The Ministry of Culture in collaboration with Digicel launched the week-long National Drama Festival yesterday.
The festival, which will start on May 30 and close on June 5, is to be added to the national calendar of events.
Coordinator Godfrey Naughton said it caters for all groups of dramatists countrywide. Sixteen plays will be staged, including a guest play from Jamaica, titled “Over me dead body.” Naughton said so far 20 plays have been submitted, all written by Guyanese, which will be performed by youth groups coming from as far as Mahdia, Buxton, Berbice, Essequibo Coast and Vergenoegen. Organisers hope to see a reflection of the true Guyanese culture in the plays, he added. “We hope to see a lot of who we are as Guyanese, where we’re from and where we’re going through this festival,” he said.
A panel of five judges will judge the plays at the Lichas Hall in Linden, the New Amsterdam Multilateral School in Berbice, and the Theatre Guild Playhouse and the National Cultural Centre in Georgetown, between May 14 and May 22. After this phase is completed, groups will participate at the one-week finals.
Digicel’s Head of Marketing Jacqueline James said the company was thrilled to be participating in the venture. She said Digicel aims to develop young people in the country and that drama is a wonderful way of doing this. In terms of the company’s contribution, James said over $1M will be given in prizes, which includes the winning group being afforded the opportunity to perform in Jamaica.
She also said she hopes the partnership continues in the years to come.
Ron Robinson, a member of the technical team, said it is striving to ensure that the groups attain a certain quality and standard for a national drama festival. He noted that although some of the groups may be inexperienced, they have the potential to better themselves and join a good production and as such will be given the necessary guidance. “We are basically being big brothers to the various groups to help them to raise their standards which they themselves may not realise they can do,” Robinson said.
In addition, Minister of Culture Dr Frank Anthony noted that this is the first time that a National Drama Festival is being held. He said over the past several months two sets of people had been engaged; a policy steering committee and a technical committee. According to Anthony, the two groups comprised the best minds in drama and theatre in the country, with some of them boasting over 30 years of experience. He also said that the intention is to make this festival the special feature in Guyana’s theatre calendar, where over the year playwrights will write scripts which they will showcase during the one-week fiesta.
Anthony also spoke of the benefits this festival may have to offer, saying, “We envisage that in the near future that perhaps other countries might be coming here, looking at our plays, looking at our displays, wanting some of our people to collaborate and go abroad to perform and things like that.” The Jamaica team is also expected to host a workshop for participants to share and exchange technical and other ideas.
“In addition to this festival, what we are also working on is to set up a theatre arts school, which will be based at the Cultural Centre, so we see this as a logical sequence in what we are doing,” Anthony said. He also announced that the festival will be an annual event and it would be hosted every May.
