What does it mean to be a lion womxn? To be courageous enough to be yourself
When these 12 women and non-binary youth came together, it wasn't hard to find the love in the room
What does it mean to be a lion womxn?
As the youth of the AMY project explain it, being a lion womxn is first and foremost about having the courage to be yourself. So when the 12 women and non-binary artists came together to create and perform Lion Womxn for this year's Summerworks Festival, it wasn't hard to find the confidence and love in the room.
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Collectively, they had received mentorship through the theatre program of the Artists Mentoring Youth Project (AMY for short). The AMY Project runs a multitude of initiatives, but the theatre program exists to address the systemic barriers many diverse performers face in breaking into the industry and connect them with artist mentors.
"We're here because this is a space we want to be in too," explains Nikki Shaffeeullah. "As a woman, as a person of colour, as a queer person, it was a long time before I felt I had mentors who could affirm all parts of myself."
Each performer wrote their own stories — which is courageous at any age, but especially in your teens. What they found was that whether cisgender, non-binary, racially diverse, queer or heterosexual, there were commonalities across each of their individual experiences that bonded them.
Lion Womxn co-director Julia Hune-Brown shares: "I never saw my identity portrayed on stage or on film in a way that I could recognize myself" — which is why empowering youth to tell their own stories became a main goal of the production.
Check out the above video to spend some time with creators nevada-jane arlow, Clara Carreon, Olivia Costes, Gabi M Fay, Carvela Lee, Megan Legesse, Laya Mendizabal, Morgan, Whitney-Nicole Peterkin, Rofiat, Aaliyah Wooter and Fio Yang.
Watch CBC Arts: Exhibitionists on Friday nights at 11:30pm (12am NT) and Sundays at 3:30pm (4pm NT) on CBC Television.
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