The Tribune

By ALESHA CADET

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

MORE than 200 people witnessed a unique stage production in Nassau last weekend which sought to reveal and restore the beauty of womanhood.

Over two nights at Crush, Atlantis, three best friends – Mycquel Glinton, Nishan Patton and Anthia Butler – explored what it means to be a woman in today’s world with their first show called “She Shall Be Called Woman”. Both women and men made up the audience.

The title of the play is taken from the biblical story of the first woman, Eve, and in “She Shall Be Called Woman” the trio of friends considered how her experience is connected to the struggles of women around the world in the 21st century.

With a cast of 15, made up of both kids and adults, the show opened up the conversation through a series of journal segments which included song, dance, drama, spoken word and other forms of art.

Anthia gave a solo dance performance of Janet Jackson’s “Control” and Beyonce’s “Freedom”, while Nishan gave humorous relationship advice. Mycquel’s enactment of a scene featuring Eve called “Remember Me” brought the show to an emotional close.

“Remember Me” is a special piece that Mycquel and Nishan wrote together based on a lot of their conversations over a period of five years. Anthia said it was the perfect way to tie in the theme of Eve.

“We have heard so many things about Eve; she is sly and there are negative associations with her all the time. And we thought to ourselves if we were to truly consider her, who was she, what would she say?

“If Eve could speak right now she would say, ‘Remember me’, because Eve felt what we feel. She lost her sons, Abel and Cain, who ended up being a wanderer,” said Anthia.

She added that Eve was also the first women to feel the pain of child birth.

“ I think Kelly (Mycquel) got so emotional because we realise that we are so connected to her and when you just think about her being the mother of all the living and the billions of women that have walked that same walk and overcome and stood the test of time, we think about Eve,” said Anthia.

Anthia said she used her passion for dancing to express her growth and womanhood.

“There was an introduction to that performance tonight and it talked about the three of us all celebrating our 30th this year, and that draws on Janet Jackson when she came out. ‘Control’ was her breakthrough album 30 years ago, when she finally left her father’s guidance and did things her way. It was an album of liberation,” she said.

The song, Anthia said, describes her life story, not in the sense of being controlled like Janet was, but in other aspects of her journey.

“‘Control’ comes into play when you don’t know who you are, so I just wanted to dance that for every single woman in the audience, and that is where the emotion came from,” she said.

The performance of ‘Control’ then segued into a dance for Beyonce’s “Freedom”. In “Freedom”, Beyonce sings about breaking free of the chains and tears falling away until the last one burns into flames.

“Our goal was to speak truth, share truth and use truth to reveal and restore the identity and beauty of women,” said Anthia.

“We feel as though by the grace of God we were able to transform minds and lives. For our first time putting on such an amazing and such a huge production we are just ecstatic and elated with the support that we got from everyone who just came out here. We didn’t know what to expect, so to walk onto that stage and see a full house, we were truly just overwhelmed.”

She said people loved that the show included a variety of the arts. She said they also enjoyed the venue, which was very important.

“We want to use whatever is available to change the mindset. We purposely didn’t want to go into an auditorium because we want to put people into a space where they are not use to thinking in. Also, the women have said they have never been more proud to be a woman. We have had tons of girls who have seen the show who want to now participate in future shows, which is actually what this also served as the conversation continues. The goal is to not keep this to us, we want others to run this race,” said Anthia.