Delta Stageworks presents Heirlooms & Baggage (My Mother’s Story), a play devised by the company featuring the extraordinary lives of five ordinary women at Genesis Theatre.
Performances take place Oct. 12 to 15 with a preview Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m. with matinees at 2 p.m. on Oct. 14 and 15.
Heirlooms & Baggage (My Mother’s Story) features Stageworks actor/writers Camryn Chew, Peg Christopherson, Ragini Kapil, Renee Iaci and Eric Keenleyside, who all came to the project with a personal desire to delve into their Mom’s life story.
Kapil, whose mother’s journey began in Fiji, then took her to Nelson, B.C. in the 1960s and on to a noted career as an educator in Vancouver.
“I’ve often taken my mother’s strengths and accomplishments for granted, and this creative process has really opened up my understanding of who she is as a woman - not just as my mother - and what it’s been like for her to negotiate the cultural expectations and judgements faced by a woman of color coming to Canada in the 1960s,” said Kapil.
By turns celebratory, humorous, relatable and transformative, the play explores those oh-so-essential relationships, the ones we have with our mothers.
Chew tells stories from both her mother’s life journey as well as her own that involve lived experience of anti-Asian racism.
“Before this project, Chinese characters in plays I have been cast as were written as racist stereotypes,” said the Delta actress. “Now I get to finally be the person writing the story. And the most poignant part is that I couldn’t be doing this without the power and strength of my mother.”
The catalyst for the shows’ development was the My Mother’s Story writing process founded by award-winning actor/author/playwright Marilyn Norry. Norry’s 2023 TEDX Talk about the important and transformative work of writing our mothers’ histories is available online.
Tickets are now available at: https://deltastageworks.ca/ or by calling 778-384-2948.
-Submitted
