Guyanese-British actor and prize-winning poet Marc Matthews is one of the foremost dramatic, stage and literary personalities in the Caribbean. He has worked in the UK for most of the 40 years since he left Guyana, with periods in St Lucia and Barbados. In Guyana he is hailed as a legend, revered for his contributions to the stage, his outstanding memorable performances, and his iconic place in the history of theatre in Guyana since the 1960s.
In recognition of that constellation of achievements and the part he played in the rise and extension into the Caribbean of Guyanese theatre and personalities, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, Matthews was conferred with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Theatre Guild of Guyana last Wednesday, May 31. This was presented to him by Chairman of the Theatre Guild Paloma Mohamed at a special event at the Guild Playhouse.
In a staged conversation with actor and Spoken Word poet Keon Heywood, who is also a member of the Guild and of the National Drama Company (NDC), Matthews provided a sketch of the span of his long and legendary career, which dates back to 1959. He referenced his first excursion into public theatre, which was street theatre improv (improvisation) at Fogarty’s in Georgetown with an actress whose name he could not remember. Those Guyanese beginnings were followed by his move to the UK in the 1960s, his efforts to start a theatre group and performances there.
Wikipedia’s biography quotes Matthews as describing his experience at Queen’s College (QC) in Guyana where he went to school as “a Victorian education” and he told Heywood that he was not comfortable at QC and spent the time after the first two years “wanting to get out”. That is consistent with his activities in Britain, which were anti-colonial. He worked closely in the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) with Kamau Brathwaite and John La Rose, and, according to Wikipedia, was one of the younger poets there along with Linton Kwesi Johnson.
He returned to Guyana in 1969 when he was associated with the Theatre Guild and linked up with the now legendary radio broadcaster Ken Corsbie. Matthews, too, had a career in radio. It was during that period that he was part of the Golden Age of the Guild when it was the Mecca for drama and dramatists in Guyana. It was the primary playhouse and the home of theatre. All the leading players, local and expatriate, practised there, and that was where most of them received their first training and apprenticeship. Many who ‘graduated’ from this went on to become major practitioners in the larger movements and the professional developments in the wider Caribbean.
The Stage and Dem Two
During that period Matthews is fabled for his appearances as an actor at the playhouse, including in plays directed by Corsbie and the landmark creation of the lead character in Ian McDonald’s play The Tramping Man (1969).
Added to that is his fame as a storyteller. This has been a main pillar in his career, with performances internationally. These include his work in St Lucia, his appearances in the Cayman Islands and his most substantial performances in the United Kingdom, which he sustained for decades. However, the greatest overall achievements have been his work in “Dem Two” and his winning of the Guyana Prize for Literature.
It was circa 1974 that Corsbie and Matthews announced their arrival on the Caribbean stage as the phenomenal performance act known as “Dem Two”. Their impact on regional theatre was extraordinary and they impressed critics and audiences with an innovative Caribbean theatre form. They combined selections from West Indian literature with samples of Guyanese folk tales, the West Indian story-telling tradition, dramatisations, and hilarious comedy routines.
They toured the Caribbean, including performances in Jamaica at the UWI, Mona’s Creative Arts Centre and the Barn Theatre in Kingston. Their most exceptional performances were at Carifesta II in Jamaica 1976, when they appeared alongside Paul Keens-Douglas, Surinamese Robin Dobru and Eddie Kamau Brathwaite. This was a definitive grouping since Keens-Douglas was rapidly developing as a storyteller and comedian, Dobru was Suri-name’s leading performance poet and Brathwaite was already famed for “Rites”, his unprecedented cricket poem.
“Dem Two” was redefining Caribbean performance with their combinations of folklore, comedy and literature in a style that created a form and commanded the attention of the literary and the popular.
By 1977, Corsbie and Matthews had extended their stage act to become a larger group of six performers known as “All Ah We”. The team included poet and actor John Agard, actor and designer Henry Muttoo, musician Eddie Hooper and steel-pan player Compton Narine also known as Camo Williams. This widened the scope and performance capacity of the group without changing the material that they were performing.
“All Ah We” did not become a fixture. By 1980 it fragmented with members departing to pursue individual careers elsewhere – London, USA, Jamaica. Matthews went on to St Lucia and Barbados and his second sojourn to the UK. It was at that juncture of his career that he made forward strides in literature.
Literature
During his performances with the group, Matthews had been engaged in performance poetry. Some of the selections were spoken-word compositions, many of them written by Matthews. Among the most popular was “Six O’Clock Feeling”, which many assumed he wrote. But Matthews pointed out that it was written by Kamal Singh and passed to him for his assessment. It impressed him tremendously and he included it in his repertoire.
At that time also, dub poetry was on the rise, as was performance poetry. Matthews’ line, however, was not standard dub poetry, which was uniformly rooted in post-colonial politics, protest and reggae music. Matthews had different models following a ranging compass and sundry subjects, like Singh’s “Six O’Clock Feeling”, Martin Carter’s “This Is the Dark Time, My Love” and his own “Eleven O’Clock Goods Train”. Dub poets were publishing their work in sound recordings as well as in print. Matthews’ most prominent output in this department was an LP recording titled ‘Marc Up’ released in 1987.
The performance background served well in the development of more literary poetry and enriched Matthews’ poems with rhythm, music, life and language. Those qualities are strong in his first published collection Guyana My Altar by Karnak House (1987). He was awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature 1987 for the Best First Book of Poetry.
That was the inaugural awarding of the Guyana Prize, which was founded in 1987. The recognition of Guyana My Altar was significant because from the very beginning, the prize was acknowledging the brand of performance verse as a part of mainstream literature. The novelty and entertaining qualities of the book were crucial factors.
Apart from being anthologised in major volumes such as Paula Burnett’s Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse (1986), Matthews published other collections. Peepal Tree Press put out Season of Sometimes (1992) and Kairi in Trinidad had printed Eleven O’Clock Goods in 1974.
His recordings and much of the poetry in his published collections, as did some of his “Dem Two” performances, capture the life and times of an old Georgetown of the fifties and sixties. The same is true of the tales told as a story-teller, reflecting the British Guianese countryside of his growing up.
