Arts on Sunday

VERSE 27:   Light, oh where is the light? Kindle it with the burning fire of desire!

The theatre is built on traditions, some with historical significance, some arising from the formal nature of the profession, others because of its prevailing sense of nobility, though several of those origins are unknown, hazy and speculative.

The virtues, the value, the merits and the importance of the work of Stephanie Bowry are yet unsung.

Several Guyanese plays of historic significance were recently staged at the Theatre Guild and National Cultural Centre as part of a Jubilee festival.

2016 remains a significant and celebrated year for Shakespeare. It is commemorated worldwide as the 450th year since his death in 1616, and following major and clamorous celebratory events in London and Stratford in April, there are still similar programmes continuing during this year in England and elsewhere, including Guyana.

Coolie Mother   Jasmattie live in bruk – Down hut big like Bata shoe box, Beat clothes, weed yard, chop wood, feed fowl For this body and that body and every blasted body, Fetch water, all day fetch water like if the whole – Whole slow-flowing Canje River God create Just for she one own bucket.

  Elsa’s Version      Lawd God I tired fe hear it I tired fe hear it so till.

On previous occasions we have offered surveys of different areas of Guyanese literature, from its origins in the oral literature of the native Amerindians in the pre-Columbian period, through the beginnings of the scribal literature—both Dutch and British—covering the colonial literature up to the founding of modern Guyanese national literature.

  The Guyanese Alphabet A             for the great Arapaima River fish that’s as tall as a man,

While there has been a kind of cooling off in the offer of plays on the popular commercial market, there has been a stepping up of activity on the Guyanese stage.

by Alim Hosein   The National Gallery of Art, in collaboration with the University of Guyana, the Guyana National Museum and the St Joseph Mercy Hospital will mount a special exhibition in celebration of Guyana’s 50th Anniversary of Independence.

2016 is already a very important year for anniversaries. For the nation of the Republic of Guyana it is most significant because it is the country’s 50th year since Independence and Golden Jubilee celebrations dominate its cultural agenda.

April 23, 2016 is an extremely important anniversary on the world literary calendar.

The National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD) staged Performance 5: Ritual at the National Cultural Centre last week Sunday night, in which it showed off the work of its students.

The Walt Disney musical Aladdin Jr was very recently performed in Guyana by the Georgetown International Academy.

The Guyanese play For Better For Worse by Leon Saul returned after a very long time to performance at the National Cultural Centre two weeks ago.

Guyana has just witnessed one of the rare wonders of its composition as a multicultural society.

This week in Guyana there is going to be the most intense activity in spoken word poetry, performance poetry, rap and hip-hop than there has ever been.

[Frank Birbalsingh, Guyana: History and Litera-ture, United Kingdom: Hansib, 2016. 324p.

There is a private collective of workers known as the Main Street Art Group who held a ‘grand art exhibition’ at the Pegasus Hotel in mid-February titled ‘Jubilee Art’.