Concept and editing by Dan Monafu

Written and narrated by Megan Piercey Monafu

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Rideau Centre, Ottawa’s most famous downtown mall! Let us equip you with headphones, a podplayer, and a story, so that you can experience shopping like never before. Part local history, part history of our globalizing world, part behavioural psychology, part experiment, and part tragicomedy, our theatrical podcast-play-tour will allow you to observe your fellow humans as an outsider, and be audio-guided through one of the most popular and least documented phenomena of the 20th century: the indoor, climate-controlled, super-shiny shopping mall.

Mall ratting ran as a regular secret tour of the Rideau Centre from May to August 2015, and was included as a part of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival Industry Series that June. Mall ratting was commissioned by Ottawa (de)tours.