Guyana’s National Drama Festival (NDF) 2017 has now reached the stage where nominations have been made for the various awards and prizes in the different categories. The annual Awards Ceremony is scheduled for December 4 when the winners will be announced, and the cash prizes and trophies presented.
Popular interest will now concentrate on who will be the winners, and that will be fuelled at this time by the publication of the nominations and shortlists. However, while there will be deep interest, speculation and curiosity over who will win, an equally enduring question is what does the drama festival tell us about the contemporary Guyanese stage?
As usual, after the curtains come down on the performance of plays, there is further concern about what remains. Will all the theatre, the pageantry, the fine castles, sets, buildings, streets, homes and establishments, all the princes, heroes, villains and citizens, have ‘faded into air, into thin air’ and ‘leave not a rack behind’? Were they all illusions conjured up for their moments of glory ‘full of sound and fury’ and then are ‘heard no more’?
