The past few weeks were significantly marked by an explosion of community theatre mainly led by secondary schools in several different parts of Guyana. This was the result of a combination of factors, including a plan in the outreach programme of the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD) and the National Drama Festival (NDF).
The performances were by schools, by classes doing drama for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination and in one instance, in collaboration with a new drama company. In some cases, they were partial fulfilment of the requirements for either Theatre Arts or Performing Arts but were also the achievement of successful outreach activities and an extension of the academic study of drama in the schools.
During the months of March and April this year, there were 6 public productions in this wide sweep of new theatre: 4 in Berbice, 1 in Georgetown and 1 in West Demerara. In Berbice, 3 were in New Amsterdam at the Berbice Educational Institute (BEI), Tutorial Academy and Berbice High School. The other was at Port Mourant Secondary on the Corentyne. In Georgetown it was at St Joseph High, and the other was at the West Demerara Secondary School.
Both BEI and Tutorial in New Amsterdam have led the way through their drama teachers Antacia Thomas and Mehelai McAlmont. They have fulfilled the promise of community theatre for two years now.
BEI, directed by Thomas, started the recent run of public performances with a feature play, Thief From Thief by Wilfred Redhead, along with two other short plays based on Caribbean and Guyanese cultural forms, and an improvised drama by past students of the school. The team in this production was joined by some students of New Amsterdam Multilateral School.
Thief From Thief was also a feature play in the public production directed by McAlmont at Tutorial in another part of New Amsterdam. The programme there also had another drama, Anansi’s Way by Paloma Mohamed, along with dance and other short pieces of improvisations. Contributing to this programme were students also from New Amsterdam Multilateral and Bygeval Secondary.
The audience in the ancient capital had a surfeit of choices, with three public productions within the space of a month, and that was quite fitting, given the history and past wealth of the municipality. This, after all, is the native city of Edgar Mittelholzer, Sir Wilson Harris, J W Chinapen and other foremost literary giants. A third performance was staged at Berbice High under the leadership of their drama teacher Shenellie Kendall. They staged two plays by Mohamed: Anansi’s Way and Cupuchabra.
Port Mourant High School, like BEI, is very new in the study of drama. Led by drama teacher Rayel Franklin, they staged a play devised by the students with Franklin’s guidance – a tragedy based on the contrasting cultural forms of the wake and of Mashramani.
So Berbice led the way, and it is hoped that the national capital with its command of the greater number of schools and an increasing number of them offering drama at CSEC, will follow. That is apart from St Joseph High, which had a variety production in collaboration with a new drama company – Lloyd and De Arts, also referred to as L’Arts.
In this case, the students of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination class studying Business Management in the Performing Arts were called upon to manage a production. They devised a launching, the formal inauguration of the company, which has been active for at least 3 years, but had not been formally launched. The director of this company is also the drama teacher at St Joseph, who allowed the students to benefit from the experience of working with live theatre in the course of their studies.
This, in a small way, advanced the intended outreach and the development of community theatre. Both the students of the school’s drama classes and L’Arts have worked together before on public shows, but they have done this within the conventional theatre, performing at both the National Cultural Centre and the Theatre Guild Playhouse. This time they have advanced the progress by staging a show at the school.
Outside of the city, a school that has been very vibrant in theatre and the arts took another bold step forward with the staging of a public production within the community of West Demerara. The teacher there, Taneka Caldeira, is a member of the National Drama Company and quite active on stage in both dance and drama. She introduced the Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC) Theatre Arts very early in West Demerara as well as at St Rose’s High.
Community theatre was considerably advanced with the school’s public performance. The Theatre Arts students staged two new dramas: one written by Caldeira focusing on the story-telling tradition and on the myth of the ‘Ol Higue’; the other created by the students to dramatise the culture and tradition of the spiritualist revivalist church along with the practice of obeah. They dramatised a plot in which the two confronted each other.
As the West Demerara community turned up to see students who belong to their families perform, they learnt much about theatre and its value. Both short plays taught them the deviousness of the human character, the workings of envy, malice and rivalry. But they also saw something of the inherited compulsion driving the spirit of the Ol Higue within a dramatic framework of irony in a domestic drama.
The New Amsterdam population received similar instruction reaching them through a high degree of entertainment. BEI’s version of Thief From Thief was very high-spirited bringing out the farce with its serving of humour. It is a Grenadian one-act play belonging to the backyard tradition of plays, to a large extent comic sketches like this one. The other feature play was to a very large extent a dance drama, which, particularly because of the newness of drama in that school, was quite significant. But Thomas’s dance experience has been very influential.
Dance was also a factor in the Tutorial production with the similar influence of McAlmont. The class there is also doing the dance option at CSEC and created choreographies which were used on the programme. It was, additionally, obvious how the drama on stage was revealing to the audience who, perhaps for the first time, in addition to studies of human nature, had an opportunity to understand what their students’ study of drama was all about.
What happened at Berbice High and at Port Mourant very significantly advanced the effect and impact of the outreach programme of NSTAD and of the National Drama Festival. The teachers there, Kendall and Franklyn, were students in the Summer Workshops held at NSTAD and run by the National Drama Company.
Through this series of annual workshops and in other forms of outreach, preparation for the NDF is undertaken. The expectation is that the teachers who attend the workshops will produce theatre in their respective communities for entry into the NDF. These plays would then be performed at venues within their communities for the benefit of the potential audiences there. This should build theatre at new and unconventional venues while ideally increasing interest in theatre among all sections of the population. It will also make theatre available and accessible throughout various regions around the country.
Other factors are contiguous. There is growing interest in drama in secondary schools driven by the CXC programmes, but also by the creation of graduates out of NSTAD, many of whom have been starting drama programmes in the schools for the CXC exams. With the particular example of Port Mourant, the impact of the summer workshops is very much in evidence, as the subject has been introduced on the Corentyne.
The opening up of this theatre in the communities has been rapid over the past two years. The idea is that it will continue, and theatre will become a norm, reaching the population in the several corners of the country.
