1 May 2012
Our latest project ‘A Song To Sing’ has started (title inspired by Maya Angelou). Maya talks about the fact that birds don’t sing just because they can sing, they sing because they have a song to sing, and that’s what we are doing with this project. We are working with women, those from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups, and women from the Travelling Community, to find out what their Song is, what their story is and then we are going to work together to create that Song and tour it early next year.
The workshops started a couple of weeks ago and we have run drama workshops with Czech/Roma women, Portuguese women, and those from Bangladesh, Eritrea and Slovakia/Roma young women. We are at the early stages but it’s clear that women with English as an additional language feel at times on the outside. Also there is an issue with people’s names, some of the women, when introducing themselves talked about the fact that they feel the need to shorten their names because the English can’t take in too many (foreign) names, too hard for us to remember, spell and/or say. I can hear women feeling the need to change their names to English names, so they are easier for us (mainly the white community) to say, which is true for a lot of people, including me, but I can’t imagine a white English woman called Shirley moving to Pakistan and changing their name to Shamshad instead, wouldn’t happen would it?Other women we are talking to are women from the Travelling Community. Because of Big Fat Gypsy Wedding there is a distrust of what the company will be doing and more work will need to be done to win the trust of these women, and I’m spending this time visiting these women and talking to them about the company and the project, so fingers crossed.
It’s weird to step off one project and then start again with another (we have just finished touring Swags & Tails, a play about older women and carers, paid and unpaid). I’m right at the starting line again, not knowing what will come out of the workshops and what the Song will be, but that’s exciting too and I feel the women will produce a beautiful and powerful Song, one that will change things, and that’s the point…..Catrina McHugh, Artistic Director
