Drama in the time of Coronavirus is a long dark play. The national lockdown has placed a prohibition on public theatre for an indefinite period. Discussion on performances for the rest of the year might then be quite academic, but it is still rewarding, if you can’t get on stage, to evaluate one of the ways in which theatre in Guyana moved ahead of the other countries in the Caribbean.
The nation should be now getting an idea of what it might have been like in England during 1642 to 1660, when there was a ban on public theatre and performances. The Puritans (English Protestants) managed to wield enough power in parliament to criminalise theatre and spin it to suit their narrative against the monarchy and against Roman Catholics. They waged a civil war which led to the overthrow of King Charles I and the accession to power of Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell in 1649. The Puritan Commonwealth ruled England until the Restoration, which defeated them, and brought King Charles II to the throne in 1660. He immediately restored the public theatre.
The Puritans had argued that theatre violated the mood and gravity of the times. Already known for their disapproval of anything enjoyable, they shut down theatres in London, claiming it was “not seemly to indulge in any kind of diversions or amusement in such troubled times”. By ordinance, “public stage plays” were declared to be “of lascivious merth and levity”. By 1648 they got a law passed which made all actors “incorrigible rogues and vagabonds” and it was illegal to perform a play before a public audience. Actors and dramatists were unemployed and many enlisted in the Royalist army fighting for the king. That war was lost in 1649.
Those grave and troubled times with public entertainment closed down may well be compared to what obtains today under the Covid-19 lockdown. One cannot even think realistically when the pandemic may be sufficiently contained for rehearsals to resume and the doors of the theatres to reopen. At this same time of bleak inactivity, longing questions are asked. Will Guyana celebrate its own restoration after the defeat of the virus? And will that mean the return of an institution that used to be a jewel in the crown of the Guyanese theatre in an area in which Guyana reigned confidently over the rest of the Caribbean?
That crown jewel is the National Drama Festival (NDF), which started in 2011 and came to a halt in 2017. We will soon be approaching the time in the year when the preliminary action normally begins, ushering the festival which usually culminates with plays on stage in November. The sum total of all the activities, the concept, the design, and the outcomes, made this NDF supreme across the Caribbean and its equal was not to be found anywhere. The only country with anything of that kind of magnitude is Jamaica, but it is of an entirely different structure and does not conclude in a concentrated period of plays on stage in a one week or ten-day festival.
This NDF in Guyana before it ceased in 2017 was unique as a festival of drama, and for all the advancements it was planned to achieve in its conceptualisation. It was a competition for the best plays and productions staged in Guyana in the year. But its concept made it much more than a one-off contest which ended and was swept away after the prizes were handed out. It culminated with the closing of the curtains and the glitter of awards at the end of November, but something more permanent was left behind. This includes theatre in many different corners of the country; performance of plays in communities in Georgetown and in far-away regions; community theatre; new drama groups in various regions and localities; an increase in drama in secondary schools; new plays written – new additions to the corpus of Guyanese drama; a greater awareness of theatre in communities and villages.
A plea for the restoration of the NDF might be purely academic and may be unrealisable in 2020 because of Covid-19, the date of whose dissipation cannot be accurately predicted. So, it remains a question whether there can be a festival before year-end. But the first part of the festival build-up under normal circumstances is the outreach. This is where the launch of the NDF is announced and activities begin to generate interest and create opportunities for training and playmaking in far-flung localities around the country. The National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD) begins this outreach by travelling to many different areas to generate interest, get drama groups reactivated or created, and conduct workshops.
A team of trained persons called mentors are sent out after contact with groups, schools, communities are made, and it is ascertained that there is an interest in plays being entered in the NDF. Sometimes new plays are created by the groups. Where secondary schools are concerned, there is a collaboration between NSTAD and the Unit of Allied Arts of the Ministry of Education, which has responsibility for such development in the schools. That unit normally administers the annual Secondary Schools Drama Festival, but many years ago this merged with the NDF as the fifth category in the competition – the Secondary Schools Category.
Entries are invited in the NDF. Once there is a signal that entries may come from the localities, groups or schools, mentors are sent out by NSTAD to assist them. In some cases, they assist in playmaking, they offer some degree of training, assistance in rehearsals, sometimes spending several days in the communities. The aim is that the end-product will be a play prepared and entered in the NDF.
Preliminary performances were introduced into the NDF. Plays entered had to first perform before the judges in the preliminaries and the best of them were then selected to compete in the finals. Further, it was decided to conduct the preliminaries as far as possible, out in the communities from which the groups came. This meant that performances would take place at unconventional venues outside of the National Cultural Centre, outside of Georgetown, and at venues not commonly used for drama. Even going beyond that, was the development of audiences. Residents of the various communities would then get the opportunity of seeing plays performed there, thus creating local interest in drama and developing a place in the community where theatre can be performed.
This is the notion of community theatre, which successfully developed mainly in 2015 and 2016. To add to this, secondary schools entering students for Theatre Arts at CSEC and Performing Arts at CAPE were encouraged to present community theatre. Arising out of this, plays were performed before local audiences for the first time in Sophia, at the Tipperary Hall in Buxton, on the UG Campus. What is more, when the plays from Sophia made it to the finals, several members of the community turned up at the NCC to see them there. This was unprecedented.
Further away, and for the first time, there were plays performed inside the village at St Cuthbert’s Mission, at Kuru Kuru, at Onderneeming, Parika, Den Amstel, Mabaruma and Bartica. Groups came from Mabaruma, Kuru Kuru, St Cuthbert’s Mission and Parika to perform at the NCC. This was the development of local theatre as never seen before. Secondary schools also started to do local performances, such as at Port Mourant, Tutorial, Berbice Educational Institute, and Berbice High School in New Amsterdam, West Demerara, the Bishop’s High and St Joseph High.
Several new plays of recognisable quality have been written for entry into the NDF, thus enlarging the corpus of Guyanese drama. A prize for the Best New Guyanese Play is offered in the festival, and that has attracted the creative efforts of new and established playwrights, some of them coming out of NSTAD.
Those have been some of the achievements of the NDF, most of them are not found in any drama festival anywhere else around the Caribbean. At the restoration of drama in Guyana following the virulent reign of the Covid-19, it is hoped that this unique NDF can re-emerge.
