Al Creighton

While there has been a kind of cooling off in the offer of plays on the popular commercial market, there has been a stepping up of activity on the Guyanese stage.

by Alim Hosein   The National Gallery of Art, in collaboration with the University of Guyana, the Guyana National Museum and the St Joseph Mercy Hospital will mount a special exhibition in celebration of Guyana’s 50th Anniversary of Independence.

2016 is already a very important year for anniversaries. For the nation of the Republic of Guyana it is most significant because it is the country’s 50th year since Independence and Golden Jubilee celebrations dominate its cultural agenda.

April 23, 2016 is an extremely important anniversary on the world literary calendar.

The National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD) staged Performance 5: Ritual at the National Cultural Centre last week Sunday night, in which it showed off the work of its students.

The Walt Disney musical Aladdin Jr was very recently performed in Guyana by the Georgetown International Academy.

The Guyanese play For Better For Worse by Leon Saul returned after a very long time to performance at the National Cultural Centre two weeks ago.

Guyana has just witnessed one of the rare wonders of its composition as a multicultural society.

This week in Guyana there is going to be the most intense activity in spoken word poetry, performance poetry, rap and hip-hop than there has ever been.

[Frank Birbalsingh, Guyana: History and Litera-ture, United Kingdom: Hansib, 2016. 324p.

There is a private collective of workers known as the Main Street Art Group who held a ‘grand art exhibition’ at the Pegasus Hotel in mid-February titled ‘Jubilee Art’.

One of the leading plays in the 2015 National Drama Festival (NDF) was the new comedy Crack Jokes written and directed by a national Stand-Up Comedy Queen Odessa Primus.

The Republic of Guyana has the unique privilege among Caribbean Caricom nations of being able to celebrate two national days each year – Republic Day which is celebrated carnival style on February 23, and Independence Day celebrated in various other ways on May 26.

The release last week of the new film The Ole Higue by Ssignal Productions refocused the camera on Guyana’s attempts to build a film industry and on recent attention paid to the recognition and development of cultural industries.

New Year’s Day In the midst of firecrackers goes the old year, and the spring wind has wafted warm breath to the Tusu wine.

The public theatre today is dominated by humour. Comic performance is by far the most popular and commercial theatre is the most viable.

The recent rediscovery of a collection of short stories by Commonwealth writers first published in 1971 has given rise to many pertinent thoughts about the literature and the significance of the selection highlighted at that time.

VIII Enough, Catullus, of this silly whining; What you can see is lost, write off as lost.

Although the Christmas season has ended in Christendom, it makes such an impact, and is so influential in other parts of the world that it continues in a subterranean sense, to be a subject of interest.

The Little Vagabond Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold; But the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm.