Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer

Left: Actors from Sistren Theatre Collective perform in a scene from 'Lady Chance and the Butterfly Dance'. - photos Winston Sill / Freelance Photographer

Lady Chance and the Butterfly Dance' staged by the Sistren Theatre Collective at the Ward Theatre last weekend was a case of style battling to outdo substance.

The play dubs its style as dancehall theatre, and like the genre from which it takes its name, it is a fascinating spectacle for all that it does right, all that goes disastrously wrong and even all that is simply perplexing about the play.

The production takes standard elements of community theatre, such as a set comprised largely of boxes that are rearranged to change the setting and interchangeable characters and then weaves in elements from dancehall. As such, the narrator is dubbed a DJ and when she wants to impart lessons via song, she calls on the 'sound bwoi' to run the rhythm. Indeed, Lady Chance and the Butterfly Dance manages to harness the lively, energetic spontaneity of the dancehall and place it on stage.

Tackles issue of the sexual exploitation

Written and directed by Orville Simmonds, the play tackles the issue of the sexual exploitation of women especially targeted at those from a lower socio-economic background, highlighting how they can be pushed back down when they attempt to rise. The play clearly wants women to rethink their role and their options for work, particularly the notion that it is a man's world and that women therefore need men to pull them up. It also challenges the notion that the only jobs available to women are those in traditional feminised areas.

One realises that that is the goal of the production because that is what the DJ says. However, the dramatic structure of the play works against this and says all too eloquently that hope is not all that floats. As such, the woman who plans is the one who is sent crashing into madness but the young woman who has no real plan, but only a dream that her mother then has to sell herself for, is the one who succeeds.

The message the play therefore sends is that planning is madness but allowing oneself to be sexually exploited may have its rewards. As one woman then yelled as the mad woman ran off the stage, "Mi naa mek no plan den!"

The dancehall in Lady Chance and the Butterfly Dance came through its structure. Scene breaks featured silhouettes of dancing girls, intermission had a battle between two vendors and a security guard followed by an energetic bout of dancing by four women, one who proved to be a gelatinous medley of shaking parts, so the play easily captures its audience's attention.

It is, however, questionable whether it manages to do this to the detriment of its intentions which is not merely to entertain, but to educate or at least engage the audience into thinking about its situation. The problem was not the presence of the spectacle, but that the spectacle lacked focus and sometimes even seemed to be working in opposition to what the play was attempting to do.

The question deserves to be asked because, behind all the dancing girls and largely atrocious acting that rarely goes beyond yelling, Lady Chance and the Butterfly Dance seems to posses a decent script, though one barely gets a glimpse of it. For what it attempts to do, however, Lady Chance and the Butterfly Dance is a fascinating piece of work.