How to Catch A Flying Woman in the Nashville Pride by Cass Teague
Come experience an amazing new play by Cynthia C. Harris, free of charge presented by the Actors Bridge Ensemble in partnership with Nashville Public Library at the Main Nashville Public Library Auditorium, located at 615 Church St. The event runs from 3 pm – 5 pm on Saturday, May 25, 2019 (Memorial Day Weekend).
“I am incredibly excited to debut my latest work, How to Catch a Flying Woman(HTCAFW),” says Harris. “It’s been a long time coming. Here, I’ve written about my experiences in life, love and loss over the past decade. In all my work, I try to get to the essential truth of a thing. I need to understand the experiences that motivate human choices and set us on a certain course. HTCAFW allows us to consider the experience of being a woman with a vision, one that may be challenged familial and cultural pressures to conform rather than soar.”
The talented cast includes Nailah Ajamu, OlaOmi Amoloku, Deyonna (N’biyah) Fairbanks-Duskin, and Tasneem Grace Tewogbola, along with Harris.
“HTCAFW is a collection of meditations on flight, presented as a choreo-poem,” continues Harris. “Audience members are not only spectators, but participants in this community ritual of healing and transformation. As a beloved community, it is our responsibility to catch our flying women, should they fall from flight. Flying women inspire and transform everything they touch. Flying women are necessary. Flying women will lead us into the future.”
Flying Women on the Nashville Public Library Blog May 17, 2019
Nashville’s history with theatre and the performing arts is long and storied. You can find treasure after treasure documenting this history in NPL Special Collections. On May 25, Special Collections is playing its own role in the story.
Next Saturday, May 25, the library will host a truly special, one-night-only presentation of How to Catch a Flying Woman* featuring the Nashville Room’s very own Tasneem Tewogbola. Written by Nashvillian Cynthia Christina Harris, the work is a combination of poetry, drama, music, and dance—a choreo-poem that celebrates women’s voices and recognizes the necessity of supportive communities. Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s work for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, Harris calls How to Catch a Flying Woman the “artistic half of [her] research into black women’s lives and intimate relationships.” The playwright describes a woman in flight as someone who is passionately following big ideas and taking risks. Inevitably she will falter as she soars towards success and will need a safe and supportive space amongst friends to heal and restore herself. With this piece, Harris asks, when she falls, will you do more than witness?
She is a self-described Writer/ Performance Artist/ Dancer/ Activist/ Health Educator/ and proud southerner. A natural sign watcher, very much in tune with her surroundings, Ms. Harris finds it almost impossible not to hear the stories hovering around people. Growing up in a multi-talented family, she always felt at peace pursuing her creative interests. However when it came time to choose a career, Cynthia chose to focus on her parallel interest in health and graduated from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University with a BS in biology in 1999. Her subsequent work in the field of women’s reproductive health research fed her appreciation for the analytical and gave her the opportunity to study human behavior, leading her to not only be a vocal advocate for women’s health issues, but to create stories of empowerment.
Ms. Harris developed her weaving voices technique as she deepened her understanding of the intersection of performance art and public health. In 2017, Ms. Harris completed her Master of Public at Tennessee State University. In 2018, How to Catch a Flying Woman premiered and was commissioned in 2019 by Nashville Public Library. In 2022, The Calling is in the Body debuted with Actors Bridge Ensemble.
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Healing Waters Productions 