Our signature Shakespeare production this year is the comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It portrays the adventures of four young lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the local ruler, Theseus, the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, and with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. All of this of course will be imagined with a Bahamian touch. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of William Shakespeare’s most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.

Our signature Bahamian production is Telcine Turner Rolle’s award winning play, Woman Take Two. Love and greed are two elemental passions Telcine deals with in this exciting three-act play. It tells the tale of a few people forging alliances for themselves – for love and/or money. Rolle writes with sensitivity and insights into her characters. Suspenseful and intriguing, Woman Take Two provides a glimpse into the darker side of the human character and is even more poignant with the recent events in Haiti. This is a work that thousands of Bahamian students, present and former, are familiar with and would have had their first introduction to in High School.

The third work we are announcing is a production of James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones, which is also sometimes known by its full title, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. This production, written in 1927, is based on a book of poems by Johnson patterned after traditional African-American religious oratory. This work has delighted audiences in theaters, churches and other venues for over 80 years and never grows old. Our production will not only feature the junior choir from St. Francis Church, under the direction of Francis Richardson, but we will have a very talented group of actors preaching the sermons. We are presently working on having one or more of the sermons delivered, at each performance, by some very special guests. More on that will be announced later.

This is our first announcement concerning this year’s festival. You can expect to hear a lot more from us in the months to come. We expect to be announcing at least one more local work, a work from the Caribbean and a work from North America to round out the productions for this year’s festival. We will also be announcing audition dates for all of the shows being directed by Shakespeare In Paradise directors and we will let you know how you can become involved in the festival, either as a performer, a backstage worker, front of house or many of the other areas where volunteers would be needed throughout the festival.

You can find out more information, get in touch with us or keep up to date with what’s going on with the festival online here and at these various sites:

Shakespeare In Paradise Official Site
YouTube: ShakespeareParadise
Facebook: Bahamian-Shakespeare
Facebook Page: Shakespeare in Paradise
MySpace: shakespeareinparadise
Twitter: shakesparadise

Photos by Peter Ramsay

Driving Miss Daisy is a 1987 play by Alfred Uhry about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish lady and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, from 1948 to 1973. The original off-Broadway production starred Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman. The first production took place at Playwrights Horizons Theatre on 42nd Street in New York. It later moved down the street to the John Houseman Theatre. Ivey’s performance garnered her an Obie Award as Best Actress. The play was the first in Uhry’s “Atlanta Trilogy” dealing with Jewish residents of that city in the early 20th century. The play was Uhry’s most successful, winning him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was performed in London’s West End in 1988, with Dame Wendy Hiller as Miss Daisy Werthan.

In 1989, the play was adapted for a Warner Brothers film with Morgan Freeman reprising his role and Miss Daisy played by Jessica Tandy. The story defines Daisy and her point of view through a network of relationships and emotions by focusing on her home life, her synagogue, friends, family, fears, and concerns. Hoke is rarely seen out of Miss Daisy’s presence, although the title implies that the story is told from his perspective.

The film won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Picture. It is also, as of 2008, the last PG-rated film to win that title.

There will be THREE PERFORMANCES ONLY!
at The Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts:

Thursday, July 3rd – 8:30 p.m.
Friday, July 4th – 8:30 p.m.
Saturday July 5th – 8:00 p.m.

The play runs 90 minutes, without an intermission.

This production features, in order of their appearance:

Daisy Werthan – Jane Poveromo
Boolie Werthan – David Jonathan Burrows
Hoke Coleburn – Anthony “Skeebo” Roberts

The play is directed by Philip A. Burrows

Because there are only three performances, seats are limited for this production. Ticket sales information will be released to the general public in few days.

Advanced bookings are available to the readers of this blog, members on our Ringplay mailing list and subscribers to the Ringplay discussion board.

Tickets are $20 (Purchased by 4:00 p.m. on the day of the performance) or $25 if purchased at the door.

Ask about our group rates for groups of 20 or more.

There are no student discounts available for this production.

For further information, you can email us at onstage@ringplay.com or admin@artsbahamas.com.

The Children’s Teeth bites into social issues
Bethel’s new play officially opens Winston Saunders Repertory Season

By Thea Rutherford
Guardian National Correspondent
thea@nasguard.com

What makes Dr. Nicolette Bethel’s new play The Children’s Teeth so powerful is the fact that the household of characters struggling to sew up the old wounds of their lives could be your neighbors.

The meddlesome mother who can’t mask her concern for her daughter, the middle-aged daughter turned widow who tries to be a dutiful wife long after her husband’s death, the children who relate to their father’s daughter in different ways and the “outside” daughter who never quite fit in, all try to survive under one sagging roof. The house they live in crumbling as the already shaky family crumbles within it.

Throw in the high strung nephew whose connection to the family further complicated by the specter of a relationship gone sour and a developer who wants to buy the dilapidated house the father built with his own hands, and you add to a story that already churns with an undertow of complexities that linger with the audience long after the final curtain call.

