I spend a lot of time thinking about the end of my life. I am certain this is because I lost my mother suddenly at the age of 10. So over the years, many women have helped raise me into the woman I am today. Many of them I know deeply, and some are strangers to me, but women; nonetheless that I admire from afar.
This piece began its conception from my couch with a glass of wine in hand in October 2015 when I paused to consider the women who have made me.What I envisioned was a magic skirt; I had no idea where the stories would carry me.
I expected some fabric to arrive, what I was rundown by were the stories. Stories of love, heartache, loss, tragedy, success, and history. Some stories were told to me aloud, others scrawled on the back of old receipts, and so my own story began to come pouring out.
In November 2015, I locked myself in a trailer on the Oregon coast for three nights and wrote some 20 something pages of what became the base for where this play began. In the meantime, I also began writing music and have created seven songs (that I sing and play on the piano) for this project.
The story is still an unknown to me, this is just the beginning. As any idea you begin to wrestle with, I'm equally as terrified as I am excited to share what I have dug up. This piece will evolve over time, and at current, plans to have another life; touring to Coffee Creek Correctional Center, a female prison, in February 2018. My mother was a teacher in Los Angeles for a men's lock up prison, Camp Holton, so somehow, without planning to, I am being called back to her.
-Nikki Weaver
Weaving Women Together
Created and performed by Nikki Weaver
Directed by Gretchen Corbett
January 17-28, Hampton Opera Center
January 19, 20, 21 - SOLD OUT
In October 2015, Nikki Weaver sent a letter to 60 women - some she knew and some she didn’t - requesting a piece of fabric and an explanation of its sentimental value. The result is
Weaving Women Together
, an entirely female-driven piece about the loss of Weaver’s mother and how she has collected her in other women, and a magic skirt made entirely of the tales - and fabric - shared by these women.
