Caribbean Theatre: a PostColonial Story
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CARIBBEAN THEATRE: A POSTCOLONIAL STORY Edward Baugh I am going to speak about Caribbean theatre and drama in English, which are also called West Indian theatre and West Indian drama. The story is one of how theatre in the English‐speaking Caribbean developed out of a colonial situation, to cater more and more relevantly to native Caribbean society, and how that change of focus inevitably brought with it the writing of plays that address Caribbean concerns, and do that so well that they can command admiring attention from audiences outside the Caribbean. I shall begin by taking up Ms [Chihoko] Matsuda’s suggestion that I say something about my own involvement in theatre, which happened a long time ago. It occurs to me now that my story may help to illustrate how Caribbean theatre has changed over the years and, in the process, involved the emergence of Caribbean drama. Theatre was my hobby from early, and I was actively involved in it from the mid‐Nineteen Fifties until the early Nineteen Seventies. It was never likely to be more than a hobby. There has never been a professional theatre in the Caribbean, from which one could make a living, so the thought never entered my mind. And when I stopped being actively involved in theatre, forty years ago, it was because the demands of my job, coinciding with the demands of raising a family, severely curtailed the time I had for stage work, especially for rehearsals. When I was actively involved in theatre, it was mainly as an actor, although I also did some Baugh playing Polonius in Hamlet (1967) ― 3 ― directing. The productions in which I was involved give some indication of the focus and aspirations of Caribbean theatre at that period. I acted in nine productions and directed two. Almost all of the eleven were English or European plays that could be called classics. Five of those in which I acted were by Shakespeare: King Lear, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and Macbeth. The other four included Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, and Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not For Burning, a romantic comedy then in vogue in London and New York. The fourth was a popular English or American thriller, whose title and author I don’t remember. The two plays Baugh playing Creon in Antigone (1962) which I directed were by major American writers: John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. So I suppose I can claim that I was helping to bring high‐quality drama to the Caribbean stage, but it was not Caribbean drama. However, at the time when I was active in theatre, Caribbean drama was beginning to fulfill more closely the primary function of theatre: to make a society see itself, critically. As Wycliffe Bennett and Hazel Bennett write in their book The Jamaican Theatre: “One of the consequences of the British conquest [of the Caribbean] was that, by becoming English‐speaking, Jamaica acquired British national memories, ideas, legends and customs that flow from one generation to the next through the English language.”1 Up to well into the twentieth century, “the theatrical scene [was] dominated by touring companies from overseas.”2 Local theatre groups consisted exclusively of British expatriates and white or near‐white Jamaicans, and “Up to the late 1930s […] the number of black faces in the audience at theatrical productions could be counted on the fingers of one hand.”3 The situation was much the same throughout the West Indies. As Bruce King writes: Before 1948 most high culture was imported and there was little in the way of indigenous theatre. The few local amateur theatre groups were white, with some light‐skinned non‐whites, and performed European or American plays.4 ― 4 ― In Barbados, the Bridgetown Players [established in 1942] and the Green Room [Theatre, established 1951, were] dominated by white expatriates, assisted by white and not‐quite‐white Barbadians. The productions catered to the taste of a socially privileged minority, offering light material, such as English drawing‐room comedy and “whodunnits” …. 5 It was from the end of the 1940s that Caribbean theatre in English began to change its “colour,” with the gradual emergence of gifted Caribbean playwrights exploring Caribbean themes, and with a corresponding rise of Caribbean actors and directors of a Caribbean orientation. One or two landmark events will illustrate. I begin with a personal experience. In March 1954 I was still living in my hometown of Port Antonio, which is a good distance from Kingston, the capital of Jamaica and also the theatre capital of Jamaica. I used to read newspaper reviews of plays produced in Kingston, and I longed to be able to see them. I would be entering the University College of the West Indies as a student in October. I saw a complimentary review of a play, Henri Christophe, staged by the College’s Dramatic Society, the student drama group of the College. The group was very active and their productions were of a high standard. But what was remarkable about this play was not only that it had been written by a student, but also that it was about the Haitian Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the black Haitian slaves revolted successfully against their white, French colonial masters, a landmark event in Caribbean history. My anticipation of becoming a student at the College was heightened by the thought of being in an environment where such a development in Caribbean theatre could occur. That play was written and directed by Derek Walcott, who was to become the leading playwright of the English‐speaking Caribbean, and a major pioneer in the development of Caribbean theatre. Even before he had entered the University College as a student, Walcott had made Caribbean theatre history by being co‐founder of the St Lucia Arts Guild, whose aim was precisely the creation of truly Caribbean theatre. The leaders of the group included his twin brother, Roderick, who was also to become a notable dramatist. Henri Christophe was the first play performed by the St Lucia Arts Guild, in 1950, before Derek began his studies at the University College of the West Indies. Derek Walcott was naturally a leading figure in the University Dramatic Society, which played a seminal role in the development of theatre in the West Indies, not only by leading the way with quality West Indian (and other) productions, but also through the work of UCWI graduates in the communities and schools of the region.6 After Walcott graduated from the College, he continued to live in Kingston for a while and remained a vital presence in the University Dramatic Society. In 1956 the group produced other ground‐breaking, early Caribbean plays of his: The Sea at Dauphin, about the hard lives of the fisher‐folk of St Lucia, and the internationally acclaimed TiJean and His Brothers, based on a St ― 5 ― Lucian folktale and the Caribbean experience of plantation slavery and its legacy. It also drew tellingly, in respect of both form and theme, on a traditional St Lucian folk performance (theatre of the street), a mime performed at Christmas. In the mode of presentation of the play, Walcott also drew artfully on Japanese Noh theatre. The creative exploitation of Caribbean folkways – stories, proverbs, beliefs, customs, characters, performances ‐‐ was to become an important factor, also used by other path‐finding playwrights. The inner‐city life of the proletariat further extended their portrait of the people. A major step in the progress toward a Caribbean theatre was made at the end of the 1950s, when Walcott relocated to Trinidad and soon founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. He had gone to Trinidad for the production of the pageant Drums and Colours: an Epic Drama, which he had been commissioned to write to celebrate the opening of the Parliament of the newly‐formed Federation of the West Indies. It is significant that the emergence of Caribbean drama coincided with the move toward political independence and nationhood for the British West Indian colonies. That a Caribbean writer was chosen for the pageant, and that Walcott, albeit still not at his maturity as a playwright, was the obvious choice, are facts of obvious significance. The pageant took a survey of Caribbean history, through selective episodes, exploring the struggle of Caribbean people for self‐realisation. The effort to spawn a truly Caribbean theatre had begun to make itself felt in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War, when a nationalistic impetus began to gather voice in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. In Guyana there was the Georgetown Dramatic Club, and by 1966, when the Theatre Guild of Guyana, which took in the Dramatic Club and other groups, staged significant Caribbean plays such as Jan Carew’s University of Hunger, it could be said that the “common people” were being drawn to the theatre. In Trinidad, Errol Hill, beginning to make his presence felt as one of the region’s shapers of theatre – as actor, director, drama tutor, playwright – founded the Whitehall Players in 1946. Their productions included his own Ping Pong and Man Better Man, in which notable forms of Trinidadian folk performance, especially carnival, calypso and stick‐fighting, are centrally informing structural and thematic features. In the 1950s, while he was Drama Tutor for the Department of Extra‐Mural Studies at the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica, Hill established the Federal Theatre Company, a short‐lived but significant contribution to the development of Caribbean theatre.