Thinking about Theatre
Nico on Aug 21 2005 at 4:55 pm | Filed under: General Theatre
When we think about Bahamian culture, strangely enough, we don’t think about theatre. We’ll rattle on about Junkanoo or cuisine or language or art or music, but we almost always leave theatre out.
This is an odd fact about us, considering that twenty years ago The Bahamas was singled out by Caribbean neighbours as being a regional force in theatre. Along with luminaries like Dennis Scott and Errol John and Trevor Rhone, Bahamian playwrights and actors were counted among the best in the region. Pandora Gibson-Gomez and Winston Saunders, in particular, were singled out as early as 1981 by Caribbean scholars as theatrical stars, and indeed, Trevor Rhone chose The Bahamas to provide the first cast for his play Ol’ Story Time. That doesn’t even begin to touch our other great actors, from Claudette Allens to Greg Lampkin to David Jonathan Burrows to Patrick Rahming.
It’s also an odd fact, considering that playwrights such as Winston Saunders and Telcine Turner and Ian Strachan garner rave reviews wherever their works are played (Saunders’ You Can Lead a Horse To Water took the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by storm in 1991, Strachan’s Diary of Souls charmed Louisiana and Barbados in 2004, and Turner’s Woman Take Two won a Commonwealth Prize. It’s an odd fact, considering that James Catalyn‘s Summer Madness has been a fixture of Bahamian life for easily thirty years. It’s an odder fact considering that since Independence we’ve produced a folk opera (E. Clement Bethel’s Sammie Swain and a classical opera (Cleophas Adderley’s Our Boys), and that director Philip A. Burrows has an international reputation that stretches from Edinburgh to San Francisco to Barbados.
There’s a whole generation of young wannabe actors who don’t know our theatrical history, who haven’t seen the best in Bahamian theatre, and who are setting themselves up from scratch rather than building on what’s already been done.
Why’s this? Maybe because we don’t have any specific location where theatre can happen on a regular basis any more (the Dundas is too expensive and the Shirley Street Theatre is still really a cinema). I don’t know.
But I do know it’s time for us all to work for a major, major change. Nobody’s getting any younger.
Support Ringplay! Support Track Road! Support ThoughtKatcher! Support Michael Pintard and Terez Davis and James Catalyn! Support Bahamian theatre!
I have been priviliged to be apart of most of the productions which have been mentioned in this blong entry and i have always wondered why we havent seen Sammy Swain in all its glory since we did it for CHOGM many years ago – Can it be that there are no play houses to do this? – I dont know the drama around places like the Dundas and the National Theatre but it seems that if someone doesnt get a handle on this those that did Sammy Swain etc will be dead before it can be passed on (in the way that we know it to be done) – what is the solution – i wish i knew but i lament with the writer – perhaps what we need to do is work seriosuly on finding and funding a theatre so that a real series of productions can be set forth and theatre (as we knew it) will thrive again in the Bahamas -
are there any published works of Pandora Gibson Gomez?
I would like to have some of her works. The one comes to mind with her at a function that plays on ZNS.
Val, as far as I know there are no works published by Pandora but if someone else knows of any hopefully they will post and let you know. She basically did comedy routines which she knew in her head and I don’t recall her writing any of them down.