by JANIS KIRSHNER

Now that Black Theatre Workshop's hit four-man play A Common Man's Guide to Loving Women is under their belt the local company is turning its focus to a four-woman collaboration, rock.paper.sistahz, opening tonight at the MAI. The production was first staged as part of Toronto company Bcurrent's season. The group is carving out a distinct identity with non-conventional approaches to developing performance material and artists.

rock.paper.sistahz is really four plays in one. In all of them, drama, humour and high energy leap across the stage as words and rhythms express being young, black and female. On alternating nights you see stuck or yagayah, and every night there's an excerpt from one of two new works, the stand in or loathing.solitary.ooman.

Montrealers Debbie Young and Naila Belvett are at the core of this event. In the throes of rehearsal Belvett explained the journey these works have taken. Both women had been on the poetry/performance scene for a while doing social- and political-themed work when Young approached Belvett with the idea of doing a piece together. They commandeered Young's loft at Pine and St-Urbain, using the existing furniture as their set. In her living room over 100 people saw that first yagayah, a tale of two girlfriends exploring the gulf between Canada and Jamaica. And in the process, the two talented women found togetherness, safety and a wonderful creative challenge.

Bcurrent's Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, last here to direct the terrific Maija of Chaggaland, directs stuck, about a young woman dealing with the death of her dad. Both stuck and yagayah were workshopped under BTW and performed at Infinitheatre's studio space as part of the process. For Belvett the opportunity to get the work up on its feet and present it with basic lights and sound was valuable with post-show talkbacks proving especially useful. "Many times the audience gave feedback indicating they got things you didn't know you were putting out there," she says. Also important was that the language was understood. Yagayah is billed as dub theatre, rooting it as much in a cadence as in Patois. They needed to know if the rhythms were accessible to a wide public. The answer came back a resounding yes and they went with it all the way.

Even after Yagayah had been performed many times, great changes were in store. What Young and Belvett expected to be just a rehearsal turned into some of the most constructive work yet. Director Weyni Mengesha dramaturged the play, "not letting the writers get away with anything," as Belvett puts it. "She made sure every line kept the story rooted in the two characters Imogene and Mary."

It all seems a bit unreal as some of their imaginings are being realized. This show marks almost four years to the day that Belvett and Young first performed yagayah and dreamt aloud that "one day it will be performed in a real theatre and published," as Belvett recalls. Her pride is palpable. Come April it will appear in Testifying, An Anthology of African Canadian Playwrights, edited by Djanet Sears.

One last note on the subject of sisters: mazel tov to big sistah Georgia and the whole family as we welcome Amy Barratt's son Theo James. All are doing very well. :

rock.paper.sistahz until April 6
at the MAI (3680 Jeanne-Mance), $12–$18, 932-1104

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