Ringplay Productions

Over the past eight days, dream became reality.

Shakespeare in Paradise, an international theatre festival, opened on October 5th, and closed on the holiday Monday. As far as we can tell, it’s the first festival of its kind in the English-speaking Caribbean, featuring seven productions over the eight-day period, taking place in seven separate venues, and providing a mix of productions and a mix of nationalities.

For our first festival, it was a success. The idea was a hit with the Bahamian public, who came out in numbers, giving us sold-out houses for much of the weekend and near-capacity houses during the week. It was even attractive to our visitors and second-home residents, as individuals from the cruise ships, Atlantis, and Lyford Cay made their way to the shows.

We had more crucial partnerships with local corporate entities than we ever dreamed of, and that made it possible for us to mount the festival with virtually no cash flow to speak of. Not until we opened our box office and began selling tickets did we get the kind of revenue that enabled us to start paying the bills we were running up, and there were a tense couple of weeks just before the festival, when we were seeking to finance our programmes, our tickets, and our line of t-shirts. But our partnerships — which enabled us to house our visiting artists, provide them with transportation around town, run the ads that got our audiences interested, and create the look for the festival that made us attractive — carried us through.

So we’d like to thank everyone who made the festival possible. We’ll thank them personally and often, but for now, a big big hug and thank you to them all:

Ringplay Productions
Track Road Theatre
The Dundas
The Hub
The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas
Nirvana Beach
Graycliff
Marley Resort
CL Concepts/You in Music
Cable Bahamas
Robin Hood
The Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture
Gems FM
La Rose
The Ministry of Tourism
The Endowment for the Performing Arts
Cable Bahamas Cares Foundation
Coles of Nassau
Buttons Formal Wear
Cultural Experience Productions
Wild Seed Designs
Blanco Bleach

… and many many others. Thanks to you all!!

Tags: Shakespeare in Paradise

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Hard on the heels of Trevor Rhone’s passing comes news of the death of another Caribbean theatre giant: Surinamese director Henk Tjon.

If it weren’t for CARIFESTA, we would have never met Henk, nor would we have been exposed to his passion and his eloquence on the subject of the role of the arts in Caribbean society.

Most of the reports are in Dutch, so it’s hard to get specific information on his passing. However, he suffered a stroke in a few years ago, and when I met him again in Guyana (I first met him in Trinidad in 2004) it was clear that he was not well.

Henk was one of the architects of the New CARIFESTA Festival model (a model our country seems determined to reject). He will be remembered for its success when at last it is tested for real. He died too soon; he was only 61.

Walk good, Henk.

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Yesterday we were shocked and saddened to hear that Trevor Rhone died of a heart attack, at only 69.

For those of you who don’t know who Trevor Rhone is, or don’t know you know who he is: he co-wrote the 1970 Jamaican cult classic film The Harder They Come.

In the theatre world, though, he’s remembered both here in Nassau and in his native Jamaica as one of the region’s most prominent playwrights. Bahamian companies have produced at least three of his plays both here and in Grand Bahama over time — School’s Out, Smile Orange, and of course, Old Story Time, which premiered in Nassau at the Dundas with the following Bahama Drama Circle cast:  Winston Saunders, John Trainer, Pandora Gibson-Gomez, Calvin Cooper, Gwen Kelly, and Joan Vanderpool.  In the 1980s, too, the Dundas Repertory hosted another of Trevor’s plays, Two Can Play by a company out of Guyana.  We will miss him!

The Caribbean world has lost another great playwright. Walk good, Trevor. Walk good.

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The idea for a theatre festival has been knocking around in Ringplay’s repertoire for the better part of 10 years. I’ve blogged about it here already, so no need to go into all of that. It’s become a reality, though, because it was time.

In our country, where we welcome millions of tourists annually (from the 1.2 million who stop over to the almost 4 million who come on cruises), where we have no indigenous entertainment to offer those visitors, you’d think that it might be a national priority to develop activities that would attract attention, keep that attention, and — more to the point — keep those tourists coming back for more.

Well, in theory, that’s a good idea. But in practice? Another story. We often rely on our government to take the lead in this sort of thing. In this case, though, it’s easier said than done. One of the biggest obstacles to making such projects work was the fact that government agencies cannot easily collect money. In the government structure that we have, revenue and expenditure are two different entities, and they rarely, if ever, talk to one another. All revenue, whether it be gross or net, is to be paid directly into the Consolidated Fund, and all expenditure comes out of the annual budget allotted to the government agencies at the beginning of each budget year. If that budget, as approved by Finance, does not include an item to cover the expenditure of mounting productions that could bring revenue in — and more to the point, if the revenue generated by those productions is not permitted to be equivalent to the projected expenditure — then one cannot produce shows.

