When director, musician and playwright Sherri Raeford was invited to dramatize the struggles “of courageous and resolute women of North Carolina to obtain equal rights” she was struck by the diversity of the those who pioneered the right to vote for women in the state. Many of the stories were Asian, Black, Jewish, Native American, Immigrant Irish and white Americans, she learned.

American Association of University Women North Carolina (AAUW NC) president Cheryl Wheaton envisioned a 2020 performance to be given in Raleigh at the Governor’s Mansion for a special centennial. Raeford, who thrives on group projects, was elated that the diverse group of women she pulled into the project were loving it, too — so much that they agreed to even be cast members. The writers included Jalila A. Bowie, Sheryl Davis, Patsy Hawkins, Ruan Walker, Lennie Singer, Chappell Upper and, of course, Raeford.

“The original idea was to envision women at the Governor’s Mansion on the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage,” she says. Raeford is owner of Shared Radiance Performing Arts Company, which she founded after years directing the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival.

Underwritten by a grant award from the AAUW and later supplemented by High Point nonprofit Women in Motion, or WIM, the original work, Sisters of Mine; Hear the Voices, will finally come to the stage at two Triad locations on August 24 and 29 after COVID disrupted that original production.

Raeford has spent years researching and dramatizing events surrounding the passage of the 19th amendment. Ratified on August 26, 1920, the centennial observation — four years after the fact — will serve to mark Women’s Equality Day.

She held developmental meetings in her Pleasant Garden studio.

“A lot of the women who contributed [to suffrage] were women of color, and I didn’t want to write other people’s stories.”

That was then.

“When [the project] began,” she recalls, it was exhilarating. “There was a lot of momentum.” Raeford sighs. “Then COVID hit.” 

With the pandemic raging, the group attempted collaborating on Zoom rather than in person. That proved difficult, Raeford admits. The production lost steam as the pandemic ground on. Eventually, the project stalled.

Raeford grieved a bit, then “let it lie for a few years.” She regrouped as best she could during the pandemic, staging open air company productions in the interim. Best known for bringing classical and original works to students and into the general community, Raeford’s company, Shared Radiance, is a member of the North Carolina Theatre Conference and the Shakespeare Theatre Association.

Shared Radiance productions frequently use outdoor locations, including parks and public space, where the audience follows the actors from scene to scene. So, using the outdoors as the stage was nothing new to her.

Open air performance, as it turned out, was a godsend during the pandemic.

Shared Radiance board member Martha Yarborough had learned about the developing production during those COVID-era Zoom meetings. Almost immediately, she grasped that the theme of women’s equality was a fit with another organization, WIM, a leadership initiative founded in 2015. She felt WIM would instantly see the production was “about finding a voice.”

Yet Sisters of Mine might never have found its voice, Raeford stresses, if not for renewed interest from AAUW NC. “The AAUW Greensboro branch recommissioned the production to highlight today’s equity issues for women,” the organization explained recently in a release.

With AAUW’s renewed interest, Raeford was further buoyed when WIM sought a second performance in High Point for their organization.