Act Like a GRRRL

This is the first of a two-part feature on Tasneem and Yemurai Tewogbola. Tasneem is a writer, storyteller, activist, former journalist and associate director at Nashville Public Library. Her daughter Yemurai is a 17-year-old high school senior planning to study interior design. This installment focuses on their involvement with Actors Bridge Ensemble’s performance program for young women, Act Like a GRRRL. Part Two will focus on The Art of Conversation and the role of the artist in the present moment.

Six years ago, Tasneem Grace Tewogbola took Yemurai and Asali, two of her four daughters, to see the Nashville-based performance program Act Like a GRRRL, where young women ages 12–18 perform autobiographical work built through introspection and intense development. It made an impression on all of them.

By the time we sit down to talk, in the tumultuous summer of 2020, both Yemurai and her sister Asali are Act Like a GRRRL veterans, and mom Tasneem has co-led a production in Washington, DC, taken part in the group’s adult equivalent, Act Like a Big GRRRL, and is currently the Act Like a GRRRL parent liaison.

“ “This is a very different way that young girls are being brought to womanhood than, say, my generation’s experience. Way more access to their voice … if you're a woman who's used to being some of yourself, it is eye-opening.” —Tasneem Tewogbola

Act Like a GRRRL was created in 2004 by Actors Bridge Ensemble co-founder and current artistic director Vali Forrister. Forrister watched her 12-year-old niece discouraged by a teacher who claimed her poetry was “too dark.”

Determined to give young women an empowering, safe environment for self-expression, she started a month-long summer camp for six teenage girls.

Sixteen years on, Act Like a GRRRL has helped scores of young women find their voices, pursue art and be seen for who they really are.

Yemurai Tewogbola remembers that first event she and her sister attended.“Seeing these older girls speak so poetically about their feelings, and so openly and so honestly about them… in front of people who are their parents, people they don’t even know… we were like, ‘we want to do that.’”

Tasneem adds that young women are drawn because “they've heard that there's a space for them where they get to be all of them so if you're a woman who's used to being some of yourself, it is eye-opening.”

She adds, “It almost makes you wish you could go back and experience it and think to yourself, ‘well I wonder who I'd be if I had been given permission to be all of these things at one time.”

Act Like a GRRRL isn’t about feel-good performance and platitudes. It’s about honest, raw storytelling and empowerment through courage and challenging work. It offers a platform for young women to speak truths they often don’t get to address publicly, because of family, school or social expectations. They’re not messing around.

For instance, one of Yemurai’s pieces explored her experience being expelled from middle school after being caught with marijuana — a topic that would once be unimaginable to tackle in public performance, particularly when the performer’s parents are in the audience.

With the encouragement of her peers and Act Like a GRRRL leaders, Yemurai took the shame, anger and confusion of the experience and created a cathartic piece that rebuilt bridges with her own self-worth and with her family.

“That piece and Act Like a GRRRL really opened up a space for my parents to talk about the mental effects of me getting in trouble.” Yemura says. “Why I made those types of decisions. And what was the next step. How are we going to help our daughter … develop who exactly she wants to be?”

Tasneem remembers the moment with great clarity. “Utter shock,” she says. “I remember the silence in the audience. I remember how eloquent Yemu was … it really does pull on a parent’s feeling of, I guess, competence in your own family’s story, but also, ‘am I ok with people knowing the real me? That my daughter had this experience?”

She turns to Yemurai and adds, “The truth was, though, and you pushed me there with your exposé, was ‘yeah that happened. That happened. And here we are, and beautiful things happened after that we never would have guessed.’ What a beautiful piece. You had the courage to share it, you heard from teachers how much they believed in you, you wept, you wept.”

“I feel like Act Like a GRRRL has also made it easier for me to communicate with girls who aren’t in the circle or girls who don't even know what Act Like a GRRRL is,” Yemurai says. “Because now I understand ‘oh, there’s more emotion behind that choice that she just made,’ and ‘you might be mad right now.’ There's different reasons, so many different reasons because all these girls are going through different things and they’re pushed into one puddle of, ‘let’s all be teenage girls together.’”

It’s a testament to the young women of Act Like a GRRRL, and to the strength and openness of the Tewogbola family, that Yemurai could use that experience so transformatively. And it exhibits one of the Tewogbola family’s core values — conversation.

We delve deeper into the art of conversation in part two of this series, looking at how it deepens art and strengthens civil discourse.

Yemurai and Tasneem find that it also strengthens the bonds at home. “If I do honestly believe that conversation is a pathway to building community, then I have to have it in my home,” Tasneem says. “I'm challenged by the ways in which Act Like a GRRRL recrafts notions of young women, womanhood, who we are, who we’re meant to be, that we're not meant to be invisible. And then as a woman myself, and as a mother and as an artist, do I really believe it in all situations or do I just box it into certain situations? I have two girls in a family of five girls who are now schooled in the art of believing that their voice is worthy for all conversations. This is the learning curve. Sometimes it doesn't feel artistic. Sometimes it feels like tension, but it's gotten us to some beautiful sharing spaces, I must say.”