Roaring Fork Valley resident Nuni Zeeni knows the power of a good story. 

When she attended a performance of a Women’s VOICES Theatre Project in 2024, she was struck by what it offered her: an opportunity to truly receive the experiences of local women. 

“I felt really honored that I got to witness these women sharing their stories. I don’t even remember what they were, I just remember feeling so touched and in awe of their bravery and their courage,” Zeeni said. “What an honor it is to be able to hear them, listen to them, receive them: storytelling in general is such a beautiful way to get to know our community members.”

Afterward, Zeeni told herself that if she still lived in the Roaring Fork Valley in two years — when another iteration of the biennial production would begin — she would be one of the women onstage. 

This weekend, Zeeni will be one of six women performing in “When We Dance Again,” a Women’s VOICES Theatre Project directed by Jennifer Hughes, executive director of SOL Theatre Company. 

This production is an especially important one for VOICES — the Women’s Theatre Project,  inspired by organization founder Barbara Reese, is its longest on-stage production. This year also marks VOICES’ 10 year anniversary. 

“The stories, they will touch you,” MinTze Wu, executive and artistic director of VOICES, told the Post Independent. “They will remind you of your mother, yourself, your grandmother — these are a beautiful collection of stories and it really touches upon why we’re all so interconnected.”

Like all VOICES programming, the collaborative performance was created through devised theater, a process that weaves together participants’ life stories to create a raw, insightful and emotional original production. 

“After a few rounds of story circles, what arose was stories of generations of women…about their mothers, about their grandmothers, about themselves in a previous life,” Wu said. “(The title) ‘When We Dance Again’ has that continuation of different generations of women meeting at different times in their lives.”

Zeeni will share stories of womanhood and motherhood alongside locals Indhira Barron, Nina Gabianelli, Monica Muniz, Ashley Stahl and Brittany Crooke. 

Her segment is about finding her voice and finally allowing herself to be seen — a journey that has culminated in her performance in “When We Dance Again.”

“I think my story is about staying small and staying quiet and the recognition of that pattern and growing out of it and choosing a different path,” Zeeni said. “Just because I recognize it doesn’t mean that I feel comfortable doing it, it doesn’t mean I feel comfortable being loud. 

“It’s very edgy for me. It’s very hard,” she added. “I feel like even acting it out in front of the other cast members is edgy for me because the journey that I’m on, of allowing myself to be bigger and louder and brighter, has just begun.”

For her, the project has meant reopening old wounds.

 “My journey has been revisiting parts of my story that I haven’t revisited since they happened, so it was like processing these memories that I had pushed away for a really long time and transmuting them,” Zeeni said. “There were days that I was so tender because these old memories came up again and even reading my script to the other cast members felt so vulnerable. 

“It was the first time some of these things had ever been heard by any ears at all, so that journey is a tender one,” she added. 

But she hopes that her decision to share — no matter how difficult it has been — will help other women take up more space, too. 

“What I’m hoping is that women walk away questioning what ways they’ve kept themselves small,” Zeeni said. “I’m hoping that men walk away questioning how they can uplift and amplify the voices of and the experiences and the power of the women around them.”