A play written by noted playwright Francis Quamina Farrier will kick-start this year’s events organised by the Guyana Cultural Association (GCA) to celebrate Carifesta in Brooklyn, New York as well as in Guyana, a press release from the group said.
According to the release the hilarious drama, What You Don’t Know Could Kill You, will thrill audiences on August 9 and 10, at Mayer Levin Performing Arts School, as part of the GCA’s 2008 calendar of events. The release stated that the play will bring together a celebrity cast of actors including Claude Leandro, Juliet Emanuel, Verna Walcott-White, Hilton Hemerding, Cyril Brown, and George Dahari.
The play is produced and directed by acclaimed stage actor, Maurice Braithwaite, and the audiences are expected to be “sucked into the emotional life of a single woman who wants to have a baby, have a career, and have it all, and the length she will go to, to succeed.”
The GCA celebrations are being held under the theme, ‘Caribbean People in Harmony Through Culture Celebrating Carifesta X.’ The association, which just handed out the Wordsworth McAndrew award to thirteen outstanding Guyanese professionals and cultural enablers at its recent awards gala in Brooklyn, will continue its events in Guyana with a symposium, scheduled for the International Convention Centre at Liliendaal on the East Coast Demerara.
Headed by Dr Vibert Cambridge, the symposium is expected to bring together a cross-section of Caribbean personalities to discuss folk, identity, and national cohesiveness, inspired by the life and works of the late folklorist Wordsworth McAndrew.
‘Creole Mehcheh Mehcheh – a Festival of Folk Games and Toys,’ will take centre stage at the Carifesta Sports Complex in Georgetown, to highlight a variety of folk games, folk toys, folk dances and folk food in a fairground, amusement setting. The beating of a variety of cultural drums of Guyana, will “climax this event,” the release said.
The GCA will then continue the calendar of events in New York, with ‘Come to My Kwe-Kwe Night,’ scheduled to take place on the night of August 29.
Brides are invited to enter the Kwe-Kwe Honeymoon competition at the event’s location, ‘Under de Tent’ at Restoration Plaza, located at 1360 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.
A colourful blend of live Caribbean music, pageantry, dance, drama and poetry, in addition to tasty Guyanese cuisine, will end the Carifesta X Folk Festival celebrations, with a Festival Family Fun Day, to be held on the grounds of Meyer Levin School in Brooklyn for the Labour Day weekend.