A Word on Caribbean Theatre from the Archives:
Vol. 17, No. 65, Pages 16–22 (June 1979)
(An address delivered at the Second Conference of Caribbean Dramatists, Barbados, December 1978)
When I was asked to speak, my first reaction was, naturally enough, intense pleasure and gratification, that I had been asked to talk to such knowledgeable and concerned dramatists as you, and then having accepted the invitation, very quickly, lest Ken thought twice and withdrew it, I could not suppress an overwhelming feeling that in fact I had bitten off more than I could comfortably chew. For what did I know about drama or Caribbean theatre that I could talk about, and that you could profitably listen to?
I had no insights to offer which you did not already have yourselves; it is true that I have ideas about the subject; I've seen a number of plays up and down the Caribbean. I was part of a stage-crowd in Port-of-Spain in the old Whitehall Players days in Ibsen's ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE; I remember that Errol John was in that, so I too had my touch with greatness, and I mouthed my "Rhubarb" as effectively as anybody else. But really, what did I know about the art that I could present for examination or discussion? All I possessed was interest, curiosity, and I had a sneaking fear that neither of these would carry me or you very far.
But as I reflected on the theatre in the Caribbean, and began to make an inventory of the assets that it has, and the feelings I have about it and art in general, I found myself thinking from time to time "If only, perhaps, one day". Then I realised that if I lacked everything else, at least I have hope—it is not extinguished. It does not perhaps burn as bright as it did thirty years ago when I saw Trinidadian Phyllis Shepherd dressed in widow's black in O'Casey's JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK walk across the stage in Port-of-Spain, and bring tears to my eyes—just walked across the stage.
I do not think I have had a single goose-pimple of awe since Slade Hopkinson shouted on Combermere School stage in Derek Walcott's DREAM ON MONKEY MOUNTAIN—"Kill her, kill her," as Corporal Lestrade. But yet my hope flickers on, against all odds.
And then when I began to think seriously, cheered by that hope, about what I should say concerning the art and theatre, as always happens when push comes to shove, I found that there was, in fact, a great deal to be said. There is for instance the matter of Government support.
For years now, the provision for a Centre for the Performing Arts, sometimes called an auditorium, has engaged public attention: and only last week, the producer of our annual National Festival of Creative Arts had words to say about the inadequacy of our facilities. We keep hearing pious noises from on high that something is on the way, and we keep our fingers crossed thinking that somehow, if we had wanted the thing badly enough, we should have had it…and then suddenly, Christmas morning, we awake and find that in fact Santa has indeed left a Cultural Centre joined to the Bank complex in Bridgetown...but we don't even know for sure...perhaps in due course somebody will tell us.
It occurred to me that the aficionados of motor racing managed to get a racecourse pretty quickly in Barbados; the flower people have a headquarters, never mind the unfortunate name of the old plantation, and the athletes have a stadium—but what is wrong with the theatre people? What have they done to deserve the neglect that they suffer? It may be possible that although they make a fashionable pretence of declaring how nice it would be to have a place to accommodate the crowds for visiting artists, they would really like to have an underwater park, or an underground cave, or new beach facilities, or buses, or burial grounds.
Maybe what we want is what we get.
Maybe lurking deep in the popular subconscious is the fear that an auditorium is not really what we need.
In a very carefully worded review of the arts in Trinidad in 1977, Judy Stone argued the case for Government support of the arts. "For Trinidad to achieve the highest standards in the arts, an essential factor will be vibrant Government support, manifested above all, in realistic subsidies, and in plentiful and unencumbered scholarships for writers, actors, directors, painters, dancers, musicians, and other creative talent; and the cry for a National Theatre or Arts Complex as a platform for that talent is more urgent than ever—such a centre could prove to be the key to professionalism in the Trinidad arts." And yet in spite of this cri de coeur, and in spite of the fact that popular Carnival gets assistance with the minimum of delay, it is fairly certain that the theatre complex will have, even in the circumstances of a country where money is no problem, to wait at the end of a long long queue.
There is a moral there somewhere.
As I said, I could use this opportunity to add my voice and yours to the others in the Caribbean for more Government attention; but on reflection, I do not believe that any good will come of our efforts. No one is listening to us...least of all those in whose name and on whose behalf we profess to speak...the arts in the Caribbean have simply not been able to secure the respect of the controllers of our destinies—I mean neither the politicians nor the large mass of people; and we must wait until they do. It has still not been possible to convince either of these groups that independence is first and foremost a matter of the spirit and only afterwards, long afterwards, a matter of economics; in fact, I'm coming round to the notion that it never is a matter of economics.
