Empowering work

Whenever Bea Palanca needs reassurance, she tells herself eight words: “stand still at the door, sure of yourself.”

Consider it her mantra.

“It tells me that, even if outside forces and other people are telling you different things and giving you different ideas of who you are and what you should do with yourself, inside, you know who you are,” Palanca said.

The line is from Enter My Goddess, a play Palanca performed in and helped write with her afterschool drama class at the all-girls Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School in 2004.

Enter My Goddess, which tells the stories of both ancient and modern coming-of-age ceremonies through a parallel storyline, has been selected for a script anthology of student- and teacher-written plays for the Sears Ontario Drama Festival.

“I’m thrilled for the legacy that they’ve handed to Notre Dame,” said drama teacher Marguerite Jack-Vermey of the Malvern Avenue school.

The girls “always really loved that particular show, and loved what they wrote.”

The storyline of Enter My Goddess was inspired by teacher Carmela Arangio’s extracurricular drama class discussion on cultural rituals for women.

“I was in her class one day, and we were watching it and thought ‘there it is,’ ” said Jack-Vermey.

The play features stories from six contemporary girls going through puberty alongside the tales of ancient first blood rituals of native cultures including Australians, Americans and tribal Africans.

“This play felt very empowering for 15-year-old girls,” said Palanca, now 20. “We knew what we were doing was something important. It was a lot of hard work.”

“We didn’t think we would enjoy it as much as we did.”

Enter My Goddess was presented at the SummerWorks festival in August 2005.

Notre Dame, which is not an arts school, had five original productions featured in the Sears Ontario Drama Festival from 2004 to 2009.

The anthology, Festival Voices: Plays Written by Students and Teachers for the Sears Ontario Drama Festival, features 15 school productions that were presented at festivals between 2000 and 2009. The anthology is set to be released in May.