Well-known Guyanese writer and actor Dr. Michael Gilkes died yesterday morning in the United Kingdom (UK) following a brief illness.
Gilkes’ contribution to the artistic world in Guyana and the Caribbean is well known and many were singing his praise yesterday and lamenting the void his sudden death will leave. In fact, at the age of 86, Gilkes was still working on completing his labour of love, a film, titled ‘Maira and the Jaguar People,’ on the Makushi community of Surama in the North Rupununi.
“He was a true gentleman, good listener and a funny and loving father. He will be missed so much,” his daughter, Catherine Cameron, told Stabroek News.
She said her fondest memories of him related to his “amazing, creative energy and ideas.” She added that while he lived in the UK, where he also studied, the US, St. Lucia, Barbados and Bermuda, he loved his home country, Guyana.
Producer Gem Madhoo-Nascimento, who worked with Gilkes in recent years, recalled that they worked on the ‘Last of the Red Men,’ which was a one-man play that Gilkes wrote, directed and starred in. The play was put on at the Cara Lodge in 2006 and later they travelled to St. Lucia, Barbados and Trinidad, where it was also staged.
Over the years, she said, she learnt that Gilkes was the first director to use the outdoor facility aback of the Theatre Guild to have a production and he used persons like well-known folklorist Ken Corsbie.
“That was back in the sixties. I have learnt about it over the years. It was something impromptu,” Madhoo-Nascimento said.
He also directed the play ‘Couvade,’ which was staged for independence in 1993. The play concerned the indigenous peoples of Guyana and according to Madhoo-Nascimento the set that was prepared for it was so breathtaking that persons are still in awe whenever they see photographs of it. She recalled that actors like Richard Narine, Andre Subryan, Corsbie and Ron Robinson, among many others, were a part of the play. At the end of the staging, Gilkes invited the then newly minted President Cheddi Jagan, who was in the audience, to the stage and he placed an Amerindian’s chief headdress on his head.
Speaking about Gilkes’ last project, ‘Maira and the Jaguar People,’ for which Gilkes was the writer and director, Madhoo-Nascimento said it is still pending as while there is about ten hours of footage “sitting in Canada,” there has been no money to complete the project. Gilkes was slated to travel to Guyana in February to solicit funding but because elections were just around the corner she advised that he come at a later stage.
“It is not a cheap film. It was done with high quality equipment and professional people,” she said of the film, while expressing sadness that Gilkes would never see the end product as they would now have to attempt to complete it in his honour. Her company, Gems Theatre Productions, served as producer.
The cast consists mainly of the indigenous population of Surama and Madhoo-Nascimento recalled the months Gilkes spent with the children of the community, whom he trained to act in the movie. According to her, he made about six trips to the community and spent weeks at a time.
“It is very useful film. It showcases Guyana’s flora and fauna and the critical role the Amerindians play in our everyday life, their role in the rainforest,” Madhoo-Nascimento said, before adding that he loved the indigenous people whom he held dear to his heart.
‘His contribution’
Lecturer, poet, theatre director and literary critic Al Creighton shared that Gilkes was a member of the Theatre Guild in the late sixties, a time when the institution did a lot of training in the field and many of the persons who benefitted during that period went on to work in other countries. He was trained and was also part of training others at a time when Guyana produced a fair deal of talent in the field of drama.
Dr. Gilkes, who Creighton said has a place in the international fabric of theatre, also contributed to Guyana’s literature and drama with his poetry and his direction of a number of plays and films.
“He has had a really very rich career as an artist.
He has worked in a number of areas, some important to the art in Guyana and the Caribbean,” Creighton said.
For Creighton, Gilkes was first an actor and then he was a director, playwright and every other thing that comes with his name. He said the late Guyanese worked on the stage for a very long time then he went into film and did quite a lot of work in film.
As an artist, he said he was very important to Guyana and in literature he had won the Guyana Prize for both poetry and drama. Creighton said Gilkes also made important contributions to Barbados, where he worked and made great contributions in theatre and literature.
Gilkes, according to Creighton, produced a version of Dominican-born British author Jean Rhys’ book Wide Sargasso Sea, which was well received.
The later actor and director left Guyana in the early 70s. After working at the University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill campus, he returned in the 1990s to Guyana and worked for a few years at the University of Guyana before again departing his homeland.
Gilkes is being mourned by his wife Joan, with whom he lived in the United Kingdom, his children and seven grandchildren, other relatives and his many friends.