There is a meeting here tonight 
There is a meeting here tonight
Come one and all and gather round
There is a meeting here tonight
(Traditional)
We have previously published accounts of the life and work of Caribbean theatre artist Ken Corsbie in these pages. Other accounts have now surfaced offered as tributes to his memory by persons who knew him personally, who have worked with him, and whose lives and careers he has impacted. The following analysis contains material which will be repeating a few bits of evidence already published, but it is offered for its value as new contribution to knowledge, including a few factual corrections, and an overall coverage of the meaning and importance of the work of Ken Corsbie.
Al Creighton
Stabroek News Arts Editor
Ken Corsbie was a Guyanese theatre artist, a legendary personality in the field of Caribbean culture to which he has made significant important contributions as performer, definer/codifier, administrator and even theorist. He served the Caribbean region in a long influential career as actor, director, story teller, comedian, film maker, radio announcer/producer, and published author.
He began his illustrious career as a radio announcer and a producer for radio in Guyana and was already a recognised voice in broadcast journalism when he made his entrance upon the stage. He was among several theatre practitioners who were trained at The Theatre Guild of Guyana through practice, workshop sessions and stage productions and went on to be among the foremost in the West Indies. But before his unofficial apprenticeship at the Guild Playhouse in Kingston, he was among a number of others who were fledglings, being immersed in the arts at another famous private training ground called “The Yard” – Woodbine House or Taitt House in South Cummingsburg, Georgetown. This was the residence of the Taitt family, known for functioning as a virtual cultural centre with performances, exhibitions and mentorship of dancers (famous for ballet), actors, musicians, artists and athletes including the great Helen Taitt, Clairmont Taitt, Ken Corsbie, Michael Gilkes, Stanley Greaves, and Philip Moore. Under the Woodbine House associations, we are told by Henry Muttoo, that Corsbie was also a sportsman.
Theatre Guild
At the Theatre Guild in the 1960s he rose to prominence in the theatre. That famous house is fabled for its production of stage actors, directors, playwrights, designers, dancers who went on from there to join a long line of artists “exported” by the Guild to the rest of the Caribbean where they became foremost contributors to theatre and the arts, their illustrious performance and important developmental directions. These include Gilkes, Muttoo, Slade Hopkinson, Marc Matthews, Eugene Williams, Wilbert Holder and Robert Narain, among others.
However, on the way to the wider arena, Corsbie was making an indelible mark in Guyanese theatre well beyond the normal productions at the Playhouse. One of his areas of operation was in administration when he worked at the National History and Arts Council (NHAC), whose name was later changed to the Department of Culture (DOC), where he would have worked directly with the iconic Lynette Dolphin, Frank and Bill Pilgrim, Cicely Robinson, Denis Williams, Francis Farrier, A.J. Seymour and Sheik Sadeek. Muttoo credits him with progressive contributions to administrative direction of the arts while he was at the NHAC and the DOC, and he did rise to the position of Director of Drama in those institutions.
In that period Guyana was deep into discussions and hosting regional conferences which led to the creation of Carifesta, first staged in 1972, but there is little evidence of Corsbie’s input into it as an administrator. By that time, however, he was already reshaping the face of Guyanese performance. With his radio background he would have collaborated with radio producer/announcer Wordsworth McAndrew, Guyanese poet and folklorist who promoted and read local short stories on radio. Although BBC trained, McAndrew was a very strong creolist and Corsbie moved in the same directions with the use of Guyanese Creole (Creolese) on radio and in performance. This influence (seen also in the plays of Sheik Sadeek), informed Corsbie’s performance style that was to become so important later on.
Carifesta 1972 saw a great leap forward in Caribbean culture, especially in Guyana who established deep connections with Haiti and Cuba, particularly in dance. These were largely responsible for the creation of the National School of Dance (1974) first led by Haitian Lavinia Williams, and the National Dance Company. Williams was succeeded by Cuban directors/choreographers. These early factors were associated with Corsbie’s personal development and his impact on the Guyanese stage.
