“Sleepless Girls” Launches on Saturday in San Ignacio

Kayla Arnold

Since February of this year, the Youth Advocacy Through Arts has been traveling the country and visiting high schools across the city performing its latest play entitled Sleepless Girls. The drama piece looks at social issues affecting teenage girls and on Saturday the group is taking the play west, to the Welcome Center in San Ignacio. Community Arts Coordinator of YATA, Kayla Arnold, tells us more about the production.

Kayla Arnold, Community Arts Coordinator, YATA

“We’ll be performing our play, Sleepless Girls, at the Welcome Center so it is one that we want San Ignacio to look out for and definitely come out. It is very special to us because it is one of our last tour dates. What we try to do is take the play to different areas and on the road and different districts. We left San Ignacio for last because it is one of the districts that’s very emotional; they know how to feel things and they take things seriously. So we kinda saved the best for last and we wanted to end off with a bang in San Ignacio. The play, Sleepless Girls, is mostly surrounded around the life of a young girl, Jenna, but focuses on the struggles that she goes through within her home, at school and what it is like growing up as a young girl within society and where society is right now. We didn’t want to only put off a normal play or a skit or just something for entertainment purposes; there is a message behind it—a profound, deep message. There are issues that happen within families that people most of the time don’t want to talk about. And so we find a way to incorporate all of that and bring a message behind the reality. YATA tries to produce a play every year; we have a play that is our platform the year. With this year, the social issue being saving the young girls. We started the planning phase of it from about November, December. We launched the play at the Street Art Fest in February and from since then, we’ve been here and there showing it. We’ve been at Maud Williams [High School], we’ve been at Gwen Liz, we’ve been at Supal, we’ve been at Jump Street. So now we are going to Cayo and we want to give them a flavor of this play.”

The event is free of cost and starts at five p.m. on Saturday.