Although Guyana has made significant advancements in drama and theatre, in some areas there has been a decline, and the country’s position in a Caribbean and international context is less than favourable.
Local drama, dramatists and players are just as good as their counterparts in other parts of the Caribbean, in a few cases they are even superior. That is certainly the case in comparison with many territories or islands, particularly some parts of the Eastern Caribbean, where theatre is not developed.
Yet, in other respects, in areas where it matters most, Guyana lags behind the region and the world. The state of the art is not homogenous across the Caribbean. Jamaica is the powerhouse on all fronts, but the group of advanced territories also includes Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. St Lucia has the advantage of a history of interest and activities, considerably boosted by being the home of the Walcott brothers (Derek and Roderick), and other leading personalities like Kendell Hyppolite and Joh Robert Lee. Cayman Islands has a historic cultural centre, and the work of Dave Martins in the past, and now of Henry Mootoo (incidentally, both Guyanese).
If one steps out of the Anglophone region, Cuba looms large, while Haiti is enviable in the depth of cultural tradition but not in technology. Suriname’s not dissimilar wealth of cultural depth gives it great potential, and French Guyana benefits technically from its place as a territory of France. The wealth of neither the French nor the Dutch, however, has made any commanding impact on Saint Martin/Sint Maarten.
So where is Guyana in relation to this? The history of development has been uneven. There is a strong and influential colonial history. If we set aside indigenous and folk theatre and drama of the oral traditions, which are not being treated here, the first activities on the formal western stage were colonial. Britain as a coloniser, left its mark on the stage. The theatre through to the 19th century was dominated by visiting English and American companies. Even long after those evaporated the theatre was performed by and for the white colonial class and their descendants.
This was as important in British Guiana (BG) as it was in the other more developed West Indian islands of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. The heritage was the growth of amateur theatre groups which drove drama in all the (former) colonies. The Theatre Guild was BG’s equivalent. Guyana was even able to export talent to the rest of the region after the Theatre Guild developed as an informal training ground.
However, political, economic and social development became uneven and Guyana, while being among the four more developed countries, trailed its colleagues as a regional power and diminished severely as an economic one. Concurrently, it became the last place where advancements in theatre reached. Top level training, international exposure, expertise, techniques, stage technology, and the concomitant excellence of standards that were advancing internationally were established in the other territories long before they were heard of in Guyana. Some of them did not reach there at all.
As a consequence of the devastating economic decline in and after the 1970s, Guyana found itself unable to pay for the technical necessities. The brain drain included dancers, directors, actors, designers and playwrights.
What is the current situation? There have been gains and areas of ascendancy as previously mentioned but areas are deficient. Several technical areas are easily noticeable. Both of the leading theatre houses in the country – the National Cultural Centre (NCC) and the Theatre Guild Playhouse – broke down and never recovered. At the Theatre Guild the curtains literally fell, taking most of the building with them. It was resurrected, Phoenix-like, through the efforts of a group of individuals initiated and mobilised by David de Caires, and funds donated by several companies and individuals just in time for Carifesta in 2008. (No attempt is being made here to identify by name all those who worked and contributed; that is not the purpose of the piece.)
The NCC was for decades the largest, most consummate theatre house in the Caribbean since its construction in 1972. The National Academy of the Performing Arts (NAPA) built in Trinidad in 2010 has since usurped that distinction. But the arrival of NAPA only served to underline what was wrong in Guyana. The NCC still has the largest auditorium; no other theatre in the region seats 2,000. There were dozens of technical things wrong with NAPA, but it is of modern design and (flawed as it is) is state-of-the-art. The NCC never had the best equipment and was never properly maintained as a physical plant – as a theatre.
The deficiencies at the NCC reflect the deficiencies in Guyanese theatre. These are mainly in lighting, sound, stage management technology, make-up and technical expertise. Many times, new equipment was purchased and installed in the NCC for lighting and sound, but this confronted another problem – the absence of persons properly trained to use it. The new installations in the Theatre Guild Playhouse have now suffered depreciation and cannot support the demands of a fairly uncomplicated production.
In these areas, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and French Guiana far outstrip Guyana. Commensurate with this is the lack of training and expertise in Guyana. The new National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD) is a high-flier in a few areas but is yet too new and ill-equipped to offer a technical programme in lighting, make-up or in sound. There are no specialised options in these disciplines. Further, most of the persons who operate as lighting or sound technicians in Guyana are untrained or lack a background or an interest in theatre. The exceptions are two members of staff – one is a set builder, the other a dancer and associate member of the National Drama Company (NDC). That is not the case in Jamaica, Trinidad or Barbados.
Guyana needs the likes of a Franklin St Juste, legendary master of the art and the science in Jamaica. Back-stage personnel found in Trinidad and Barbados are either professionally trained or are amateurs with deep and lengthy experience on stage. That background has given them on-the-job training which is supported by an interest in theatre and that makes a difference.
A knowledge of theatre or drama and an interest in it, or a desire to learn it, are very important if one is working as a stage technician. One needs an understanding of rehearsals and of the niceties of performance. One needs the ability to interpret a script or of what is effective in lighting a scene. One cannot simply be a switch turner, trying to follow a cue to cut, fade or gently increase the sound under a voice without an appreciation of the effect one is intended to create.
Even if we suspend discussion of weaknesses in back-stage technology, the breakdown in lighting and in sound will be obvious to the least knowledgeable member of the audience. This difference is worth noting. There is a vast and obvious improvement in the quality of both sound and lighting when Naya Zamana performs at the NCC. That is because the director Vindhya Persaud brings in privately contracted equipment and technicians to enhance what the NCC’s physical plant offers. This has proven to be a boost in the clean technical quality of the production.
A producer who rents the NCC for a production ought not to be forced to bring in private technology to get a good quality performance. All producers and all audiences who pay to see drama should not have to suffer from the frequent flaws and technical break-down in the NCC. And this includes the air conditioning.
Theatre is a part of national cultural life and governments must invest in the theatre. The necessity to put money into the arts will be the subject of another discussion. But for the moment, the government must be prepared to fund repairs and replacements to provide technical quality to support theatre. One of the great advantages that other countries have over Guyana is the much better quality in technical support. Guyanese marvel at that when they see a play in one of these countries. It undermines their attitudes to theatre in their own country and their appreciation of local groups on the Guyanese stage. They do not expect to see anything good and always believe the foreign product is superior.
This leads as well to theoretical questions. Styles of drama, the avant-garde, and excursions into the experimental theatre artistry might be well known in Jamaica (even there, as on Broadway, it is not commonplace in the commercial theatre, where producers still go for the popular and the box office). But these modernist and post-modernist forms are rare or hardly seen in Guyana. Here, the country still lags behind, and these more advanced forms are basically only seen in what comes out of the NSTAD, which includes the plays of the NDC, because they have studied them.
The state of these arts in Guyana will never improve if they depend on rundown or nonfunctioning equipment. Directors will not venture beyond the facile and the ordinary if the technical support is not readily available. They cannot try new techniques if they lack outside exposure or have never seen them on stage. The NSTAD struggles to find qualified lecturers in different fields, and training is another of these difficult areas.
There is very little self-belief at the national level and public confidence in local theatre is thin. It becomes difficult for the population to accept that Guyana could possibly be on par, let alone ahead of the Caribbean in any area when the ways in which it is deficient are visible or perceived. The government itself needs to have that belief in the theatre, in its worth and potential, and it must be prepared to provide more funding for development, starting with scholarships for graduate training, which at the moment do not exist, and going the route to the acquisition of up-to-date equipment and technical support for the National Cultural Centre.
