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.
