Just in case you needed reminding...

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JEAN BINTA BREEZE READS LIVE a tribute to 5 generations of women

Jean touches the core of earthy Womanhood when she reads poems like these in this way.

FEMFEST - a Festival of Women Playwrights – an interview with Hope McIntyre of Sarasvati Productions

I interviewed Hope McIntyre, the Artistic Director of Sarasvati Productions and the driving force behind Femfest. Where other festivals with women at their focus have died out in Canada, the drive and determination of Sarasvati and all its volunteers, has  Femfest striding in its ninth year.

Click to go to Sarasvati's FemFest 

Website for 2011

Hope is herself a playwright, hence her passion and is at present developing a new theatre piece called "Jail Baby".  Hope Kindly sent the opening monologue:

Spotlight on Jasmine, about 8 months pregnant. 
As she speaks she changes into Remand Centre issue clothes.

JASMINE:      They say you can’t remember that far back – back to being born. Maybe I don’t remember, but if I close my eyes, I can feel the concrete against my slippery little body. I feel metal. I have nightmares of sliding out into a world of bars and cold and noise and suffocation. It’s like something I can’t escape. Born to be in prison. Born a prisoner. Sounds like a bad country song. Even worse, I became known as the toilet bowl baby. Now there’s a good song title. If only someone had taught me to play guitar, I could be traveling the world telling my sorry tale. I’d record an album in Memphis and they’d make a movie about me. (now fully dressed in prison garb, she looks down at herself) I’m just fulfilling my destiny. This is what my mom was wearing when I was born. I’m my mom 18 years later.

I asked Hope what were her future plans for Jail Baby:
"In terms of the plans, we are doing rewrites this year and working towards a full production and publication in May 2013. Our goal is to produce it for the general public but then also take it on

Edens Serpent - A poem

Edens Serpent 

this ‘S’ on my chest
is a molten lava river
flowing down to power source my vulva

this ‘S’, a serpent
gripping its tail in its mouth
swallowing the knowledge of itself
till it is sated

singing infinite circle songs
signing itself onto its own scales
to the tone of the kundalini ohm
a note recognisable in us all
if we only listened

a note that supersedes the noise of misogyny
of war rape and the cost
of living  the nip tuck
dictated by ticked boxes and barbie stencils


WHEN THE 33'S SPIN - Music, Race & a Little Girl - Pt. 1

When The 33's Spin - A poem

Eleven and home alone
with the turntable 
and the shiny liquorice  platter
playing a set
for memories to be made treasures and cuckoo stories
of broken hearts, of lost things found,
of courage liberated
the triumphant fist of blues
the spectrum of emotion played  in those grooves
onyx plates of Soul Food 

Bobby Womack's gravel molasses tones
riffs stretching notes  beyond the elasticity of time
Funkadelic dooloops scoop me on my roller skates:
ripped carpets, broken door handles 

Let's Get It On - big peoples music, it felt new
Marvin understood the expanse of a night for lovers hue 
and why did Anne watch and listen to the rain 
if it made her feel so blue?
I would come to understand, as woman, later
but I know something in my new soul moved
as they crooned...

Extract of Travelling Light in Winnipeg, Canada for FemFest

So in the theatre of the University of Winnipeg, Canada, I asked Steve, the lovely stagemanager, to film me doing a quick warm up of the introduction for Travelling Light. 
It was a dramatized reading of the show that help me understand how far along the show is in it development.

Here is a taste 10 mins before curtain up.