Last year we took a huge gamble. We pulled together Shakespeare in Paradise on a dream and a prayer, with no money to get things going, but armed with an idea and some faith that it could work. And it did — thanks to the support of the public, who bought tickets and came out in good numbers, and because of the generosity of many partners who gave grants and exchanges in kind that helped cut our cash expenditures in more than half. Thanks to you all, Shakespeare in Paradise 2009 was able to break even.

But breaking even is only part of the picture. We’ve got a plan for this festival, and we envision a future that has Shakespeare in Paradise as a regular part of the social and artistic calendar. So it’s not enough just to cover our costs — we have to cover our costs and bank a little to make sure we can mount a festival in a year’s time.

Just so you know — the festival costs roughly $200,000 to produce, all told. To put that in perspective: our ticket prices last year topped at $25, and we offered several discounts to make it possible for people to attend multiple performances and to help students afford to come see our plays. But for us to cover all our costs from ticket sales alone we would have had to sell our tickets at $50 a head!

Now that leaves us in a difficult position. We could raise our ticket prices. We could eliminate all discounts. But neither of these is an option that appeals to us. We happen to believe that theatre isn’t a luxury in a democratic society. We buy into the Shakespearean idea that theatre holds a mirror up to nature, and that societies without theatre don’t often get to look properly at themselves or the world they inhabit. So we won’t be raising our ticket prices anytime soon, and we’ll let the discounts stand.

So what are our other options? Here’s where you come in. You can help us bring off this festival in one of any number of ways:

1. Become a Sponsor! Last year, Shakespeare in Paradise reached audiences of 3,500 people. This year, we’ve added an extra weekend and a production or two, and we hope to increase our reach to 5,000. Your support will benefit us both!

2. Make a donation! If you do not have a business and would like to contribute to the growth of theatre in The Bahamas you are welcome to just make a donation to the festival!

3. Become a Partner! If you are low on funds but you have services or goods to offer, consider a barter or in-kind exchange. If it were not for our barter exchanges last year we would have never been able to pull off the festival—your help this year will be invaluable!

4. Book early! We’ll be releasing our schedule in the next two weeks, and we’ll be opening our phonelines for advance bookings. Get your tickets then! I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the more actual ticket sales we get, the more streamlined we can make our advertising budget. And it’ll help you as well as us — advance bookings are the best places to get discounts on multiple shows. What we seem to lose on advance sales can be saved in advertising dollars, so help us out and buy your tickets as soon as you can!

5. Buy our merchandise! Last year we printed up t-shirts for each of our productions, and we sold the t-shirts at the productions. This year we hope to have a range of t-shirts — not just the expensive limited-edition poster tees that we sold last year, but also a more affordable generic Shakespeare in Paradise 2010 tee as well. Come and help us sell out of both!

6. Help us move last year’s merchandise! We’ve got shirts left over from all of our productions except for The Tempest. You’ve still got a chance to wear a small piece of art by Jace McKinney (One White One Black), Reuno Pratt (Caribbean Voices), Lindsay Braynen (Zora), Jon Murray (Love in Two Acts), or Trevaughn Neely (Music of The Bahamas). We’ve also got CDs and VHS copies of Music of The Bahamas for sale as well (special order DVDs – burned specifically for you can also be purchased). Move fast, though — we’ve got limited supplies!

7. Sponsor a schoolchild or two! For $15 per person, you can help us subsidize our school discounts of $10 a student. Help us make theatre an integral part of the Bahamian schoolchild’s experience!

8. Advertise in our programme! We’re printing a minimum of 5000 of these for distribution throughout the festival. Like last year, our programmes are attractive and collectible, so contact us for pricing!

9. Support our sponsors! We’ll add their logos to our website as they come on board, so please give them your business!

10. Spread the word! The more you talk about Shakespeare in Paradise, the more word of mouth we get, the less we’ll need to invest in advertising and marketing coverage. Let’s make this festival a viral thing!

Contact us for more information: admin@shakespeareinparadise.org

Bel Canto will be presenting its 2010 Music for All Times performances at St. Andrews’ The Kirk on Friday, May 7th at 8:00pm and Saturday, May 8th at 8:00pm. This year’s Affair is to be held under the Patronage of Sir Arthur, Deputy to the Governor General of The Bahamas and Lady Joan Foulkes. Tickets are $35. These concerts mark The Bel Canto Singers’ fifth anniversary. The concerts will be recorded as the group endeavors to reach more persons through the sale of compact discs (CD’s). The events promises to be enjoyable as music from various countries and periods will be performed.

