Rex Nettleford 1933-2010

Jamaica lost one of its most revered cultural figures last night when Professor Rex Nettleford, vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and founder of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC), died, just hours before he would have celebrated his 77th birthday.

Nettleford passed away at George Washington Hospital in Washington, DC, one week after suffering a heart attack at a hotel in the United States capital.

via Jamaica Gleaner News – Icon lost – Golding, Simpson Miller mourn Nettleford – Lead Stories – Wednesday | February 3, 2010.

Rex Nettleford: artist, choreographer, academic, labour activist, dancer, author, perpetual student of Caribbean identity, strength and place. Jamaica’s icon; the Caribbean’s heart.

We will not be the same.

Walk good, Rex.

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

All the female parts have been cast, but we’re still looking for some men for The Tempest. We’ll be auditioning at the Hub, Bay and Colebrooke, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday August 8th, 2009.

Audition pieces may be downloaded here.

And here’s the result of all of that silence:

Ringplay Productions is excited to announce the First Annual International Shakespeare in Paradise Theatre Festival, to be held in Nassau, Bahamas, 5th-12th October, 2009.

Shakespeare in Paradise celebrates the best in World, Caribbean, African, and African American theatre, all presented in historic and exciting spaces in New Providence.

This year’s inaugural festival will feature Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Zora, a one-woman play by Laurence Holder about the life of African-American anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, whose work in Georgia, Florida, The Bahamas and the Caribbean remains inspirational today; and One White One Black, a two-hander by Caymanian Frank McField, a play that wowed audiences in CARIFESTA X Guyana.

For more information go here:  http://shakespeareinparadise.org

And watch this space.

In 1965, an African-American playwright by the name of Douglas Turner Ward wrote a play he called Day of Absence, which told the story of a small town — any small town — in the Deep South in which the white inhabitants discover on a particular day that all the black people have disappeared.

When this fact becomes general knowledge, the establishment comes to the brink of chaos. Without its black labor force, the town is paralyzed because of its dependence on this sector of the community.

Day of Absence: Information from Answers.com

Part of the reason I agreed to take the job of Director of Cultural Affairs, and much of the reason I left, was that, in many ways like African-Americans in the 1960s USA (and black Bahamians, and people of African heritage the world over), cultural workers in The Bahamas — artists, musicians, writers, actors, directors, dancers, designers, craftworkers, you name it — are marginalized, disrespected, and taken for granted in our nation.

Thirty-six years after independence and forty-one years after majority rule, creative workers in our country are unable to find work in the areas in which God has gifted them. There are virtually no avenues in The Bahamas to enable creative people to develop and hone their talents, or to enable them to make use of them when they are developed. Our greatest brain drain is arguably in the area of the arts; like Sidney Poitier over sixty years ago, Bahamians who want to exercise their talents in the cultural industries are faced with the choice of pursuing their callings as hobbies at home, or of leaving home to make a living by their gifts elsewhere. And we are all the poorer for it. 

That we appear to be unaware of the absurdity of this state of affairs in a nation which welcomes several millions of tourists to our shores annually is indicative, to my mind, of our abject conviction as a people that Bahamians, and particularly Bahamians of colour, are congenitally unable to produce, behave, or perform at any level that could possibly be considered world-class, and that it is a waste of time, money and effort to believe anything else.

Newsflash. No country can be great, or even good, without its artists. When all has passed away, when all has crumbled and gone, it’s not the speeches of the politicians, the enforcement of the country’s laws, the profit and the loss, or the tourist arrivals that are left behind to tell the story of the people who once walked this earth. It’s the art. It’s the statues, the paintings, the music, the poetry. Until we invest and believe in our art, and until we respect our artists, our country will never even be.

And so I’m calling for a Day of Absence in honour of all cultural workers in The Bahamas and around the world.

On February 11, 2009, I’m asking us all to stop — for a day, for a moment even, and imagine our country, our world, if we woke up one day and all the artists and cultural workers had disappeared.

I see it as a symbolic day, to be started this year and go on annually, where artists can come together in person or in cyberspace, and blog, email, sing, act, perform, speak, or whatever they want to do, in honour of art and artists themselves.

I chose February 11 because it’s my father’s birthday, and the disrespect began to be evident when he was Director of Culture. It wasn’t so clear while he was living. As with so much in this country, the people who did not respect what he stood for, who did not respect his art, respected him. Many of the leaders — the politicians of his day, and certainly the senior civil servants — had been his schoolmates, had known him and his family for years, and trusted him when he said he could do things. It’s for this reason and none other (well, maybe it was also because of our new-nation status too) that culture flourished to the extent that it did during the 1970s and early 1980s in The Bahamas. But his death in August 1987 took everyone by surprise.

