy the Our Hen House podcast, please leave us a positive review! To view the show notes with resources, visit the website at https://www.ourhenhouse.org/ep671-5/

We invite you to join our end-of-year matching campaign where your donations will be TRIPLED, dollar-for-dollar, up to $20,000, between now and December 31!

Get the future of podcasts.