Dem Two
He launched a one-man performance act known as “He One” in which he converted the influences of stories on radio, story-telling generally, creolisation, dramatisation and stage performance in solo shows. Yet, this was only a launching pad because he soon developed the idea into a performance package that enlightened and jolted Caribbean theatre.
In 1974 the two-man team known as “Dem Two” exploded upon the West Indian stage, sending shock waves in its meteoric rise across the region. Corsbie teamed up with Marc Matthews, another star at the Theatre Guild where he excelled as a leading national actor, to form the performing act and create an earth-shaking brand of Caribbean performance. The group delivered, story-telling, recitals of West Indian poetry and fiction, comedy, and audience interaction in sessions that were full length, but could also be fit into a programme with versions from 30 minutes to two hours.
Their selections were drawn from published, established West Indian literature, excerpted, but also unknown pieces from new writers, folk tales, folklore, the supernatural, oral literature, stand-up comedy material, jokes and even songs. They would often open a performance with the singing of a traditional mento song taken from wayside spiritual sessions
There is a meeting here tonight
There is a meeting here tonight
Come one and all and gather round
There is a meeting here tonight
This signified the roots of Dem Two performances which were grounded in and flavoured by the folk, traditional and oral literature, folk traditions. The song was a call to a public audience on the street to join a spiritual session, borrowed by Dem Two as a prelude to an experience of enlightenment, participation and entertainment on stage. Interestingly this same song provided Caribbean artist Stanley Greaves, who is a traditionalist, a spiritualist, an intuitive as well as a post-modernist, with a title for one of his outstanding exhibitions “There Is A Meeting Here Tonight”
This was an extremely important factor on the road being experienced by West Indian literature as a whole, but specifically by the drama, in redefining its identity. It was experiencing a thorough grounding in the folk elements and the embracing of creole language and voice. Popular and professional theatre were on the rise in Jamaica, where Carifesta 2 was held in 1976 and where Dem Two had their biggest performance. That appearance did not only establish the group as the biggest form of stage performance in the Caribbean, but as a definer and a profound signifier in regional theatre. It announced the emphatic arrival of a brand of “Caribbean performance” that exhibited change in form and orientation.
There was the blending of the popular with the profound, the entertaining with the instructive. What was only introduced in Carifesta 1 in Georgetown in 1972 was demonstrated in Kingston in 1976. Against the backdrop of the rising streams of consciousness following the expulsion of Walter Rodney from Jamaica in 1968, as well as developments post Carifesta, there were now confirmations of certain trends in the theatre, such as the stage appearances of Eddie Kamau Brathwaite, Mervyn Morris, the Dub Poets, Surinamese performance poet Robin Dobru and Paul Keens Douglas, professional theatre and the folk traditions were taking shape. Dem Two brought all these together and propelled an innovative hybrid package of the popular and the accepted, the seriously acclaimed. That was an achievement considering the great outcry that was raised against popular drama in Jamaica in the 1970s.
Corsbie was at the forefront in the popularising of what may be termed “Caribbean performance”, which is the indigenous story-telling tradition with its engagement of dramatisation using dance, music, mime and interactions with the audience. Corsbie and Matthews were not dancers, but tolerable singers, enough to support this kind of performance.
All Ah We
Following what was the most powerful dramatic force in the mid-seventies, Corsbie ventured forth with another step forward when Dem Two was transformed into All Ah We. The group was expanded to include other very talented Guyanese into a group of six. Incorporated were Henry Muttoo (actor), John Agard (actor and poet), Eddie Hooper (singer and musician) and Cammo Williams (musician). This grouping, according to Muttoo, was to increase the Caribbean/Guyanese multi-ethnicity, but it certainly intensified the overall performance strength and versatility. Hooper was already a popular professional singer, who brought his guitar and his voice to the performance. Williams added the steel pan, while Agard and Muttoo provided acting and stage strength.
All Ah We, though, did not last as long and did not make the same impact as Dem Two. Their Caribbean tours were not as extensive and almost all the individuals departed Guyana. Matthews went to St Lucia and then to England and developed as a dub poet and a published performance poet, winning the Guyana Prize for a First Book of Poetry in 1987.
