The 14th edition of the Caribbean Festival of the Arts (Carifesta XIV) has taken off in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago where it is running from August 16 to 26. This unique festival, which aims to excite all people, has had a very interesting, but also a mixed and very unstable history. Carifesta has failed to meet all the great visions for it, has fallen short of what it was designed to be and has not done what it promised for the participating nations.
It has seen a number of significant trends in its patterns and performances. Carifesta reinvented itself between 2003 and 2005, but still did not achieve its new goals. Yet, there are changes, and these are to be seen in Trinidad right now, as the hosts try to realise many aspects of the refashioned festival and effect changes in the trends developed during the past 10 to 15 years.
Trinidad and Tobago is hosting Carifesta for the fourth time (1992, 1995, 2006, 2019), more than any other country in the history of the festival. No other country has held two consecutive Carifestas. It is not surprising then, that Trinidad will also upset a few of the trends because of what it is doing this year.
Three other countries hosted two of the regional arts festivals – Suriname in 2003 and 2013, Barbados in 1981 and 2017 and Guyana in 1972 and 2008. The history is completed by Jamaica, 1976; Cuba, 1979; St Kitts-Nevis, 2000 and Haiti, 2015. There is added significance in that Suriname and Haiti are Caricom’s two newest members, and both new members hosted Carifesta soon after joining the community.
The other remarkable factor with respect to these countries is language. Suriname and Haiti are the non-English-speaking territories in Caricom – Suriname is Dutch, and Haiti is French and Patois/Kriol. This linguistic factor contributed to some of the trends that have developed.
Outstanding among the trends are what has been happening around the factors of the popular culture, public involvement and the audience for Carifesta. More and more, since 2003, it has been observed that the audience for Carifesta has been the local people – the population of the host country. Despite Carifesta’s aim to excite all people, drawing large multitudes of tourists as spectators has not materialised. In the reinvention of Carifesta that took place between 2003 and 2005, a new model was fashioned that placed the festival on much more commercial/professional footing. Nations would bid to host it because of its financial benefits from the likes of concessions, mega concerts, the earnings of cultural workers and tourism.
The Grand Market has come closest to realising that, since several groups of craftsmen, culinary artists and other vendors have been attending Carifesta to ply their trade. They arrive as entrepreneurs in cultural industries even when they are not a part of their countries’ official delegations. They rent booths and stalls in the Grand Market to exhibit and viewers and buyers have turned out in significant numbers. The traffic in this marketplace was outstandingly hectic in Barbados’ Sherbourne Centre in 2017. But these crowds have been local people, there are no significant records of tourists. The large numbers that arrive in the visiting delegations, though, may be regarded as tourism arrivals and function as such with revenue for the host country.
But there are two factors of further significance. Carifesta showcases the arts of the various territories. However, the artists who come from one territory are rarely seen as members of the audience for the performances of other countries. The various companies of performers are often very occupied with engagements at far-flung venues and sometimes never see what other territories are doing on stage. Exchanges almost don’t happen.
A particularly striking feature first seen in 2003 was the way Carifesta appealed to the population and integrated with the popular culture. In its first experience as the venue for this regional festival, Suriname carried out a thorough campaign of promotion among the population of Paramaribo. In Suriname again in 2013 there was the feel that Carifesta was for the entertainment of the local populace. This was even stronger in Haiti in 2015, prompting the question as to whether this was a feature of the culture of these countries.
In Haiti, residents from communities around the inner city dominated the audiences in Port-au-Prince. In Suriname, Carifesta infiltrated the popular culture, or it was the other way around, but there were nightly popular events attracting large crowds. These were extremely positive developments, but they did not happen in the Anglophone territories.
This meant, however, that language was an issue in performance. Public readings by visiting writers were virtually untenable. Because of this language barrier, drama was discouraged by the Caricom administrators in Haiti in 2015, especially full-length plays in English. Surprisingly, Guyana performed a play (Guyana Prize Winner, Sauda by Mosa Telford, performed by the National Drama Company) which still managed to work for the audience. It might have been the language of the theatre, the circuit of performance that can work without a full understanding of the words.
Never mind the language barrier that could be an issue only in 2003, 2013 and 2015, another of the trends is the reduction of drama in Carifesta since 1995. This could not have been considered so critical when Carifesta was held in the Latin American nation of Cuba in 1979.
Right up to 1995, major full-length plays were prominent in the Caribbean Festival of the Arts. In 1995 in Trinidad, one of the leading plays from the professional circuit in Kingston was brought as one of the dramas in Carifesta by Jamaica. At that time, plays such as those (Ecstasy by David Heron, directed by Trevor Nairne) were commonplace in Carifesta. Since then many factors, which may have included professional engagements at home, or the fact that artists are not paid to represent their country at Carifesta, led to the decline of drama in this festival.
In Trinidad in 2006, one of the best plays on stage at the time, Mary Could Dance by Richard Raghubarsingh, directed by Raymond Choo Kong, was not a part of Carifesta, but was performed by its producers in the fringe. Except for Guyana, territories have not been bringing their major plays, though there have been a few one-act plays.
This played a role in what seemed a very subtle change in emphasis from drama to ‘Country Nights’. A Country Night is a brand of variety show in which each territory is given 45 minutes on stage to showcase itself. Drama is brief, sketchy or absent, as these performances tend to be dominated by music. There is dance, but often excerpts from some of the full performances that the particular country has brought. It is like countries are saying: ‘let us give you a sample of what we have brought to Carifesta’.
It is likely that this current festival will see a departure from that trend. There will be examples of major plays on offer. One company in Trinidad is offering the long-standing Errol John classic out of the Backyard drama tradition, the evergreen Moon On A Rainbow Shawl. There are tributes to Derek Walcott and the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, which he founded in 1960, will perform drama.
Guyana is almost alone in consistently performing drama at Carifesta. Guyana had the most impressive play in Barbados 2017, and will have another major piece in Trinidad this year. That is the National Drama Company performing Subraj Singh’s Laugh of the Marble Queen. Guyana has been consistent in this, because 2008 was a singular year in which major full-length plays were highlighted. This did not happen before or after.
Guyana invited and featured a number of leading plays, including top-of-the-line Love Games by Patrick Brown and Oliver Samuels’ River Bottom, in 2008. Guyana itself offered Legend of the Silk Cotton Tree, and Trinidad performed the powerhouse Ogun Iyaan (as in Pan).
Trinidad is also implementing a number of the recommendations in the new reinvented Carifesta model. This included a much higher level of commerce. However, no government since 2006 has elected to adopt the model full-scale. For example, even Trinidad this year will not sell tickets for the regular performances. This might have been a thinking by governments that the people should not be hindered from seeing the festival by having to pay.
However, Trinidad is maintaining another of the recommendations which prescribes that Carifesta must be held every two years. This was a change from every four years, according to the original model. That fell away decades ago and Carifesta became sporadic and vulnerable, depending on when a government felt moved to host it. There were long years of nothing. Some of the longest gaps have been in the years 1981 to 1992; 1995 to 2000; 2008 to 2013.
Since 2013, however, there has been strict consistency: 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019. Trinidad has helped to sustain that and will announce the hosts for 2021 at the closing ceremony on August 25.
