Mount Holyoke Student/Author Presents A Performance Of Her Work Shaduhs Uh Voodoo On Friday, March 26 & Saturday, March 27

South Hadley, MA -- Author Cheryl Gittens will present her work Shaduhs uh Voodoo at Mount Holyoke College. A production that brings together performers from the student body of the Five Colleges, Shaduhs uh Voodoo combines dance, music, poetry, and acting and is based upon the life story of Gittens, a Frances Perkins scholar at Mount Holyoke. The play will be staged at Chapin Auditorium, Mount Holyoke College on March 26 and 27 at 7:30 pm. The show is free and open to the public and is wheelchair accessible. Donations will be accepted at the door for Women Shelter Companeras, Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Beginning with the story of a curse that was placed on a family in the early 1800s, a time of slavery in the Caribbean, Shaduhs moves to the 1970s and the 1990s to depict the present day ramifications of that curse, including domestic violence, on a family in Barbados.

The "shaduhs" are manifestations of the curse and stake their claims on the family, which, except for the dying brother, remains unaware of their presence. Throughout the play, the shaduhs mimic the family's movements and are witty, playful, ominous, and quite naughty at times. They represent the unspoken and the unseen. The play concludes with a young man in the family dying of AIDS while his mother and sister seek to come to terms with both the violence of their past and the uncertainty of the future.

"Writing the play," says Gittens, "allowed me to heal and speak to others who have had similar experiences while helping those who don't, to become aware." Shaduhs uh Voodoo is Gitten's honors thesis, and was awarded a James Baldwin Playwriting Prize in the spring of 1997. Gittens has been nominated twice to be an All-Academic USA-Today Scholar, and is a Who's Who of American Students in Colleges and Universities.

Gittens has dedicated the piece to her brother Hendy who succumbed to AIDS in 1997. The play is sponsored by the Department of Theater Arts at Mount Holyoke College and numerous campus organizations.