“I am not special,” says Nickose Layne. “I am just me, I work harder for the things and if I could do it other people can do it too.”
His disclaimer aside, Layne, currently a Theatre Arts major at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, has not gone unnoticed as his talents have resulted in him being one of six students and possibly the first Guyanese selected to direct a play for the Annual Student Theatre production series.
Every year, the UWI Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) selects six university students who have performed exceptionally during their first two years at the university to direct plays for ‘The New Directors Forum: A Festival of Plays,’ which is part of the Annual Student theatre production. Over the course of three months, each student is expected to work rigorously and tirelessly to direct and organise these productions.
Layne will be directing Clinton Duncan’s “Final Chapter,” at a staging to be held on November 23rd. In an interview, Layne says he was told by staff of the DFCA that he may be the first Guyanese to be selected to direct a play for the festival. Layne said the last time he spoke with them they said they couldn’t find any Guyanese on record and they would like to believe that he is the first.
If he is, Layne says it would be “amazing” due to the fact that he is patriotic. “I wear Guyana on everything. On my chest, on my back. So, it feels amazing,” the enthusiastic Layne said, while adding that he feels a tremendous amount of responsibility to make his country proud. “It is a lot of pressure to just be doing this course but it’s exciting,” he notes.
The play, he says, is about a young woman named Keisha, who gets a job at a library and soon finds out that the books in the library detail the lives of people she knows. Keisha encounters issues with the people around her and tries to change their attributes by rewriting their stories in the books. However, those changes have consequences.
Although Layne was given three months to work on the staging, he revealed that he didn’t start right away because he was working on his first professional production in Trinidad from August to September. The show he was working on, he says, was held on the last week of September so while his classmates had already begun their work, he had to attend rehearsals, which was every day and only began rehearsals for his own project a week after the production ended.
One of his main challenges so far, he says, is raising funds for his production. “Directing a play is not cheap especially when you want do it how I want to do it which is all out,” he notes.
He also says although the process has been tiring, it has also been “interesting” trying to get actors who would commit to the play considering the fact that it’s a school production and they can’t afford to pay them. He says although some professional actors have asked to be in the play, they leave after a while for paid work. ”I understand that but its challenging,” he notes.
‘Take the risk’
Before Layne discovered his passion for directing, he was involved in theatre and dramatic arts as an actor. His acting career began when he was in nursery school and he continued throughout primary and secondary schools. It was during his secondary school years that he discovered his passion for directing. He said the task of directing school plays in secondary school usually fell to him or his best friend. “It started from there and I knew that I liked it but I never took it seriously and I never thought that I would end up studying it after school,” he explains.
After leaving high school, he enrolled at the School of the Nations, which was at the time located opposite the Theatre Guild and after classes he would attend the workshops there. A few years later, he said, he started acting at the Theatre Guild and he later joined the National Drama Company, where he directed his first play for the National Drama Festival. He won the Best Director award in the Junior Category two years in a row.
He later enrolled at the University of Guyana, where he got a diploma in marketing. After graduating, his life was filled with theatre and he no longer felt like furthering his studies and studying theater arts was far from his line of sight.
However, his thinking began to change in 2015 when he visited Trinidad for a few months to expand his knowledge about theatre. “I felt like I knew some things but I knew that there was an entire world out there filled with theater conversations and I want to have expert impact and I felt that one of the best ways to get expert impact is to learn,” he said.
It was while he was there reviewing and auditioning for plays that his friends encouraged him to study theatre. “One of my friends, who was studying at UWI tried to convince me and I was like, ‘Study theatre? I don’t think so.’”
Layne recalls that he didn’t think it was a viable option and he refused to even think about it at that time. However, a trip to the 2016 Olympics, held in Brazil, changed his mind. “When I was there I was among like-minded people who liked travelling and who wanted to make the world a better place and we had similar passions,” he says. His time with those people changed his mind about studying and a couple months later, Layne applied to UWI. He was informed that he had gotten through the day before the first semester started and has since enjoyed every bit of university life.
Layne says being selected to direct a play for the festival validates him and his course of study. He notes that a majority of persons do not think he made the right decision when he made the choice to study theatre arts. “Even if I didn’t get the opportunity [to direct a play for the festival], I would have still known that my decision was right but this serves as a reminder that I am making the right decision. It reminds me that if I really want it, I can do it and other theatre students can make it too,” he adds.
He now hopes his success can inspire other Guyanese, especially those in the creative and cultural industry, to “take the risk, jump on it and follow their passion.”