Sunday Nov 24, 2024
Sunday Nov 24, 2024
Thursday, 2 April 2015 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Citi Sri Lanka took a pioneering turn in celebrating International Women’s Day by inviting Mind Adventures to perform an original theatre production, ‘Wonder Woman,’ scripted and directed by celebrated theatre personality Tracy Holsinger.
Joining Citi worldwide to honour women in the forefront of progress and diversity under the theme ‘Connecting Women. Inspiring Change. Making Progress’, Citi Sri Lanka pushed the boundaries of theatre with Mind Adventures, using vignettes of past and present situations, conventions, traditions and stereotypes to get the message of the vital need for women’s empowerment across.
Tracy and her actors, Tracy Jayasinghe, Thanuja Jayawarene and Tehani Chitty, pulled out fairy-tales to dispel the myth of ‘happily ever after’. Bella was the perfect (yet boring) wife who lived in denial with her ‘beast’, Cinderella was just not the ‘perfect’ mother – hassled, frazzled and driven to drink, she hated her life of being on call 24/7 and Rapunzel, who used the first escape route she could find to gain her freedom just sits there, crying and whinging, because her Prince is simply not around.
The actors revolved on the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, ‘Make it Happen’ as the discussion point. They spur a discussion on the failed attempt by Joss Whedon to entice Warner Brothers to back the ‘Wonder Woman’ movie.
In fact, it is well known that Warner Brothers went on with Marvel Comics to make The Avengers instead, figuring there would be no market for a movie based on a strong women. The actors have a mock interview with Joss Whedon, in which he says that his penchant for strong women characters is because he always believed in equality.
Light-hearted social satire was used by the actors in an interactive session with the audience based on Charm School and how society wants women to behave, act and look, despite piling on an unmanageable load of work to juggle with family and career.
‘Wonder Woman’ also highlighted some women across the years who have been phenomenal women in the true sense of the phrase, Maya Angelou and Ada Lovelace, all women who ‘Made it Happen’.
They also touched on stereotypes in advertising, pulling in examples of marketing campaigns and commercials of today, most of which continue to position women as conventional homemakers playing traditional roles, sexual objects used for marketing campaigns with no relation to the product being marketed and the unrelenting discrimination in various dynamics that continue to dog women even in today’s liberated society.
With 220 Citi IWD events taking place worldwide in the month of March engaging employees, clients and community partners across 130 cities in 90 countries, Managing Director, Citi Country Officer of Citi Sri Lanka, Ravin Basnayake said: “A growing number of Citi’s clients around the globe are women. Citi is well positioned to meet this demographic shift, with our own women making up over half of Citi’s workforce. 2015 marks Citi’s fifth global IWD Celebration. Citi has always championed women’s empowerment and we believe strongly that companies, industries, communities and nations benefit immensely from optimising the strength, knowledge, skill and talent that women have in multi-dimensional areas.”
Concluding a highly-celebrated evening for Citi Sri Lanka, the audience joined the cast in singing and dancing to the song ‘Brave’ by Sara Bareilles, reiterating the motto of ‘Connecting Women. Inspiring Change. Making Progress’ through its strong lyrics and catchy music.
Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.
