Sound, song, and personal testimony are really important elements of the play and so we wanted to explore these themes further with a group of local young people through Sound workshops which focus on our relationship to our environment and local and personal heritage.
Throughout our story we are taken through several different worlds; the warrior women, Portchester Prison, the town hall, the Baroque family and the plantation by the narrator, Guede Iya (Geh-deh ee-yah) a black ageless Yoruba woman; These overlapping narratives weave together to create our tale; the Ancestors. After an energising introduction Guede Iya takes us first to meet the warrior women, a group of Maroon women who are escaping enslavement, on the luscious Caribbean island of Saint Lucia.
Because of the warrior womens bond, their connection to the space and the different characters and personalities and experiences that make the group - we decided to focus on the warrior women and the themes they explore as well as what they represent during the play, the questions we focused on were:
What does choice mean to you?
When have you felt like you’re part of a community?
What makes you as individuals?
What are you fighting for?
Who are you fighting for?
What does friendship mean to you?
More infomation at https://www.nyt.org.uk/theancestors