Begotten | Minola Theatre

Begotten is a touching duplication of inter generational tragedy and trauma mixed with hopefulness. Written and performed by Bianca Butler Reynolds and directed by Kat Dekker, Begotten threads together the story of five women who are connected by blood.

We see the relationships the women have with men unravel from healthy and supportive to dysfunctional and abusive. We see these women losing their identities and finding themselves, embracing motherhood and running away from it and either fighting against or succumbing to the hardships in their lives. 

I don’t know how Reynolds did it, playing five divergent characters with different accents in the course of 90 minutes, without once leaving the stage, but she did it and she did it with such ease that there is no doubt that these were the roles that she was born to play. This was the script that she was destined to write. The prose were so divine; each character had their own flavour, their own spirit and song to sing. The stories were flowed together beautifully, thanks impart of the elegant yet striking imagery of a suitcase filled with various items of clothing. These clothes not only dressed the characters but were symbolic of their mindsets and their views of the world around them. Dekker did such a fantastic job transforming the suitcase into a train tunnel, a bed, and many more places. Such an effective directorial choice.

Begotten is a story about strong women. It is a story about strong women who love, who hurt, who break and who rise again. It is a story that needs to be heard and seen.