About the performance

Travelling Light is a poetic story exploring and unpacking the paradoxes that haunt and challenge womahood and gender definition. Zena tells of her fractious and touching relationship with her mother, and her mother’s recent reunion with her own lost mother. The show takes gritty and moving twists and turns through the crafts of poetry/spoken word, visuals, song, movement and blogging.

Key Personnel

Anthony Shrubsall - Dramaturg
Sarah Ellis - Production
Abi Idowo - Film

Production Information

Running time at full length: 15 minutes

Medium use of text

No use of music

Does not require a clear understanding of English or another language

Touring Information

Small scale show (up to 400 seats)

Appropriate for studio setting

Number of people on tour: 2

Number of performers on stage: 1

Touring availability: March 2012

Suitable for rural touring

Outreach and Educational Work

Workshops developed explore alternative means of defining and RE-imagining/imaging womanhood. Through dynamic and intimate debate, creative writing, sketching and drawing, photography and beginner to advanced performance exercises, participants will discover personalised tools to inspire confidence in everyday life to share. Aims of the sessions are, through art, to develop new and contemporised versions of ancient rites of passage as options for and to female awareness other than those offered by commercial and ‘traditional’ socializing.

Company History

Edwards has been involved in performance internationally for 16 years after graduating from Middlesex University. She has been a performance poet since 1998, was artist in residence at the Poetry Society (2002), nominated for the Arts Foundation Award for performance Poetry 2007, written commissions for the BBC, BREP, Nitro, BAC and has toured extensively round the UK and Europe supported by 57 Productions, Apples and Snakes poetry organisation and the British Council.

Recent Productions / Tours

Security is a one woman show project written and performed by Edwards, commissioned by BAC and Birmingham Rep and produced by Apples and Snakes (November 2009 - Februry 2010). As lead artist she also created, directed and mentored Verbalised - a British Council initiative where 5 South African poets and 5 UK poets were brought together for international collaboration stretching the boundaries of poetry in performance.

Reviews

SECURITY
"Edwards combines old-fashioned storytelling, songs, poetry and performance to tell the interconnecting stories of five very different people.
Edwards is a superb performer, equally at ease as an elderly Caribbean man, as a would-be teenage MC, Ayleen, or as a lonely, 47-year-old Palestinian photographer, Mahmoud. A chance encounter between Ayleen and Mahmoud becomes the backbone of a fragmented tale of London life through which love and loss flow." – Lynn Gardener, Thurs 20th November 2008

"Security is Edwards' theatrical debut but it doesn't show. As the sole performer Edwards delivers a convincing, raw performance full of passion and conviction. Edwards is not one to shy away from challenging and controversial issues, indeed the press release boasts that it covers London knife crime, nationality, intergenerational tension and neuroses, encompassing some pretty hefty grand narratives of contemporary society." Eva Ritchie (2008) , The British Theatre Guide

VERBALIZED
"Led by veteran lady of words, Zena Edwards, five up and coming South African poetry stars join forces with five top UK poets to create a show that’s on fire!"

“Verbalized is a journey, an exploration of how we, as spoken word artists, shape the world around us”, explains Verbalized’s lead poet, Zena. “The British Council asked me to create a project giving up and coming poets from the UK and South Africa the opportunity to work together to create something special.”

"So, in March this year, Zena and five UK poets went to South Africa and literally “rocked the house” in Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesbourg. Audiences were stunned. One audience member said that they had “never seen poetry like this before” Another confessed that “this show moved me so much, I was crying by the end.”
- Verbalized: South African soul food for the mind, www.voice-online.co.uk, Sept 2010