Nyack Premiere Friday, Production Headed To Edinburgh Fringe Festival

NYACK, NY — A multimedia theatrical production written and performed by Bea Conner-Pohl will premier during Women's History Month at the Nyack Center with a special event featuring a performance and discussion with the artists. The event begins at 8 p.m. March 8.

"Illuminate the Darkness" is being developed through a collaboration with the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, a non-profit art organization and the Rivertown Film Society. The project received partial funding from Humanities NY.

"Although Black Lives Matter and Me-Too movements have paved a road that creates discussions surrounding diversity and race, they do not answer the questions of women of color," said Conner-Pohl. "These women don’t want to be judged based on stereotypes, but on facts and real-life experiences."

"Illuminate the Darkness" exposes cultural stereotypes perpetuated by misinformation and ignorance that is associated with racism and sexism in America. The women interviewed share their success strategies to not just survive but thrive.

The production has three elements, a live theatrical performance by Conner-Pohl, a screening of video interviews of five women of color by Conner-Pohl, and audience participation.

Conner-Pohl interviewed five women of different races and ethnicities illustrating their plights, their tragedies, and their achievements. It shows how they address the cultural inequities that affected them through their own unique ways of humor, common sense, heart, and empowerment.

"Their stories will produce conversations throughout our communities to hopefully develop solutions. To create dialogue which protects one from divisive social rhetoric. A storyteller format is utilized. It is then interspersed with compelling historical theatrical re-enactment, visual interviews, and audience participation," said Conner-Pohl.

Bios of the women interviewed for "Illuminate the Darkness"

Cynthia (Cindi) Hoffman Fountain is Clan Mother to the Ramapough Nation in New York and New Jersey, activist for human rights, noted internationally for her contribution to the cause of grandparents' rights within the Indigenous community who made her journey in October of 2023. She was the first Chairperson of Kinship Care in NY State and received the Cura Award for Lifetime Achievement Kinship Caregiver Champion in 2019. She believed in human rights for all people and respect for Mother Earth.

Lisa Lee Peterson was born in Hawaii to Chinese American parents and grew up in the Castro section of San Francisco where she studied with neighbor, sculptor Ruth Asawa and then began her career in textile design. She taught weaving in the art department of Purdue University before retiring to co-operate an artist’s residency program at her husband’s family farm in northwest Indiana, www.taleamorpark.org. She enjoys mahjong, memoir writing and teaching Qi Gong.

Liliane Brown is a singer, writer, video editor, and photographer. Meditation is her remedy to any of life’s discomforts; and she subscribes to the ideology of visualization to manifestation as a path forward in life. Currently, you can find her EP called Begin with Three on iTunes, songs include the first single Lost, available for download now.

Evelyn Cepeda is a multi-faceted individual given to artistic expression in its different forms, a singer, an actor, a dancer, and theatrical producer. She has performed in her own works, El Rimto de Mi Gente, in films such as Circle of Life, Transgressions and Everlast and in plays written by Samuel Harps and Bea Conner-Pohl. As a jazz dancer and singer, she has performed at Carnegie Hall and as a lead singer with the band Soul of Paradise.

Donna Lightfoot-Cooper, born in British Honduras or what is now known as Belize, is a political activist and protector of human rights in Nyack and in Rockland County. She is currently a Village of Nyack Trustee and was a pivotal person at the Nyack Library in the past. In the New York Heritage Digital Collection, she is interviewed by Nery Fortune as part of the Nyack Record Shop project, a historical-based project about the people of Nyack.

Historical figures portrayed by Conner-Pohl

The women that Conner-Pohl portrays on stage embody resilience and resistance.

• Lin Siniang 1629-1644 (approx.) was a Chinese warrior woman who trained up an army of women and sacrificed her life to save her king, dying at the young age of 15.
• Abdaraya Toya "Victoria Montou" 1739-1805 was a Dahomey Amazon warrior and freedom fighter in the army of Jean-Jacques Dessalines during the Haitian Revolution.
• Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo 1879 -1947 was the first female medical school graduate, specializing in gynecology in the Dominican Republic.
• Buffalo Calf Road Woman, or Brave Woman 1844-1879 was a Northern Cheyenne woman who knocked General George Custer off his horse at the battle of Little Bighorn.
• Adeline Naville White 1861-1938, enslaved who was freed and a participant of the National Archives Slave Narratives, born on an Opelousas, Louisiana slave plantation.

There will be a live after-discussion with the interviewees.

For tickets visit rivertownfilm.org

Conner-Pohl is a retired special education teacher, playwright and actress. She has a master’s degree in teaching and a Bachelor of Science in IT and Visual Arts. She has performed in several plays at the Nyack Village Theatre, Antrim Playhouse Theatre and Elmwood Playhouse Theatre. She wrote, directed, and performed in her own work "Time Immemorial – An African American Experience." She wrote and directed her own play based on the life of her grandmother, "The Broken Window," performed at the Antrim Playhouse in Suffern, and has several of her short plays commissioned by Phoenix Theatre Ensemble.