In the Programme Notes for the recently performed KFC Link Show 37 it is written that the director and producers Ron Robinson and Gem Madhoo-Nascimento, when they founded the show, were the first to pay performers and were responsible for the introduction of the practice of fees being paid for work in theatre in Guyana. That is no idle boast. A proper account of it will take us back to a page in the history of theatre in Guyana, and this is how it happened.
We know precious little about pre-Columbian theatrical practice in the Caribbean, except what we glean from the theory of ritual origins and the unfathomable store of Amerindian myth. However, after the pre-Columbian, there was a lengthy Colonial Epoch, followed by the Modern Theatre, the rise of Guyanese Drama, and the Contemporary period which is defined by the commercial and the professional.
During the Colonial Epoch there was theatre among the folk through the period of slavery followed by Indentureship and survival of those going into the early twentieth century. But mainstream theatre on the formal stage was characterised by visiting professional companies from America and Britain, including the famous American Company of Comedians, performing English drama for the plantocracy and white middle/upper classes.
Traditional theatre of the folk will have to be treated separately and its details and development will not be the focus here. The Modern period started in the early twentieth century. There was practically nothing that could be called Guyanese and in 1931 Norman Eustace Cameron founded Modern Drama when he began to write plays consciously to fill the gap. Cameron’s expressed concern was primarily the upliftment of black people, while during the same period there was one known Indian playwright – Basil Balgobin.
However, the rise of Guyanese Drama did not truly take place until a combination of factors in the 1960s saw the rise of the Theatre Guild of Guyana, the work of Helen Taitt, and, especially, the plays of Sheik Sadeek and Francis Quamina Farrier. The Theatre Guild dominated in practically all respects until 1981. Around that time most of the plays were imported and included popular types like Agatha Christie, Frederick Knott and other murder mysteries. Yet there was a gradual increase in locally written drama – Frank Pilgrim was the foremost up to the 1970s until a number of new dramatists emerged at the Guild.
The Guild is famous for its priceless contributions to Caribbean drama, but one very important factor in this discussion is its promotion of amateurism. It was an amateur institution with a firm belief in the practice of theatre out of the love of it. There was a philosophy grounded in the belief that members of the Guild should be dedicated to theatre out of genuine interest in the art and not because they saw it as a means of making money. The Guild had a policy of not paying for performances and one of Guyana’s leading directors was at the helm in this. He was John Rollins, a lecturer in Drama at the University of Guyana and Chairman of the Theatre Guild. As chairman he led a group with a continuing belief in amateurism right through the 1980s.
The Guild then became a citadel for amateur theatre while it controlled mainstream drama in Guyana. This was a continuation of an era in which the West Indies as a whole inherited western theatre from the colonial expatriates and the local middle class for whom this was a hobby, engaged in for love of the art, not for an income. They were mainly professionals in different fields who were descendants of the “gentlemen amateurs” of the previous century. A good example of such professionals was a drama group in Mackenzie (now Linden) in the 1960s made up of members of the bauxite elite manager class. There were other similar groups in Georgetown and it was those amateur organisations with expatriates among their membership that moved to form the Theatre Guild of Guyana in the late 1950s. While in Guyana, they contributed exceedingly to the development of drama at the Guild; they considered it a descent from dignity if they were to ask for payment for work in drama . This position was largely responsible for official positions in these countries that dramatists were to be called upon to produce theatre but with an expectation that they would do it for free, out of civic duty.
At the same time professional theatre had already developed in Jamaica led by such personalities as Trevor Rhone, Yvonne Jones Brewster and Dennis Scott at the Barn Theatre in Kingston. Since 1970 there has been rapid development among other practitioners in that country. Interesting to note, one of the strong developments out of the working class theatre was the advancement of Ed Bim Lewis, who was already a professional in vaudeville (one half of the stand-up comedy act Bim and Bam), and who had moved closer to the mainstream stage with his popular comic plays in the 1970s. It was an impactful development out of which such performers as Paul Keens Douglas emerged. It gained ground in the West Indies to become normal practice while Guyana resisted. The tides inevitably moved south and began to create waves in Georgetown as a growing group of practitioners began to challenge the governing policy.
