Among the high points of the recent Guyana Prize Literary Festival, resurrected last February, was the performance of the play Sauda by Guyanese playwright Mosa Telford, directed by Ayanna Waddell and staged by the National Drama Company at the Cultural Centre. It was outstanding for a number of reasons. These include the actual realisation on stage of one of the plays that have won the Guyana Prize for Drama; the context in which the play was produced; the rare occurrence of two top-flight dramatic productions in the short time between February and April; and the level of excellence in the theatre exhibited.
Sauda was presented in February, 2023, and by April, 2023, the plays Duenne and The Tramping Man were offered to the public. It is rare in Guyana to have two productions of this calibre seen with such frequency, and what is more, remarkable that two of the plays were past Guyana Prize winners. Those plays are not often seen on stage and this was a significant coincidence. Duenne and Tramping Man were University of Guyana productions done in partnership with The Theatre Guild; Sauda may be placed in a very special context.