As the family grapples with the reality of the father’s death and the patchwork of confusion left in his wake, he haunts the halls of the house he left for them, chiding them, watching over them and counseling one unexpected member of his family to be the savior of them all.

Watching the play is like looking over the fence into the neighbors’ yard only to discover that you share similar problems. The pretty lies, the things left unsaid that hold so many households together, become ugly when there’s no one around to maintain the myths and nurse the unspoken divisions.

The play’s explosive second act becomes the centripetal force pulling the errant wills of all of the characters together in unforeseen tragedy. Undoubtedly thought provoking and frequently funny, The Children’s Teeth embraces issues of inheritance, Haitian immigration and infidelity that are embedded in the society.

The eight-member cast play began as a short story written for a creative writing class in university, the playwright confessed after Thursday night’s gala opening at the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts. “It’s been through a lot of different formats,” said Dr. Bethel. The play has been a work in progress for 16 years.

On Thursday, it officially opened the new Winston Saunders Repertory Season “in honor of the late playwright and cultural icon” and marked what is hoped to be a sustained revival of the country’s enervated performing arts scene. The new season is the first since 1999. Saunders’ widow Dr. Gail Saunders attended the event.

Bethel eventually worked the short story into the play, named after the Biblical verse of Ezekiel 18:2, but stalled on the first act. “I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t know what was happening . . . I don’t even remember how it all came together. I just had this family in mind and I had this ghost, and I had a story but I didn’t have a theme.”

Bethel continued work on the play while discussing it with her husband and the play’s director Philip Burrows. “In the last six or seven years I figured out what was going to happen in the second act,” she said.

After extensive re-working and workshopping, the play, produced by Ringplay Productions was ready for the theater. The cast consists of both theater veterans and newcomers whose sincere performances blend seamlessly on stage. Burrows was pleased with the outcome.

“I think it went pretty well,” he said. “It’ll vary each night because each night it’ll be different levels of energy here and there but I thought they were pretty strong tonight, and I think they’ll continue to get even better and just move forward.”

The Children’s Teeth is set for a 13-night run (corrected, an 8 night run) at the Dundas. It is the first of a list of productions planned by Track Road Theatre, Scribes Ltd., Thoughtkatcher Enterprises and Ringplay Productions to fill the new repertory season.

Nicolette worked on this play on and off for about sixteen years and finally decided to let it be produced. As with Powercut, which was staged in the early 90’s and was later made into a feature film, Nicolette draws from her own life experiences. If you knew her well you might recognize family members or family events in her work.

Ringplay Productions, of which Nicolette is a board member, chose this play to open the new Winston V. Saunders Repertory Season. The play was always meant to be a part of the season but when difficulties arose with the re-staging of Winston’s You Can Lead A Horse To Water to open the season it was decided that The Children’s Teeth would be the inaugural play. It was something of which we thought Uncle Winston, who read the play before his death, would approve.

The play boasts an interesting mix of actors, from veterans to relative newcomers. Returning to the stage after a long absence dabbling in politics and in other areas is Theresa Moxey-Ingraham. She plays ‘Ellie’, the matriarch of the Williams family, who is struggling to make ends meet since the death of her husband over four years ago. Anthony “Skeebo” Roberts, a veteran of Ringplay Productions, plays that husband, ‘Neville’, a ghost. Theatre veteran Claudette “Cookie” Allens plays ‘Blanche’, the cantankerous mother of ‘Ellie’, who has no difficulty speaking her mind, and who has no filter on what comes out of her mouth. Leah Eneas plays ‘Neville’s’ daughter, ‘Donnie’, who was conceived by a Haitian mother and raised by ‘Ellie’ and has now returned home and very quickly sets the cat amongst the pigeons. Kennedy Storr plays ‘Ross’, a nephew/cousin. who is also a former lover of ‘Donnie’ and a person keenly interested in “helping” ‘Ellie’ get a sale for her house. Another veteran of Ringplay Productions, Scott Adderley, is ‘Hepden Smith’, a developer who is keenly interested in buying the Williams home. Rounding out the case are two newcomers to Ringplay Productions, but not newcomers to the stage. Both actors, along with Leah Eneas, are members of Thoughtkatcher Enterprises and have appeared in Da Spot. Candaclyn Rigby plays ‘Stacey’, ‘Ellie’ and ‘Neville’s’ daughter, and Dion Johnson plays her brother ‘Jeff’.

The Children’s Teeth touches on a number of themes including, but not limited to, family property, Haitian immigration, infidelity and sibling rivalry. It deals with these, and other themes, with both humour and pathos.

Philip A. Burrows, Artistic Director of Ringplay Productions and former Artistic Director of the Dundas Repertory Season, directs the production.

The Children’s Teeth will only have eight performances, which begin on Thursday, January 17th at the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts and continue through Saturday, January 19th. Performances begin again on Tuesday, January 22nd and go through Saturday, January 26th. Starting time for all performances is 8:30 p.m. and tickets are $20 if reserved or $25 at the door. The Children’s Teeth is Rated “C”.