The National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD) opens its doors this week for the new academic year, offering training in the creative arts in a range of disciplines to another group of students and interested practitioners. There are courses in drama, theatre techniques, acting, performance, stage-craft, directing, among other areas. There are also new offerings in animation and film, as well as training for drama teachers, to add to the recently introduced programme in creative writing, including poetry and fiction.
All told, it is an exciting range of subjects, and should deeply engage those who enrol. Recent results have shown rewarding possibilities, and there is a very significant graduating class of 2021 to be presented at the upcoming Institute of Creative Arts (ICA) Convocation.
NSTAD is affiliated with the ICA, which was established in 2014. NSTAD is the newest of the four schools in the ICA, the others being the National School of Dance, the ER Burrowes School of Art and the National School of Music. The first two are relatively old and noble institutions that pioneered training in the arts in Guyana in 1975. The dance and art schools both arose during a period of nationalism that carried the arts on a wave in the post-independence and post-republican eras. Dance benefitted from an impetus provided by Guyana’s friendship with Haiti and Cuba. Hatian Lavinia Williams started the formal training followed up by Cuban dance maestros. The art school was founded by the great Guyanese archaeologist and artist Denis Williams.
The music school came into being in 2011 to bring together scattered focal points of training, which prepared students for the external British exams. By this time, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) was developing curricula to indigenise music education in the Caribbean. Guyana set out to formalise what was being done by private tutors. The music school continues preparing students for the Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music, but has been developing certificate and diploma programmes of its own, called the ICA programmes.
The nation was very fervently asking for formal training in drama following post-Carifesta developments, the resuscitation of the Theatre Guild and rapid strides in the wider Caribbean. This materialised when the Director of Culture put the necessary machinery in motion and the NSTAD was established in 2013. The creation of the umbrella institution – the ICA followed, with the intention of adding a School of Creative Writing and a School of Film.
In the absence of those, however, NSTAD extended its curricula to include creative writing, and is now moving incrementally to develop areas of film. The latter appeared to become more feasible when the drama school developed a course in animation. There has been growing interest and activity in film in the country and several stage practitioners are repeatedly called upon to work in film. NSTAD then saw the necessity and the opportunity to expose the actors and stage artists to the medium of film to make them a bit more competent in a developing area. Not only were stage practitioners always pressed into service, but CXC had introduced film as a part of the Performing Arts in its Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination. Drama teachers in secondary schools were little by little being drawn in to prepare students who opt to do film.
NSTAD has therefore been offering an Introduction to Film as one of its options for study. Another option is Animation, which serves yet another rapidly growing area of interest in Guyana. The drama school has been offering this optional course for a number of years, but a year ago it was extended so interested students now have a full year of study in animation. This year the options have gone further to include a focus of study on animation and film, which is available as a part of the diploma programme, but can also be done as a Technical Certificate in Animation and Film.
A particular achievement has been the Diploma in Creative Writing, which NSTAD was asked to include since 2017. Students have focused on fiction, poetry and playwriting with a few really outstanding graduates over the years. The most recent class now awaiting the ICA Graduation exercises is an especially outstanding one with students who have joined the rising group of new Guyanese writers. Creative writing has become an important point of interest, attracting some students of noted talent. a requirement for completion is that the students stage a public reading of selections of their work, but the onset of COVID-19 restrictions has gravely affected this. The next step is the publication of selections since they have produced publishable work.
One drawback in the progress of the drama programme is that some students fail to complete because of the volume of work. Many applicants have a specific interest in stage performance and might not wish to do a full diploma course of study. NSTAD, however, accepts a responsibility for training in theatre at a national level and sees the need to serve these persons as well. Among the programmes being offered this year, then, is a Technical Certificate in Acting, which will allow students to concentrate on performance. They will do courses in acting and performance enhancements that provide training in techniques.
NSTAD is largely concerned with performance and stage work. Another significant drawback affecting it has been the COVID-19 pandemic. The safety restrictions prohibited public performance before audiences and even interactions among performers on stage. This, of course, meant that theatres have been closed since March 2020 and productions and performances which are vital activities of NSTAD have shut down. Alternative methods of conducting classes have been employed; there are now online lectures and quite a bit of innovation in order to handle practical and studio courses. The same will continue for the new academic year.
Included in the innovations practised at NSTAD was the way methods had to be found to take care of the annual National Drama Festival (NDF) for which the school is responsible. There was a determination to keep such national events alive. In November 2020, there was the successful presentation of “Dramatic Distancing: Theatre Without Walls”. This was a national competition held to compensate for the absence of the NDF due to the closure of the National Cultural Centre. Dramatists were invited to submit videos of short plays with a reduced number of actors performing together so as to observe distancing.
Dramatists were challenged by the rules and guidelines of the competition to create drama while paying attention to the safety restrictions. The videos submitted were evaluated and the best ones selected for the finals – all finalists received cash awards and were shown on television. The Department of Culture produced a show to be televised so that the national audience was not totally deprived of dramatic entertainment and directors and actors not entirely idle.
The results were interesting because of the techniques employed by the entrants which drove them to explore workable devices. A corps of short plays was thus made available on a range of themes. But very dominant were plays which examined COVID-19 conditions and effects upon the population.
That kind of use of the imagination and ingenuity are in keeping with the normal work of NSTAD because styles and concepts of theatre are studied in classes. The school has been a catalyst for a greater variety in theatre offerings and types of plays written and produced in Guyana. In a situation where social realism dominates and sets tend to be realistic, there has been an increased number of imaginative works of modernist and postmodernist theatre.
It will be interesting to see what emerges in Guyanese theatre from the pandemic restrictions. It has produced a new set of writers of plays, poems and short stories, whose work will be made public. With the addition of new ventures into film and animation, the horizon for 2022 promises hope for a wide variety of works not yet imagined.
