We have on previous occasions discussed the foundations, history and development of Guyanese literature in these pages. The last time it was in the context of independence. Those accounts have, for the most part, excluded drama, which is part of literature and is studied along with it, but frequently treated separately. This is based on the real existence of drama as another discipline with its peculiar characteristics and exclusive history; that is, drama as theatre. Dramatic literature was written to be performed and is just as often looked at as theatre – as performance. This intervention is to briefly relate the development of Guyanese drama to the early epochs of national literature and show its particular evolution and relation to wider West Indian theatre.
Literature is divided into Pre-Columbian, Colonial, Modern, the period of Imitation, the Age of Nationalism; Pre-Independence and Post-Independence eras. Drama may fit into these broad areas: Pre-Columbian, Colonial, Modern, the rise of Local Theatre, Professional, and Contemporary Guyanese Stage.
Just as it is for the wider Caribbean, there is very little to indicate the state of theatrical enactments in prehistoric times and at the time of the arrival of Europeans in the Guianas. Any suggestions come from close analysis of oral literature and spiritual beliefs recorded during the colonial era, but it may be assumed to be linked to spiritual practices and performances related to mythology and story-telling traditions. Twentieth century researchers such as Audrey Butt Colson refer to very interesting probabilities in her accounts of the healing theatrics of the shaman or piaiman in traditional Amerindian culture in British Guiana. Those remaining vestiges observed by Butt Colson in the 1950s suggest that prehistoric performances related to survival and spiritual beliefs. At the same time, much more is known about the Mexican and Central American regions.
Volumes have been recorded relating to the lengthy colonial period from the late sixteenth century to the beginning of the Modern period around 1931. During that time, too, oral literature was generated and theatre evolved during slavery and indentureship. For theatre of western origin, the major activity on the mainstream stage was performed by visiting professional companies from North America and Britain on various tours over an extended period through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The bulk of these tours took place in Jamaica, but the most famous of those visitors would occasionally travel to British Guiana, including the American Company of Comedians, who, among others, were known to perform in the colony. These were British and American plays performed for the plantocracy and ruling classes, although, despite the segregated audienceship, the performances were witnessed by the enslaved, who learned and memorised much of what they saw. It took a very long time for any formal mainstream local theatre to emerge from this, but the visiting companies were often joined on stage by performances by ‘gentlemen amateurs’, who were local white residents.
Additionally, historian Joel Benjamin, writing in Kyk-Over-Al, provides accounts of theatre houses, including the Theatres Royal (there were more than one bearing that name), the Assembly Rooms and the Royal Agricultural and Cultural Society (RACS) building among performance venues and activities. The RACS was an active centre for scientific and artistic activities, including literature, the arts, publications and exhibitions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was an expatriate theatre presenting English and American plays for the expatriate and local white population. In spite of a culturally enabling environment, no local plays were generated. The existence of Dutch plays reflecting contact with a Guianese environment under slavery is known, but there is no history of their performance, or the presentation of other European plays on stage in Guyana.
This did not happen until the arrival of the Portuguese indentured immigrants in the nineteenth century. Mary Noel Menezes published accounts of the theatrical and performance activities among the indentured servants from Madeira and their descendants in the colony. They had a keenness for music and established a history of performances and plays on stage. Drama was created that reflected their life on both sides of the Atlantic. The plays, however, despite their importance to the history of Guyanese drama, are very little known and never performed, except by the University of Guyana (UG) in the late 1980s. One of the Portuguese plays was dramatised for radio by UG lecturer John Rollins using drama students of the university.
In this colonial period also, most of the theatre consisting of and leading into the traditional enactments and folk performances of Guyana developed and emerged. Running parallel to the work on the formal mainstream stage, was the theatre of the folk generated among the enslaved, the former enslaved after emancipation, the indentured labourers and their descendants. Many of these theatrical enactments were brought from the African continent and some of them survived the Middle Passage. Some experienced change and adaptation in the Guyanese environment and continued to be practised during slavery. Others evolved in Guyana arising from the slave society, while others had their evolution in the post-emancipation society. To add to those, were those enactments that made the long journey on the ships from India during indentureship and were similarly modified in the Guyanese environment. Others, too, evolved in Guyana after the immigrants arrived.
Several of these were religious, and the performances expressed spiritual beliefs, while others were entirely secular. It is to be noted, however, that most of the examples of these have faded and many have disappeared. At this point, a few may be mentioned, such as the masquerade tradition, which has or had similarities in other countries across the Caribbean. The main performance event is the street theatre known as masquerade in Guyana, and called both jonkonnu and masquerade in Jamaica. This was the grandest and most elaborate at its heights in Jamaica in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of spiritual roots and resembling the Kalabari masquerade from south-eastern Nigeria. There were, however, many mixtures and associations in the West Indies which gave rise to the shape of the traditions in Guyana and Jamaica, and the very different enactment similarly called junkanoo in the Bahamas. The Guyanese masquerade lost its religious associations in the twentieth century and remains as a mere remnant in the twenty-first.
Just to mention other examples of those based on religion, there are spiritual practices such as the kumfa (cumfa), steeped in ancestor worship, and the kali mai, with its blend of Hinduism among the Madrasi of Indian descent. Other theatrical practices include the Muslim Tadja, street masquerade now extinct in Guyana but much continued under the name Hosay in Trinidad. By far the most vibrant of the survivors is the Hindu traditional theatre of Ram-lila (Ramleela), flourishing in Trinidad but defunct in Guyana. The idea here, however, is just to give an idea of the types of folk theatre that emerged, such as the non-religious practice of Kwe Kwe (Queh-Queh) in Guyana, which is still not entirely free from religious roots. This has its high point as a pre-marriage ritual celebration that bears close resemblance to the Matikoor or Dig Dutty, a wedding ritual of Hindu derivation. Much theatre is also associated with such festivals as the Hindu Phagwah or Holi, originally imported from India.
Basically, what is being highlighted is that the greater part of the theatre of the folk in Guyana evolved during slavery and indentureship in the Colonial era. Many parts of this theatre went forward to affect the Guyanese stage that developed in the Modern period. Another factor of this theatre is the great influence exerted on it from the Europeans. The enslaved, for example, had access to the expatriate theatre and brought over several elements from it into their theatrical enactments, both secular and religious. Also to be thoroughly studied is the influence of this theatre on what developed in the later period of Modern Guyanese theatre.
This is one of the periods that can be specifically dated and its main contributors identified. The Modern period, initiated by the work of N E (Norman Eustace) Cameron in 1931, is the next era of development to be analysed.
