Dear Editor,
Mr Al Creighton’s review of the play Kanyadaan in the Sunday Stabroek of November 23 offered an in-depth insight into the production.
I was there on the first presentation of the play and I must say that I was surprised that the audience’s response to the final scene where a father is broken and weeping is far removed from an expected human reaction of compassion. Laughter was the general response.
Kayadaan was to me, as a member of the audience, a series of serious emotional experiences which moved me. For example, Wanita Hubern did not fail to transmit to me her unbearable pain as a mother for a child abused.
The final scene of a father broken and weeping made a strong impact on me. I could not laugh then. To have done so at that point would have been to lose my human heart.
I am not judging others since reactions vary from person to person with respect to life’s events. But I must concede that I am bothered when we laugh in the face of human pain on stage and off stage.
Yours faithfully,
Krishna Nand Prasad
Glad to know I’m not the only one.
Years ago I saw ‘Watch De Ride’ at the National Cultural Centre. In one scene, a mini bus conductor visits the home of a female minor who wanted to end their laisson. He tries to force himself on the screaming child, and out comes her wheel chair-bound father and gives him a couple of lashes with a stick (or something). Condustor takes away the ’stick’ and with it, beats the paraplegic into a coma. The play ends several scenes later with the invalid still hospitalized, having never recovered.
For me, this was horrifying. But not nearly as horrifying as the laughter that roared from the audience throught that scene. It was the last time I ever went to the Cultural Centre.
There’s a lot wrong with us Guyanese on several levels.
Similar reactions attended “The Green Bottle”, “Room to Let” and one of Trevor Rhone’s plays (I think it was “Old Story Time”), all at the Cultural Center. I saw all these as a boy, and was really freaked out at the laughter of the audiences to what (to me) were some quite frightening scenes. My father suggested it was the way people shrugged off images too disturbing to analyze deeply…a release from fear.
Not worth the time of day.