“I just knew that I could not mess up her work,” Lyah Beth LeFlore said about bringing her mother Shirley LeFlore’s poetry to the stage with “Rivers of Women,” which runs May 16-19 at the Missouri History Museum.
“I was very impressed,” Shirley said. “Lyah just has an old spirit. I never doubted or thought that she wouldn’t do it well. She knows my work so well, which means she knows her mother well.”
Lyah conceived and directs the production, but she didn’t do it alone, especially with the staging upgrade for the second presentation.
She enlisted the help of choreographer Nicole “Pinky” Thomas, musical director Al Anderson and a cast of women that include dancer Brooke Boyd, singer/actresses Rochelle “Coco Soul” Walker, Adrienne Felton, Olivia Neal, Leah Stewart and national recording artist Monifah Carter (who is experiencing a career revival thanks to the TV One Network hit “R&B Divas”).
“We have a five person cast, which guest stars Monifah but also some of the most amazing unsung talent and sheroes within the city of St. Louis,” Lyah said. “And now we have a full-on band and we have a larger cast. If you enjoyed it before and it soaked you in, then this time it’s going to blow you out of the water.”
In rehearsal, the cast members sounded like a full-scale women’s choir as they harmonized selections that include original music by Anderson infused with classics, from Minnie Ripperton to Chaka Khan and Angie Stone, woven around Shirley’s poems about self-affirmation, beauty shop chatter and loving a man like nobody’s business.
They laughed, they danced and they shouted. And it was obvious that they genuinely spoke to each other’s souls, especially when singing Angie Stone’s “Happy Being Me.”
“It’s so important for women to see this because it celebrates us, it connects us and it tells our stories that we haven’t seen or heard,” Lyah said.
“And with plenty of women’s stories, it’s either ‘woe is me, I’ve lost my man’ or the downtrodden side, and this is really a celebratory experience.”
“I was impressed hearing my work and hearing me speak through other voices,” Shirley said. “It came from me, but it was also picking up from other women. I hope they take away bits and pieces of these women’s hearts and spirits. But mostly I hope that they can find somebody – themselves or someone else – through these women.”
Lyah has already benefited from the residuals of her mother’s artistry.
“It’s helping me to be a better artist and better creative mind,” Lyah said. “I feel like I’m being encouraged to be a better woman when I hear those lines within her poetry. As I’ve ventured into motherhood myself, I get it now. I get where the words come from.”
Not only the daughter, and not only black women, should be able to get where these words come from.
“Outside of the pieces that talk specifically about being a black woman, it really is a culmination of my mother’s work that speaks to all women – black, white, red, purple, yellow – it doesn’t even matter,” Lyah said.
“It breaks all of those barriers because it speaks to the spirit of women – old and young.”
“Rivers of Women” will run May 16-19 at the Missouri History Museum. For tickets or additional information, call (314) 746-4599 or visit www.mohistory.org.
