A rather special and different type of dramatic production was held at the National Cultural Centre last Sunday. This was a programme titled The Performance 11 – Ancient Secrets: A Night of Ritualistic Plays, Dance and Music, produced by the Class of 2019, National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD). This has to be acknowledged as an important production in the overall scheme of the performing arts in Guyana.
It was a rich programme with three short plays and a mime along with a dance and music by the NSTAD students, with Spoken Word Poetry by the National Drama Company. It was entirely the work of the students with guidance and assistance from some NSTAD lecturers and National Drama Company (NDC) members.
The plays were Yule written by Amaraydha Kartick and directed by Nathaniel Powers; Writings from the Past written by Hannah Singh and directed by Dillon Mohamed; and Bush Spirit written by Kyle Solomon, directed by Randy Fredericks. The music performances included both vocal and instrumental (violin, guitar and piano), and were by Dillon Mohamed, Keane Bobb, Alanna Gittens, Akeem and Randy Fredericks. They did a range of selections which included the classical and the popular. The mime was an abstract piece touching a theme of care/concern for humanity.
The NDC members performed prominent spoken word pieces. Mark Luke-Edwards did “Mother-land”, which has been performed at Carifesta and is known for its nationalistic and patriotic appeal. The other piece by Keon Heywood was also taken to Carifesta. It was “Green is the Way to Go,” itself nationalistic, and promoting environmental conservation and the green economy.
The production was of special importance because of its role in national theatre, particularly in training in the performing arts. It demonstrated what is being studied by the students at drama school and gave an insight into what the theatre they can produce will look like. The drama school is interested in providing training and exposure to new and innovative forms of theatre and gives annual public exhibitions of what is being learnt. The audience could see what is currently being studied. Moreover, it shows the state of theatre in Guyana, or rather, what can be achieved on the local stage, significantly, demonstrated by virtual interns of the stage. The theatre on show was not the commercial variety that is popularly performed, and so it was important for the audience to be exposed to it, since it was alternative theatre.
The NSTAD was established to offer formal training and certification in drama and has been doing so up to the level of a Diploma. It is a part of the larger institution – the Institute of Creative Arts (ICA) which brings together: the National School of Dance, the Burrowes School of Art, the National School of Music, and the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama, which is the newest addition. It is responsible for the National Drama Festival as well as other annual events including World Poetry Day, World Story-telling Day and the National Poetry Slam.
The students’ work, a series of annual productions known as “The Performance”, is a part of the formal academic programme. Students have to manage and perform two public productions per year. They have to administer them, using skills they learn in classes in Stage Management, Production, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. In performing, they are called upon to put into practice what they learn in acting, voice, costuming, make-up, props and set design, and even in dance and music. The production is like a final examination, as it comes at the end of a semester, tests what they have learned and is graded by the examiners.
They also have to develop the material that they perform and do so in some of the classes. These include the development of skills in the Acting course, in Voice, Stage Management and an Introduction to Elements of Stage-Craft, such as costuming and make-up.
“The Performance 11” was called “Ancient Secrets” and was “A Night of Ritualistic Plays” because of the specific material used. The class studied the History of Theatre and Drama and were introduced to spiritual and religious rituals in the origins of theatre. The result was the development of ritualistic theatre. Out of this they learned a theatrical form that is both ancient and new, since it draws from ancient ritual and beliefs, as well as creates a theatre that is post-modernist (avant-garde). This was the case in this production.
All the plays fit the notion of ancient secrets. They brought tales from the past and dealt in spiritual beliefs, ritual, mysticisms, the supernatural and the fantastic. The short plays produced staged the work of not only the students of drama, but also those in Creative Writing. The NSTAD also offers a Diploma in Creative Writing, and those students study a course in the history of literature in English, which also covers the long historical periods and the different genres that evolved. Each of them was required to write a short ritualistic play for which they are graded. The plays written were then given to the drama students to perform.
Kartick’s drama – “Yule”, explores the ancient spiritual and secular beliefs that were involved in the Yule festival of Europe in the Middle Ages. These themselves were developments upon even older traditions. Yule was a part of the Old English (Anglo Saxon) and Scandinavian celebrations of the Christmas season, also known as Yuletide. Two of the traditional characters were the Yule Cat and the Yule Goat, both comic figures in this play.
Singh’s “Writings from the Past” explores the ancient cosmos of the Amerindians when they used drawings and paintings etched out on rocks – petroglyphs. A host of spirits and deities emerge out of the rainforest to appear to persons in the present time. The play is built on questions of belief and skepticism, while bringing to life lessons taught in school about Timehri and their functions.
The third short play was Solomon’s drama – Bush Spirit, a tale narrated by a chorus of spirits about an Englishman visiting the jungles of Guyana and expressing arrogance and disbelief about the ancient traditions of the people. He insults and tangles with a 1000-year-old bush spirit whose powers he refuses to acknowledge. He and his family are made to pay dearly for his contempt.
These were performed by those students already named in addition to Marika Yarris, Karen McAllister, Roslyn Fordyce-McKenzie, Sheneria Isaacs, Pearline Rose, Janella Adolphus, Felixanne Cockfield and Yetunde Hope.
One of the requirements that the creative writing students have to fulfil is that there should be a public reading of samples of their work. This performance helps to satisfy that as the drama they created is performed. At the same time the drama students help to meet their own requirements by performing what their colleagues wrote in ritualistic theatre. In this way they showed their understanding of the history they studied. The mime was developed in the Acting course.
The uses of dance were in abundance in the styles of performance which were all enhanced by choreographed movement. Ritual and ceremony were parts of it as they imitated early forms of theatre. Of equal importance to the forms demonstrated was music, which accompanied the dramatic presentations.
One theatrical element that was very outstanding in Ancient Secrets was spectacle; it dominated in the extremely rich costuming prevalent in all the pieces performed. These made much use of colour and highlighted colour schemes and colour symbolism. The clothing/costuming in many spiritual rituals is colour coded and the drama took full advantage of this to add power to the presentations.
Ritual and the spiritual as well as the spectacular were made alive through the prevalence of the use of masks. These were also factors of spectacle and lent meaning to the works. The design of the lighting also contributed to the stage-work, helping to give a spectacular performance.
Another idea behind the production was that the audience would also learn and gain from what they saw. Contemporary theatre includes the post-modernist techniques. In this production the way ritualistic theatre was employed was post-modernistic. This gave the audience a glimpse of styles and forms to which they are not often exposed. The common and prevalent type of drama seen on the local stage is realism – a theatre dominated by naturalism. It was therefore a fairly new experience that was offered by the NSTAD performance and audiences were struck by the difference in what they saw on stage.
For those reasons, then, The Performance 11 – Ancient Secrets: A Night of Ritualistic Plays, Dance and Music was an important and very special piece of stage work put on by the NSTAD. It contributed to current Guyanese theatre, added new plays to the corpus, was part of the training of students, and at the same time gave equal instruction and training to the audience.
