Once upon a time drama and theatre in Guyana were exclusive to the Theatre Guild and vice versa. So dominant was that institution and its playhouse that it was indivisible from the formal mainstream conventional Guyanese stage. Of course, folk theatre, traditional enactments and working class entertainment such as vaudeville continued separately and elsewhere. That dominance and concentration ended in 1981 with the opening up of commercial or professional theatre and the National Cultural Centre. Investigating the history of many things, therefore, would lead right to the Theatre Guild, whose “Golden Age” glistered between 1957 and 1981.
This includes drama festivals, concerning which, the poor state of records and archives make it difficult to research and we depend on the memories of a few personalities. But even the enthusiastic recall and the personal possessions of photographs and clippings by playwright, director, actor and journalist Francis Quamina Farrier cannot answer all the questions.
