Arts on Sunday

Many records exist of colonial and pre-independence Guianese poetry, but they are in different forms and different types of resources, and for the main part one has to seek them out in various places. 

The 6th Caribbean Writers’ Residential Workshop sponsored by The Cropper Foundation in Trinidad recently circulated invitations to new writers to send in applications for places in their 2010 workshop, and Poui, the Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing recently launched its latest issue, Volume 10, in Barbados.

As this column noted last Sunday, despite including nations which earlier had staunchly championed the cause of poor countries, the G20 since leading the coordination of international efforts to tackle the global crisis has turned out to be like the G7 before it, a serial violator of its pledges to help poor countries.

The stage performance of Baghban (The Caretaker) directed by Neaz Subhan in the name of the Indian Arrival Committee is the latest attempt in a long endeavour by Subhan to create/promote Indian drama in Guyana. 

In recent years Jamaican plays have been extraordinarily popular in Guyana and whenever any of the companies from that country are booked on tours to Georgetown they are in high demand. 

This week, Arts on Sunday revisits the comparative literature of Guyana and Brazil as relations between the two South American neighbours deepen and the University of Guyana renews its study of Portuguese.

Al Creighton’s Arts On Sunday The National Dance Company (NDC) of Guyana celebrated the achievement of yet another milestone with the performance of its 2009 major dance production titled Pearl .

We have on previous occasions commented upon the nature of national traditional festivals in the Caribbean and the way they respond to the cultural environments in which they exist.

Arts On Sunday There is a particular social problem that has been developing over the past decade and has become a source of great concern, specifically to the Hindu community of Alexander Village on the south-western edge of Georgetown.

Arts On Sunday How important are programmes to the theatre?  Programmes in this context refer not to the proceedings themselves, that is, what is being performed, but those little documents that are usually handed out (or sold) at the door. 

Dramatic and other theatrical productions in Guyana have always had little intermittent ‘seasons’ during which there is a varied menu of different offerings in between long periods of inactivity. 

Arts On Sunday Critic, poet and scholar Eddie Baugh observed in 1971 that Caribbean poetry had unquestionably established itself.  

Among the most memorable acts in recent and contemporary Caribbean theatre is a theatrical innovation out of Guyana known as Dem Two. 

Arts On Sunday In addition to the re-introduction of the Edgar Mittelholzer Lectures with a presentation on distinguished artist and scholar Denis Williams, there were two recent events of note which highlighted the work and contributions to academic and cultural enlightenment of two more scholars. 

Arts On Sunday AJ Seymour started the prestigious Edgar Mittelholzer Lecture Series in 1976 with a narrative of how he received a visit from the ghost of Mittelholzer which gave him much insight into the man and his work. 

Arts On Sunday We have already made reference to the fading away or the dilution of African culture in Guyana and the Caribbean. 

Arts On Sunday In spite of the many erosions, intrusions, dilutions, discouragement and disappearance, contemporary Caribbean societies can celebrate several African cultural forms and social traditions. 

Arts On Sunday However, of major importance is what remains in the communities, the culture and the minds of the people. 

Arts On Sunday The troubled Trinidadian poet Eric Roache was seriously tormented by the gathering dark clouds of Black Power in 1970 and the new emerging poets in the Caribbean “wallowing in the murky waters of race and slavery” (Roache killed himself in 1974). 

Arts on Sunday (Continued from last week) Michael Jackson rocketed into a celebrity kingship and deified empire as an impressionable youth.