This challenge came from within – members of the Guild who were actively involved in plays at the Playhouse. Some of them grew to be notable Guyanese playwrights. These included Ian Valz, who directed plays at the Guild as one of their new rising stars at the end of the decade of the seventies. Another was Leon Saul who was one of the prominent actors. Yet another of the promising young talents was Andre Sobryan, in addition to Robinson and Madhoo (as she was at that time) both of whom were members of the executive of the Guild.
Robinson and Madhoo took the bold step of moving outside of the Guild and breaking its dominance. An alternative group came into existence to change the monopoly held by the amateur institution. In November, 1981 they founded the Theatre Company. The two executive members of the Guild were directors of the new company, with prominent writer Ian McDonald brought in as a third director. It was Guyana’s first professional company in theatre and introduced a new era in which there was also a commercial organisation producing plays. It was the first such production company in Guyana whose policy was to hire and pay actresses and actors, as well as other practitioners, in the performance of plays. For the first time in Guyana, performers and back-stage workers signed professional contracts to work in productions. Robinson and Madhoo had started Guyanese professional theatre.
The first production of the Theatre Company was The Link Show which opened also in November, 1981. After a few skipped years and persistent struggle, this still exists as the longest running annual dramatic production in Guyana. As a satirical revue, it was an adaptation of the annual satirical show called The Brink, produced by the Theatre Guild and directed by Frank Pilgrim, who was the main script writer. By 1981 The Brink had ceased production and had not been seen for a number of years. Robinson’s version coined the name “Link” from the old “Brink” put together with “The Link” – a prominent and popular news feature broadcast daily at prime time in Guyana. Robinson, a leading radio announcer, was a member of the radio station team that produced the Link.
This new satirical revue was also staged at a new venue – the National Cultural Centre. Although this venue was in existence since 1972 it had not been frequently used for drama. The Guild Playhouse was still the dominant place for dramatic performance. An important factor, however, was that the Playhouse was smaller and offered a much more intimate theatre environment. The Cultural Centre was much larger, more suited for commercial theatre because of the seating capacity. The Link Show, and many of the plays performed there often had full houses, quite a financial gain in such a large auditorium. In the years that followed, the NCC became the popular venue and was the first choice of commercial plays.
Valz’s most prominent production at the Guild was a staging of Molier’s The Miser. He then adapted the play to develop one of his own. Recast in a Guyanese setting, Valz’s The House of Pressure became very popular, and was one of the first plays to be staged at the NCC as a commercial venture, moving away from the Guild and the Playhouse. This became even more significant because it was one of the earliest popular successes in the local professional theatre and numbered among Guyana’s most popular plays. Another with the same distinction was the comedy Two’s A Crowd – both of these Valz comedies taking their places as the plays most in demand for several years after.
Saul was also among the early movers with another popular drama – For Better For Worse, which was performed both as a radio serial and a stage play at the NCC. It joined the ranks as one of the first commercial successes at that time when those pioneers ventured forth. By 1983 it could be said that there was an industry in Guyana contributed to by a number of new playwrights and producers who were not members of the Guild. Two
outstanding newcomers arose in Linden – Harold Bascom with a play called The Barrel and Grace Chapman with The Green Bottle.
This was made more interesting by new trends which appeared very early in the period of professional plays. Bascom set off a long series of “mirror” plays – works reflecting Guyanese society at grassroots level with which audiences could identify, making these plays box office successes. Similarly, Chapman’s play was influenced by the cinema, in particular horror films like The Exorcist. This set off a chain of cinematographic plays dwelling on the spiritual, possession and demon invasions, which was joined by Valz and other new playwrights such as Michael Duff from New Amsterdam who started off with Kathy Ann Possessed.
That, then, was how Guyana’s professional theatre took off, eventually joining the trends already thriving in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Antigua. The horror and spirit possession plays were soon joined by obeah plays initiated by Bascom, followed not quite as successfully by Vivian Williams. The new Theatre Company joined the lucrative trends with a long series of imported thrillers, and in addition, became the first group in Guyana to take plays on tour to other countries. These overseas tours were extensions of a thriving professional industry, which enriched the story of the rise of the commercial on the Guyanese stage. The Theatre Company in that way, added another new dimension to Guyanese professional theatre.
