A family’s troubled history will unfold across five generations in The Woman at the Well, a new production being staged by Noire Youth Theatre Company in October.

The story, adapted by Patricia Pogson-Nesbitt from a book by the Reverend Georgette Prime-Godwin, follows six women who repeatedly look for love in the wrong places, unaware that they are continuing a pattern established by their great-great-grandmother.

“The storyline really is talking about those ancestral traits that we enact and are uncertain of why we do that,” Dr Prime-Godwin said.

“The whole purpose of the production is to have the participant see themselves as in a mirror, not to point fingers. But if you can see yourself, then maybe you can change your trajectory for your descendants.”

The Woman at the Well was inspired by Jesus’s encounter with a Samaritan woman, as told in the Gospel of John.

“I take stories from the Bible, put it in everyday language, so that when you're reading it, you don't actually know that you're reading the Bible,” Dr Prime-Godwin said.

The action moves between mid-1900s Skeldon, a small town on Guyana’s eastern coast near the border with Surinam, and Bermuda in 1904.

At the centre of the story is Philomena, a young woman caring for her sick brother after the death of their parents. Her journey to collect water is long and difficult. Sometimes she returns to find that his condition has worsened; at other times, she arrives home with less water than she had at the start.

Determined to find a better way, she sets out to build a pipeline that will bring water closer to their home. Her brother eventually dies but she continues with her plan.

She later meets William, a White man from the other side of town, and becomes pregnant. His family insists that he marry someone of his own race, leaving Philomena to face the consequences of a relationship that can never become a marriage.

Her experience establishes a pattern repeated by the women who come after her, each of whom is drawn to a married man. Hope emerges when the youngest member of the family begins to question it.

Although the ancestral traits at the centre of the story are negative, they do not always have to be, Reverend Prime-Godwin explained. People may repeat destructive behaviour, just as they may possess a talent that cannot be traced to their parents or grandparents.

“Your mama doesn't cook; your granny doesn't cook. You just have this ability to cook, not knowing where it's coming from. But if you go back in your family tree, maybe it was your great-great-grandma that was an exceptional cook,” she said.

Dr Prime-Godwin is a leadership coach and published the book in 2018. It remains available through Amazon.

“My view towards life has always questioned my thoughtless actions,” she writes in her online description. “What action has gone before me that has placed shackles on my heart? I sit and ponder, can this generational curse be broken?”

The stage adaptation began after Ms Pogson-Nesbitt, a teacher, playwright and theatre director, read the book and filled its pages with red ink before proposing that the story be brought to the stage.

“It scared the bejesus out of me because she had written in every column, in between all the lines,” Dr Prime-Godwin said. “But it's just that with her creative mind, she saw stories plural.”

Ms Pogson-Nesbitt told Dr Prime-Godwin at the outset that adapting the book for the professional stage would require her to relinquish control of the material. She soon realised, however, that she was working with an unusually prolific author whose urge to write was difficult to contain.

“I had to stop and listen and humble myself because I saw her,” Ms Pogson-Nesbitt said. “And as a writer, I respect the fact that she has an addiction, and I'm gonna call it that because I've never met in my whole 50 years of doing this a person that writes [like she does].”

For her, the well carries both practical and psychological meaning.

“Everybody needs water,” she said. “So the book begs the question: What are you thirsty for?”

The production forms part of the tenth-anniversary year of Noire Youth Theatre Company, which Ms Pogson-Nesbitt helped establish in May 2016, while she was head of the Arts Department at CedarBridge Academy.

The idea came from three students who asked whether they could start a theatre company of their own. Ms Pogson-Nesbitt agreed but told them they would have to run it themselves, involve their parents and create original work rather than stage existing productions.

As former members began discussing how to mark the ten-year milestone, Ms Pogson-Nesbitt felt it was time to explore a provision in the company’s mandate allowing it to stage productions for adults and the wider community. The Woman at the Well gave the company that opportunity.

At auditions this month, both she and Reverend Prime-Godwin were impressed by the abilities and emotional range on display.

“I am floored by the nature of the talent, new talent, the emotion, the gifts they brought with them to this space is amazing,” Ms Pogson-Nesbitt said.

They hope that if audience members see signs of their own family patterns in the production, they will have the courage to question them and prevent harmful behaviour from continuing into another generation.

“We both agree on this: family makes up the community, the community makes up the organisations,” Dr Prime-Godwin said. “So if the families are hurting, that translates into the community and these same folks show up in the business.”

• The Woman at the Well will be staged at the Ruth Seaton James Centre for the Performing Arts from October 8 to 11. For information, contact Noire Youth Theatre Company at 703-6248 or noiretheatrecompany@gmail.com