Let me tell you a story of old Craig in Port-of-Spain.... Old Craig, for those who do not know Port-of-Spain, is or was an old boy who lived in Woodford Square where he lived, cooked and mumbled to himself. He is one of the large band of eccentrics who have opted out of society in the Caribbean, but who exert a very powerful effect on the popular imagination and popular will. Craig, I'm told, went up to the Savannah on the night of Trinidad’s Independence, there to mingle with the crowd and watch this whole thing happen; and as the people shouted, "Hurrah, Independence!" and jumped up, Craig was heard to say, "Eh Eh, but dey celebrating what I always had."
There are other discoveries that I made in my search for a subject for discussion. There is, for example, the need to examine the reasons for the general poverty in the quality in theatrical productions, the banality of the treatment, the childishness of the language of statement, the behaviour of theatre audiences, the refusal to treat the dialect with respect. We could usefully spend our time on the effect of the University on our creative output—I have myself noticed the increasing volume of academic writing which pours out of the various campuses—writing about writing, theses, examinations, a kind of intellectual incest at the expense of writing itself; and much of this writing is of a depressing naiveté much effort going into the discovery of the obvious, the enunciations of platitudes.
We could have talked about the need for expertise in our newspapers and popular journals and radio stations, of standards of judgement more rigorous than those presently in existence.
"Why," I asked myself, "are all these criticisms valid, and why do the various defects that give rise to them exist?" And then suddenly, in the middle of my thinking of what I should say to you, I went to one of the final rehearsals of Michael Gilkes' production of SWEET TALK. Now I must make it clear I'm not here advancing any claim about the quality of the play, or the production, but you're at liberty to draw your, own inferences. In discussing this play with an acquaintance who is very knowledgeable about production and plays and the theatre, (I shouldn't be surprised if this knowledge has some accolade of a degree of some kind) I found that my enthusiasm for what we had both seen and heard before—bedsitter, West Indians in exile, angry young man radical—was not shared: the subject had been examined in depth, and nothing new had been added to the mixture. I had to agree, and could not deny the details of the criticism; and yet I remained unconvinced, and yet there was something about what I had seen—the dingy cheerless room, the despair, the choking hopelessness of estrangement from one's landscape, the despair of life in a hostile climate, the utter failure of relationship between two young people, which I knew in my guts to be the living truth.
Somehow out of the facts, inexpertly assembled though they night have been, truth had been achieved, and I recognised it. I could not in all conscience disagree with my friend, but all I could say was that the thing I had seen was true; and that was enough for me. I did not mean that it was factually accurate. Facts, I knew from my own experience, have little to do with truth. I have known and still know people who have all their facts meticulously right, who make a point of getting them right, but who invariably succeed in getting the whole picture wrong.
The day after that exchange with my friend, with the disagreement still ringing in my ears, still nagging me, (because I really do not like to disagree with anybody, although I'm always doing so) the very next day I went to see the exhibition of Ivan Payne's which the Arts Council was running down at the Pelican Gallery. For those of you who are not Barbadian, and may have never heard of Ivan Payne, he died a year ago, a painter best known for his floral pieces, masses of hibiscus, frangipani, and delightful treatment of green foliage, and his scenes of Speightstown. Again I make no claim for the man as a painter; in fact I noticed among the comments in the visitors' book at the exhibition one to the effect that the writer of it was "not impressed", and I could not help noting the arrogance of tone in the handwriting, as if the fact that he or she was not impressed was a final and irrevocable judgement. Another comment, whose writer was evidently unaware that the exhibition was posthumous, was that the painter would "probably be good someday". The point I wish to make here is that it is a fair bet that whatever verdict the future delivers on Payne's work, it will by his Speightstown canvases that he will be long remembered. And this will be because the pictures, semi-primitive as they are with considerable shortcomings of balance, perspective and undeniable mismanagement of the human figure, have nevertheless caught the authentic spirit of the town. Payne has managed somehow, with the perception and skill which only artists have, to put on canvas the distillation of his native place, which has very little to do with a factually accurate rendition of the houses and shops and narrow streets and overhanging balconies—thus a Payne Speightstown is, in a way, truer than the original.
A couple of months ago I had the good fortune to see a play in Jamaica—ANANCY AND THE UNSUNG HEROES OUT WEST by Stafford Harrison. I found it a moving and most exciting experience—vigorous dance and music, a really first-rate performance. Most of the time it was really very hard for me to understand what was being said—the mixture of Jamaican dialect and Rastafarian idiom combined to defeat me; but this is the point—I knew that what I was seeing and hearing was the truth. I have no means of knowing if the facts were accurate, but I knew the truth was there.