At the same time, the business of putting on productions for paying audiences, even in The Bahamas where people often decry our small population as making it impossible to make theatre pay, has a track record of modest success. Most shows, if well publicized and well managed, can at the very least cover their expenses out of their ticket sales alone, and in some cases turn small profits. Given the fact that our actual target audience is far larger than the permanent population of the country — our tourists need things to do onshore — surely live theatre can have some measure of success. What’s more, when ticket sales are paired with the model of attracting sponsorship from companies and individuals to assist in the mounting of such shows, theatre in The Bahamas should be able to sustain itself over time and even, in the long term, be able to do what politicians seem to imagine is the be-all and end-all of existence — create opportunities for employment. (See Ward Minnis for a fuller exposition of this idea.)

The aim of Shakespeare in Paradise, then, is to do just that. It’s an uncommon, lofty goal, but it’s one that we believe, if managed, could succeed. Why do we believe that?

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Tags: creating a festival, cultural industries, Shakespeare in Paradise

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These were taken yesterday, at the second workshop. Participants were learning the fine art of stage managing. The location: the back studio of the National Dance School.

Marking out the stage

Learning how to mark the script to call the show

Learning about the Prop Table

Tags: Shakespeare in Paradise, Workshops

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Mikey Reiach’s production workshops began Monday night at the National Dance School. I (Nicolette) caught the end of the workshop, and I can tell you that those people who are enrolled in it are getting great exposure to what it takes to create live theatre.

***

And meantime, Craig Pinder’s rehearsals for The Tempest are moving on, and rehearsals have shifted from one cast member’s house to another, bigger one.
Patti-Anne Ali arrives on Saturday, and after that the real work begins. Right now — the play’s getting read again, and everybody’s reading it.

More here!

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Were held yesterday beginning at 4 p.m.

Turnout was lower than expected, but the voices were pretty good — some exciting new people turned up!

Musical Director Adrian Archer and Director Philip A. Burrows heard the hopefuls.

All in all, 12 people came out to audition at St. George’s Anglican Church.

Rehearsals will begin very soon — music rehearsals will start mid-week.

We’re on our way!!!!

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Twenty-five people have been admitted into the Production Workshops (how exciting is that?!), which means that unless someone drops out, Mikey has his hands full.

You can still email him at mreiach (at) gmail (dot) com if you are interested and he will let you know if a space opens up.

We have got a place for the workshops right now — this week’s workshops will take place at the National Dance School, Rosetta Street & East Ave (in the plaza by Roberts Furniture, above the Honda showroom), Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 7-10 p.m.

We’re excited!!! Hope you are too!

Tags: festival, Shakespeare in Paradise, Workshops

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Shakespeare In Paradise Production Workshops start on Monday August 17, 2009.

Bahamian theatre technician Michael Reiach, graduate of the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning’s theatre programme and veteran lighting and sound operator, will share his expertise with interested students in preparation for the Shakespeare in Paradise theatre festival.

The workshop will cover the following:

• Stage Managing
  • A theatre production is a complex activity, requiring full coordination and discipline. The main reason many productions fail (are boring, start late, move slowly, etc) is that they do not have active or competent stage managers. The stage manager runs the show from behind the scenes.
  • In this workshop, you’ll learn the basics of stage managing – what goes into a show, what details need to be covered, what makes a show great.
• Stage Lighting
  • In theatre, lighting supplements the action on the stage by setting moods, augmenting scenery, providing special effects, and so on. Lighting can make or break a show — but often it’s more subtle than the lighting that is done for concerts and other live performance.
  • In this workshop, you’ll learn the basics of theatrical lighting
• Audio for the Stage
  • Audio for theatre (which is largely acoustic, indoor, live performance) is different from audio for music concerts or studio work, where amplifiers carry the heaviest load. Actors are responsible for making themselves heard; audio technicians are responsible for assisting them.
  • In this workshop you’ll learn the basics of theatre audio, including a couple of tricks that you may not have known before
• General theatre orientation
  • The theatre is a whole business. What goes onstage is like the tip of an iceberg — beneath it is a network of support that makes the show succeed.
  • In this workshop you’ll learn all the various elements of theatre, from front of house and box office to management to backstage and technical support.

The workshop has been made possible by a generous grant from the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture. It will take place at the National Dance School, Rosetta Street Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from August 17 to August 27, 2009.

Tags: festival, Shakespeare in Paradise, Workshops

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