People say that no one is dispensable, and there is certainly truth in that; but some people, especially when they fill a gap that is created because of ignorance or prejudice or disrespect, are irreplaceable. My father appeared to be one of those people — not because of any specialness about him (though he was special) but because of the fundamental emptiness and fear of self of the Bahamian people and their leaders.  Our cultural development didn’t take place during his tenure because our country respected culture. It took place because our leaders respected him. It took the government 7 years to replace him because they had taken him and his position and the work he was doing so much for granted, and had no idea what they had lost or how to replace it.

I know governments are only a part of the equation, but the things he left in place when he died in 1987 have yet to be replicated or replaced by the government or the country of The Bahamas, and culture has absolutely no respect in the national discourse.

And so: Day of Absence. It’s to be a day like Green Day or World Hunger Day — a movement, an idea that can catch fire, a spark that can spread without specific action, but just as people see the idea and become ignited by it.

Art and culture are the most human, the most divine, the most basic, and the most true actions that any living human being can do. But in The Bahamas (and throughout the world too) arts and culture are far more likely to be laughed at, talked down about, ignored, dismissed, insulted, disrespected, and taken for granted than any other action.

There are more creative people and more creative activity in our nation than there are other people with special interests. Yet our government has no legislation that supports our activity. It has a whole national sporting complex in Nassau and has sports fields and sports equipment and sports activities throughout the Bahamas, and it has legislation to govern hotels and tourist activity and education and health and disability, but nothing either in law or on the ground, to support, encourage or develop artistic activity.

And yet artists and cultural workers in The Bahamas and throughout the world are the invisible backbone of nations. When people think about what is “Bahamian” they think about what we produce, not what the doctors, lawyers, athletes, or politicians produce. This is true in every part of society, from top to bottom, from secular to religious.

And yet no one wants to recognize us, respect us, hire us, support us, or acknowledge that we exist or are important.

The Day of Absence concept is designed to get us as artists and society as general to imagine a world without artists. It is a day on which artists can stop what they are doing so that people can notice how fundamental art and artistic production and cultural activity are to everyday life. It is a day on which we encourage DJs to stop playing music for an entire minute, hour, or day, when we ask talk show hosts and newscasters and writers and editors and songwriters and artists and straw workers and advertising agencies and whoever else works in the creative field, is unappreciated for their activity, is producing work that people think of as “soft” or unnecessary, to stop doing what they do so that the people who do not respect us understand for just one moment or just one day that we are important, that without us society stops.

It’s a day to wear white because it’s a day without colour. Artists govern colour.

It’s a day to be silent because it’s a day without music, writing, speeches. Artists produce music, writing, speeches.

It’s a day to stop spending cash because without artists, money has no meaning — the designs on our coins and our paper money were created by artists.

It’s a day to worship silently, without music, or pretty clothing or the Bible, because artists are the vehicles God chooses to express the glory of His creation and Himself.

It’s a day of reflection, of discussion, of absence in honour of the creative spirit that our society insists on beating down, on disrespecting, on crushing.

On February 11, 2009, I will observe it.  Come join me.

Important Links:

• Global Voices: Cultural Solidarity
• Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot: Day of Absence Solidarity
• Womanish Words: And Still They Serve
• The Gaulin Wife: In Honour of a Day of Absence 
• Blogworld: Day of Absence Solidarity
• Facebook: Video of COB Peaceful Demonstration

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.

Remember the security breach we wrote about a while ago?  Well, it turned out to be harder than anybody thought to find it.  We’ve been looking for it and so has the host.

Today, the malicious code was finally located and erased.

Our apologies to all who were affected by it.  We have been working on tightening and cleaning all week.

If you’re observant, you’ll also notice a couple of other changes.

For those people who have bookmarks to specific pages, I advise you to change them.  The blog is now hosted at nicobethel.net/ringplay, instead of nicobethel.net/WordPress as before.  And we have also locked the domain, so that you will always see ringplay.com in the address bar when you aren’t accessing specific pages. (We changed that so that you could update your RSS feeds.)

Finally, if your browser is Firefox or Opera or IE (I believe), you may have got a warning saying that this site might be harmful to your computer.  Well, we’ve asked for a review of that and hope that we’ve caught all the bad code.  From what we can tell, all is now well.

So there it is. All that for a company that’s homeless and looking for a place to put on Driving Miss Daisy!