Giovanni Rodriguez to Stage THE EXECUTION OF GIOVANNI RODRIGUEZ in London
Giovanni Rodriguez explores economic displacement in London through performance art
Award-winning storyteller, performance artist, and communications pioneer Giovanni Rodriguez, a recipient of honors from the Packard Family Foundation for groundbreaking work in large-scale narrative and civic storytelling, announces a new public performance and visual art work to be staged across select London neighborhoods.
Titled THE EXECUTION OF GIOVANNI RODRIGUEZ, the project is a striking piece of agitprop performance art that confronts the human cost of supermarket monopolies and corporate consolidation on small grocers, independent workers, and local communities. Set within the symbolic and civic spaces of London, the work blends theater, protest, and contemporary art to provoke public reckoning.
Rodriguez is internationally recognized for his pioneering use of narrative at scale, including his historic restaging of The Trial of Lizzie Borden, in which two sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justices served as jurors and more than 3,000 Stanford Law School alumni deliberated Borden's fate in a live national television broadcast. That work is widely regarded as a landmark in documentary performance and participatory justice storytelling.
In the new London work, Rodriguez places himself at the center of the drama as a symbolic figure - "Giovanni" representing the local grocer, the small trader, and the human face of community commerce. His "crucifixion" becomes a central metaphor for economic displacement, labor erasure, and the quiet destruction of neighborhood life.
The imagery deliberately inverts the language of Good Friday into a "Bad Friday" of modern capitalism. Supermarket shelves, receipts, and price tags form a cross. Recorded voices recount the stories of shuttered shops and displaced workers. The audience is not offered comfort, but a question:
Who is responsible - the corporations, the consumers, or the system itself?
By externalizing economic harm through familiar religious iconography, the work forces empathy where abstraction has long insulated power.
The tone is expressionist and stark, designed for public encounter rather than institutional containment. Performances and installations are planned for busking-relevant and community-visible public squares across London, including areas in South Bank, Camden, King's Cross, Shoreditch, Soho, Greenwich, and Notting Hill, subject to local permissions and regulations.
Rodriguez's work sits at the intersection of narrative ethics, civic theater, and political art. As with his earlier trials and public storytelling interventions, THE EXECUTION OF GIOVANNI RODRIGUEZ asks audiences not to observe history - but to participate in judgment.
About Giovanni Rodriguez
Giovanni Rodriguez is an award-winning communications consultant, performance artist, and pioneer in applying large-scale narrative to law, politics, and public life. His work has been recognized by the Packard Family Foundation and documented in national media, academic studies, and live broadcast performance. He is known for transforming audiences into juries and stories into civic acts.
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