LONDON-based Jamaican actress Julene Robinson is a busy woman.

She currently appears in the popular West End production Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical, and then late last year an episode of the Netflix drama The Witcher. Now, the Actor Boy-winning actress is taking her one-woman production The Night Woman to the London stage this weekend, with performances at Off West End venue, The Other Palace, for four shows.

Written by Robinson, The Night Woman is described as a play about womanhood, blackness, and healing, and was inspired by Robinson’s grandmother, the late Hyacinth Rowe, who hailed from St Elizabeth.

“My grandmother, God bless her soul, was a revival woman, and I like to say that is where I honed my performance skills, having grown up in that space. When I came to England to do my master’s, my dissertation explored performance as a spiritual act and I used her as the archetype to dig into this idea. Over time, I have expanded this idea and here we are now with The Night Woman,” Robinson told the Jamaica Observer during a telephone interview in between rehearsals.

The metamorphosis of her idea into a theatrical work was given legs thanks to a three-day residency at a local theatre, followed by a week-long stretch of performances of early iterations of the work at Barbican Centre, a renowned arts space in London, last year. There Robinson was given full use of the facilities’ resources to develop her story into a full-length production.

“ The Night Woman is really a powerful story about a woman’s journey. Using the metaphor of darkness, we turn the notion that ‘anything black nuh good’ on its head and see darkness at the beginning of all things. So if darkness is the beginning, then we with dark skin are the beginning, and darkness represents all things good. On the journey, the woman goes into the darkness and meets with the ancestors who explains that all things black are good and this leads to redemption and healing,” she explained.

The Night Woman promises to be a full performance experience complete with the use of poetry, drumming, and a variety of musical and traditional folk forms, including revival, to drive home the story.

Robinson is being guided by Jamaican choreographer and movement specialist Buntu Yello [formerly known as Dwayne Barnaby], who was the first Jamaican to be cast in the West End staging of the hit musical The Lion King. The Night Woman is being directed by Trinidadian Martina Laird and produced by Emma Blackman.

Robinson would like for her audiences this weekend to become aware of the power of the darkness, having watched The Night Woman.

“I want people to feel confident as they go through the darkness and difficult times knowing that it is all part of this thing called life. The show starts with a sound bath and the audience is encouraged to breathe, relax, and feel safe as it is possible to triumph. There is so much strife in the world at this time and, as much as it stings and hurts, it is part of the process. The work is quite timely given all we are experiencing as a people. When I started writing four years ago, it was timely for a whole different set of reasons and now it is even more timely,” Robinson shared.