Welcome to our production of "Shirley Valentine." We are proud to present to you a woman so brave, so marvelous, so funny and so full of life that her story is bound to resonate in some way with each and every one of you. There are as many stories about women as there are women in the world. And each one has something unique to tell us. Shirley's story is one that comes from a particular place and a specific set of experiences and yet, it touches on so many universals.

Women through history, more often than not, have been given the short end of the stick. In drama women have been portrayed as sacrificing mothers, idealized virgins or villanized whores-and of course it was men writing about beings they seldom understood and even less so, took the time to. How refreshing then is Willy Russell's play about a woman who is no bland archetype, but a complex, living, breathing, human who is trying to find a way to make the most of her once chance at life on this earth.

A popular cigarette maker has long had as their slogan, the feminist proclamation, " You've come a long way baby!" While it is true that women have made many strides towards greater equality with men, it is undeniable that even today, as we lie at the threshold of a new millennium, women have to struggle to stake their claim on this tiny planet of ours. And freedom means different things to different women the world over. In some countries, women still can't have bank accounts on their own. And yet it is women, by a large margin, who almost single-handedly raise the ingrates who grow up and won't let them vote, who won't let them have economic freedom, who won't let them be educated, who won't let them be alive! you get the point. As these women's lives, and Shirley's indicate, women have yet a long way to go baby!.

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote the play " A Doll's House" in which a middle-class wife eventually walks out on her husband and children because he has treated her no more than his plaything. When that play first opened in England late in the last century, the play was promptly closed down and a new ending was demanded in which Nora comes back to her husband. The censors were worried that the women in the audience might get a few ideas of their own. It was appropriately called "the door slam that was head around the world." Shirley, almost a century later, finds herself in the same predicament. "To leave or not to leave." More poignantly,"To live or not to live!"

But, don't let Shirley's courage and actions lure you into a false sense of security or feminist strength. All men aren't the enemy and certainly, men aren't the only enemy. Every battle for equality time and time again, has proved that sometimes the worst enemies come from within. Sometimes women are the only ones holding other women back! Freedom has to first come from within and then asserted to the outside world. Shirley teaches us just that.

Come voyage on our journey with Shirley Valentine. She has many lessons to teach, most importantly, that humor and laughter are essential, if this struggle we call the journey of life, is to be endurable and eventually, worthwhile!