Agard went to London where he mushroomed as a published and performance poet in the British school system and twice won the Guyana Prize for Poetry. Muttoo departed to study Drama in London, afterwards to the Jamaica School of Drama (whose establishment was not triggered by Carifesta as Muttoo has written; it pre-dated Carifesta) and then to the Cayman Islands as Artistic Director of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation. He has the reputation as being the Caribbean’s best designer.
Hooper, already a song writer and recording artiste with popular hits to his name, migrated to the USA to continue his career. Williams was the only one who remained in Guyana where he still practices professionally as a steel pan maestro.
Story Telling
Corsbie’s career continued to spiral. He acquired much acclaim in Barbados and in Trinidad where he was a part of the Banyan Group responsible for the making of many films. In Barbados he skyrocketed as a leading theatre director, multiplying his contribution to Caribbean Drama. This contribution also included his founding of the Theatre Information Exchange (TIE), which took him to Barbados in the first place. This was an institution responsible for documentation, recording and acting as a clearing house for data and information about dramatic activity and personalities across the Caribbean. TIE went out of operation when the funding ceased.
However, the greatest impact of Corsbie’s work in Barbados was in the field of story telling. As an actor, throughout his long career, story telling was his speciality, and whether as performer or administrator, his Caribbean impact rested partly on that discipline. But further and above that, he founded and coordinated the annual Caribbean Story-telling Festival which ran between 1990 and circa 1993. The festival had its grand performances in early July each year on stage the renowned Central Bank Auditorium, the most accomplished theatre house in Barbados.
It won international favour and had the participation of the leading story tellers in the Caribbean in addition to several from North America. Its presentation was thorough and artistically innovative. Each performer was introduced on stage by a chorus who sang their attributes in Parang and other West Indian traditional musical forms accompanied by dance and a string band. Interestingly, one of the guitar players in that band was Stanley Greaves who lived in Barbados at that time. Additionally, annual awards were made to outstanding personalities in story telling who received The Earthworks Awards. This provided an international platform for story tellers as well as the opportunity for audiences to actually see/hear many of them from different countries. It is worth mentioning that this festival has a legacy. We are told of annual events in the Cayman Islands and Jamaican story teller Amina Blackwood-Meeks has written of an equivalent forum in Jamaica.
Such was the impact of Corsbie in Barbados that, years after his departure from the island, he was brought back to be honoured. In 2016 he was presented with an award by the Earl Warner Trust for his “outstanding contribution to Caribbean theatre”.
Notwithstanding all of his numerous achievements internationally, Corsbie had appearances in Guyana, some of them produced by GEMS Theatre Productions under Gem Madhoo Nascimento, some done at the Guild. He is known for solo performances as a stand-up comedian or as a story teller – mostly a combination of both. As a comedian he performed at the USA Caribbean Comedy Festival in Washington DC in 1994.
“Theatre in the Caribbean”
It is to be noted that a good deal of the work on stage by Corsbie was directed or driven by his concepts – by his vision of Caribbean theatre and his functioning as a theorist. Such thoughts are reflected in a book “Theatre in the Caribbean” (London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1984) written by Corsbie when he was commissioned by the publishers in London to write it. The book elaborates on his definition of Caribbean theatre, reflecting a quite commonly held view that theatre is a cultural expression that extends well beyond the drama you may read in a book or the play you may see performed on stage. Corsbie details the existence of theatre in real life, but the limitations of his discussion surrounds the wide, all-accepting .approach that deals with the raw material but tends to overlook that it is not a free for all; there is still a need for craft and creativity. Yet his account gives a very good idea of his approach to the stage and in part, references much of what he has achieved as a dramatist.
The book stands as another extant monument of this practitioner’s outstanding contribution to the art in the Caribbean. Very few outside of Rawle Gibbons have published substantively on this aspect of Caribbean drama.
Ken Corsbie is to be hailed as one who pushed the frontiers of Caribbean theatre forward in very dynamic fashion. Notable within this is the fact that this contribution was made not only in the performance on stage, but in the conceptualisation, the vision that drove the craft, and the manner in which the craft so vividly defined and demonstrated the nature of the art known as Caribbean performance.
