Arts on Sunday

Ronald Hollingsworth over the years has risen to be among the most prominent and established Guyanese dramatists – as both playwright and director. 

Not wanting to deny, I believed it.  Not wanting to believe it I denied our Bastille Day. 

The performance of a play in Georgetown, Pleasing Mrs Jones, by a Linden drama group led by Mike James revealed a number of very interesting developments in the popular theatre that suggest the way Guyana is reflecting current regional trends. 

This subject was earlier approached in a publication The Walter Rodney Factor in West Indian Literature by Al Creighton and partly carried in ‘Arts on Sunday.’

In considering recent offerings of new plays in Guyana, one can sense what seems to be a current trend developing. 

The pantomime is an important and popular tradition in the Caribbean theatre. 

Students of English at the University of Guyana over the past two years have been going out into the field to collect samples of Guyanese oral literature. 

Coffee in Heaven You’ll be greeted by a nice cup of coffee when you get to heaven and strains of angelic harmony.

Among the events held in Guyana to commemorate Arrival Day 2013 were an exhibition by the Ministry of Culture at the National Museum and the staging of Nrityageet 34 at the National Cultural Centre in conjunction with an exhibition of art presented by ICT under the theme The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting.

Foremost among the ‘Bard’s’ outstanding qualities are the timelessness and profundity of so many of his poetic lines. 

The screening of Brown Sugar Too Bitter For Me in Georgetown last week marks not only the release of the latest work in the building of a Guyanese film industry, but the third attempt to treat issues and struggles in the sugar industry in a movie. 

William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564-April 23, 1616) is the subject of intensified attention this weekend in his birthplace Stratford, England, and the rest of the world will take notice this week Tuesday, because April 23 will mark the celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday.

We have on previous occasions commented on the theatre of comedy as a tradition in the Caribbean, its changing trends and the way it has grown to become serious business in the Guyanese theatre. 

We returned to our places, these kingdoms But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation With an alien people clutching their gods  Eliot, “The Journey of the Magi” Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

While Anansi stories are dominant in the folk tales of the Caribbean, they were also a favourite in the storytelling tradition when it was a popular past-time in the region.

World Story-telling Day is celebrated across the globe in several different countries.

Guyana’s National Dance Company (NDC) staged their first public performance of 2013 with a full dance production at the Theatre Guild Playhouse in February. 

What mighty contests rise from trivial Things -Pope The Rape of the Lock …divers coloured fans, whose wind did seem to glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, and what they undid did – Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra Guyana’s major national festival Mashramani exploded in colour, spectacle, performance, revelry and music in February 2013 as the nation celebrated its Republic anniversary.

In a number of important ways the performance of the GT&T Link Show 29 in February and March of 2013 may be recorded as an achievement, while in a few other areas there are questions and blemishes. 

(Kris Rampersad, Littscapes: Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago, St Augustine, Trinidad, 2012 : 200 p.)