The Bel Canto Singers are fortunate to present international recitalist and operatic soprano, Carmen Balthrop, as the featured artist for this Concert Series.

Mr. Eldridge McPhee directs the vocal ensemble of 16 singers. He is again about to fulfill another one of his visions: to bring a consortium of music to the Bahamian stage. When the evening opens, the audience will be thrilled with a rendition of Gloria by modern-day composer, Randall Bass; Mark Haye’s All Creatures of Our God and King; Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing arranged by Mack Wilberg. This has been performed by the internationally renowned Morman Tabernacle Choir, and is a choral masterpiece. This year, the singers will present various forms of Spirituals by some of the world’s leading composers such as Moses Hogan, Hal Johnson, Norman Luboff and Jester Hairston, arrangements in beautiful six and eight part harmonies that highlight the rich and robust singing style that Bel Canto Singers Bahamas has become well known for executing.

Mr. Dionne Cunningham, an accomplished and lettered musician, who is quickly making a name for himself in this community, will accompany the group. Mr. Cunningham will again thrill our patrons with his competent renditions of works by Beethoven for piano.

Mr. McPhee comments… “For the past three years, I have been realizing my vision; to work with individuals, through musical productions, to have an impact on the lives of our members thereby impacting their communities.  The mark of a good leader is one who is disciplined, and after having studied music for some 35 years, I know that talent and discipline create success.  This formula is not unique to music.”

International performing artist Lee B. Callender, pianist – vocal and piano coach said “Bel Canto exemplifies its Italian name, “beautiful singing” at its best. This group with its rich full bodied expressive sound is a delight to the ear – An exhilarating, captivating listening experience.”?

Bel Canto Singers, through its annual production of Christmastide has raised more than $47,000 net for charities including The AIDS Foundation over the past five yuletide seasons.

Mr. Mcphee further comments… “I have seen BCS members grow as musicians as well as husbands, wives and partners and parents.  More importantly, I have seen members of this group come to learn and to understand what it means to become points of light, in their workplaces, churches, civic organizations and at play.”

Bel Canto completed its first international concert, which was held in Columbia, South Carolina on April 27th, 2008.  Dr. Sandra Teel, Min. of Music and St. Simon and St. Jude Episcopal Church said, “It was a marvelous pleasure to welcome such a professional, talented group to perform for us. The breadth of repertoire was fantastic – from Broadway to the stairway to heaven. How wonderful! And I’m looking forward to our next (and annual) event!”

… another patron said, “The sound of the group was unparalleled. I could hardly believe my ears – so few voices, such a powerful sound.”

For tickets or further information, please write us at info@mbproductionsbahamas.com or call us at 242.376.2772 or 242.431.6440.

“… probably the most reassuring thing about the best among [intuitive] artists is that [their art] is achieved with freedom from demagoguery and without the crassness of social realism. Yet they are no less ‘revolutionary’ for it. Rather, they are the embodiment of that creative tension between tradition and revolution, between an ancestral past and a groping but hopefully self-assured future. They are, as well, the embodiment of passion and contemplation of culture and instinct.”

Rex Nettleford, 1979

via The NGJ Pays Tribute to Rex Nettleford « National Gallery of Jamaica Blog.

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

Sixty years of forgotten treasures

Britain is to get a Black Theatre Archive. Playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah relives his role in its creation

In Britain, my work is almost exclusively compared to that of Roy Williams. This has always enraged me. Roy is a fine, prolific writer; but even if we were to be compared on the most obvious grounds – race – we still write out of two very different black traditions. I am terribly influenced by the African-American canon and stand on the shoulders of playwrights such as Edgar White, whereas Roy’s work has echoes of Caryl Phillips. And Roy, I would argue, takes inspiration from sources closer to home. What amazed me was that US critics seemed to get that. Although they weren’t always complimentary, to me that was secondary: what was important was that here was intelligent, detailed analysis and context.

Sixty years of forgotten treasures | Kwame Kwei-Armah | Stage | The Guardian