These notions of the relationship between facts and truth gained added support when my thoughts ran to those gems of short stories—the parables of Jesus. Let us take one of them—parable of the Good Samaritan. A certain man went down to Jericho and fell among thieves who beat him and stripped him of his raiment and left him half-dead. Now Jesus told that story in response to the question "And who is my neighbour?" and when he had finished it the question was answered. Now the validity of that answer does not depend on whether there was ever in fact an incident in real time on the Jerusalem to Jericho highway, the J.1, whether there had ever been a man with a name, address, ID card, who was ripped off on that road, and if there was such a man, what was the day and date on which he met his misfortune, were there witnesses—these police questions are only to be asked for us to realise that they are quite irrelevant to any truth that resides in the parable, and to realise that it is entirely possible for a work, play, novel, concerto to be accurate in every painstaking detail, and yet to be a downright lie.
There is a story of Oscar Wilde who went to an art exhibition and came up against an enormous painting called THE SEASONS, painted in detail of every blade of grass showing, every granular detail of snow as the seasons moved from Spring to Winter; so Wilde looked at this thing, astounded, for a long time, and then turned to his colleague and asked, "Was all this done by hand?!”
By now you may have caught the drift; if not, let me be as blunt as I can be to you; I mean that we in the Caribbean are in a perilous condition, and we are not going to be saved by the provision of cultural complexes, auditoria, festivals, or any of those artificialities. I have been as vocal as anyone else for Governments to provide things, and am all for prodding them into action, but the continued reluctance to do so (and when they do they insist in control of these facilities) has made me think again.
How is it that I do not see in the Caribbean art around me very much of what I see myself? Every morning I go for a walk, and I take the same route every day, and I never fail to see something which I had not seen before—very simple things—dunk trees in blossom, and the man coming out with his cow, and the street lights going out, and yet when I read I seldom find anything to match this experience.
What I'm trying to say is that there is a life which I live, an interior kind of life (and it must be true for most people), which I do not find reflected in the work of Caribbean artists. I do mean the recital of the facts, I mean the truth which resides in these facts. I must conclude that our artists have sold us short—there are perfectly valid historical reasons for this, but these do not make my disappointment any less keen—you see that we have fallen into the error in thinking the politics and economics will save us, and they will not. George Lamming makes one of his characters in his SEASONS OF ADVENTURE say that he did not care who makes his country's politics, so long as he was allowed to make its music. It is a profound statement.
If, for illustration, we in Barbados got the finest theatre complex in the world tomorrow, what would we do with it? If we got it in the next ten years, what would we do with it? It would be empty and unused for most of the time, and would have to wait for the Commodores, for NIFCA fortnight, for the ten days of the BIMSHIRE pantomime, to fill it up. The rationale for such a complex is that we must have some place for visiting artists to perform.
Many years ago, I heard Philip Sherlock addressing an audience in Port-of-Spain talk about Caribbean theatre. He pointed to the fact that the theatre was all around us—ride in a bus in any Caribbean town and listen to the dialogue, go into a market and hear the sharp repartee, the drama, and ask yourself if a big theatre complex is what we really need. Watch cricket from the Kensington public stands, and listen to the ol’ talk, and ask yourself what relevance an imitation Broadway or West End production can have for us? Should we not be using our church-yards, these steps we're on right now, and if we did, should we not find that what we put on there would have more meaning?
It is no wonder, therefore, that our artists find themselves estranged; it is no wonder that a bill is scheduled in the Parliament, where it provides for certain professions; when they come to “artists" they are defeated—they have "Artists (including commercial)”.
It is more than 40 years since I heard my father's voice, and on the last occasion, he talked to me about the folly of "waiting for something to happen", for sweepstake or bequest. Most people, if they get the money, will buy a house or a car and then will "start to live"; and they forget, that while they are saying all this, they are still living too, I presume.
Should we not be looking now at what we have, assessing it and using it? Would it not be more honest to do so, than continue crying for the moon? For when the moon comes we shall not know what to do with it! Is there not a truth which is in our lives now? Think of the development of the steelband, for example…some genius saw a lot of old pans lying around; he had an idea, and he used it...if he had continued saying, "If I could afford a guitar, or a piano, or a violin," where then should we be now?
Governments like their artists to cry for the moon, politicians do not go to plays, except when they are specially invited. The Prime Minister of Trinidad was a visitor to a literary club in Port-of-Spain, in the early 50's; and he once gave a most absorbing lecture on Edgar Mittleholzer, but he was not a politician then.
If I have not by now made my meaning clear, I'm sorry that I wasted your time; but I assure you that I have done the best I can. I am a convinced and unrepented regionalist, and I’m sure that the eventual integration of the West Indies will come about only after the recognition and acknowledgement of a Caribbean cultural identity, (for there is one) and not from any political or economic arrangement.
More than most people, Naipaul has said, Caribbean people need their writers (and he might have said their dramatists), to tell them who they really are—for only those artists who are able to recognise the truth among the dross of facts are going to set us free.