The Rich and Robust Culture of Theatre

THE RICH AND ROBUST THE RICH AND ROBUST

Culture of Theatre David Jonathan Burrows and Mark Humes SiP 2017 Othello Photograph Courtesy of Kelsey Nottage

By Shavaughn Moss Photographs Courtesy Of Shakespeare In Paradise, Kelsey Nottage, Dominic Duncombe

Theatre helps people express themselves. It helps them to tell the stories of their lives or the lives of others. Theatre also helps create meaning through personal narratives. Theatre influences the way people think and feel about their own lives, forcing them to examine themselves, their values and their behaviour. When it comes to theatre, The Bahamas has a rich and robust legacy that is unmatched in the region.

For the last half-century, The Bahamas can boast of having a vibrant theatre scene. And that Bahamians have produced works that are not just world class—but dare I say excellent and world class. Many things can go out to the world, but don’t necessarily have to be that great and—truth be told—there is a lot of crap out there. But the excellent and world-class Bahamian productions are of award-winning quality.

For example, productions such as the folk opera “The Legend of Sammie Swain” written by E. Clement Bethel as a ballet in 1968, and later as a folk opera in 1983, tells the story of a disabled Cat Island man who falls in love with the village beauty and sells his soul to the devil to be with her. And Winston Saunders’ “You Can Lead a Horse to Water”, which is one of the most critically acclaimed plays in the history of Bahamian theatre, is the Bahamian Greek tragedy based on a true case of a boy who killed his mother, and the lawyers who defended him.

Both were in some ways ripped from the headlines.

There is “Diary of Soul” by Dr. Ian Strachan which takes a look at migration and the underbelly of how immigrants are looked at, received and treated in The Bahamas. Again, a tragedy!

The more recent “Der Real Ting!!” musical takes Eddie Minnis’ songs and turns them into a musical; and Dr. Nicolette Bethel’s “Powercut” shows what happens in the dark—it was also made into an independent film and released in 2001. A scene from E. Clement Bethel’s Music Of The Bahamas 2002

Productions that only scratch the surface of the many great Bahamian theatrical productions, and the many other plays that are good on a national level.

Theatre in The Bahamas has been alive since the days of The Golden Age of Piracy which lasted for 30 years between 1690 and 1720. The first skit recorded in the annals of Bahamian history was done by pirates, according to anthropologist, essayist, poet, playwright and theatre producer/director Dr. Nicolette Bethel.

Records also show theatre for white society up until the 20th century, although it is known that theatre was going on in Black segregated society and was church-based and school-based, but that no one was keeping record.

“Bahamian society was segregated up until the 1960s really and then started to become integrated—and that is really when they begin to trace what can be called the tradition of a national theatre beginning, and the locust of that would have been The Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts (in Nassau), a community theatre, dedicated to building community through culture, (providing) a home for vibrant performing arts companies, committed to the development of the performing, visual, audio/visual, digital and folk arts of The Bahamas,” said Bethel.

For a decade between 1960 and 1970, theatre activity started to coalesce around the Dundas. Like the country, it was becoming more integrated with white and Black Bahamians performing together on stage, with white and Black integrated audiences as well.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, there was the formation of a Bahamian theatre idea—both on New Providence and on Grand Bahama. The theatre scene was unfolding simultaneously in both places.

In 1961, The Freeport Player’s Guild was officially formed. It was the humble beginnings of theatre on Grand Bahama with the first productions held at the Sea Craft Building … ladies reportedly had to lift their gowns to avoid the mud as they entered the tin-roofed building. During performances, if it rained, the actors raised their voices to be heard above the pound of raindrops on the metal roof. If an airplane flew over, the actors stopped mid-sentence and waited for the craft to fly over, as the metal roof resonated, then resumed where they left off.

In 1971, the Regency Theatre was built opening with the Guild’s production of “The Importance of Being Ernest”. The Regency Theatre became the performing hub of the Northern Bahamas.

Founded by The Freeport Players’ Guild in 2013, the Young Adults Regency Drama (YARD) Group comprises members between the ages of 18 and 35 who are trained in all aspects of theatre with the goal of continuing the tradition of live theatre on Grand Bahama.

The 1980s saw two big watershed moments in Nassau when Winston Saunders becomes the chairman of The Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts and in 1981 established The Dundas Repertory Season.

From 1981 to 1999, The Dundas Repertory Season set The Dundas apart from The Regency. In those 17 years, The Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts put on a series of plays every single year on a monthly basis between January and May. People knew there was going to be theatre at The Dundas in The Bahamas in Nassau. And it was like a community theatre—each play ran for two weeks, 10 nights of performances, Tuesday through Saturday, then the next show would go up the next month.

That decade and a half, plus two years of regularity and predictability, was revolutionary in the national theatre scene. Bethel said that period enabled actors to hone their skills in such a way that they became world class.

“From the 1960s to about 1990, The Bahamas was considered to be the leader in the Caribbean in terms of theatre. Other places were leaders in other art forms like visual arts, or dance or music but, in The Bahamas, theatre flourished because of this repertory season. It also meant that playwrights could get exposure, could get performances, and could get performed. And it meant that the kinds of things that were being written were wide-ranging. We had a whole lot of different kinds of things,” said Bethel, who is also a founder, with Philip Burrows, of the theatre festival Shakespeare in Paradise (SiP).

SiP was established in 2009 by Ringplay Productions and inspired by Burrows and Bethel’s experience at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. SiP is designed to celebrate the best of the past while helping to share a strong future. The international theatre festival is held every autumn in Nassau and is on the calendar from September 19 - October 8, 2022.

The 1980s saw the emergence of all kinds of new playwrights—people like Winston Saunders and Jeanne Thompson and the late James Catalyn, Dr. Ian Strachan and Bethel, herself, coming to the fore because they had the ability to dream.

She said they did not have to write stuff that they thought people wanted to see. They did not have to write stuff that they thought people could appreciate. They could take risks. The result was all kinds of theatre and that Bahamian plays reflected that richness with the likes of “The Legend of Sammie Swain”, “You Can Lead a Horse to Water” and the full grand opera “Our Boys”.

The one thing not being done during that period was classical work like Greek tragedy and Shakespeare.

Since its establishment, SiP has presented work by William Shakespeare, Bahamian classics, one-person shows about the African-American/Caribbean experience, and musical extravaganzas.

A quote Bethel likes is that theatre and democracy emerged in the same place at the same time, so the concept of democracy, the concept of the power of the people, is very closely linked to the concept of theatre because theatre requires empathy.

It’s a quote that does not necessarily recognize that theatre is a very human activity.

“Storytelling narratives … that’s part of who we are as humans. And stories are meant to be told, but they are also acted out. So, theatre is one of the basic things which human beings do in society that is a group thing. It is an in-person thing. It is a live thing. And it is in a real-time kind of thing. But what that means is that theatre and the fundamental art of being human are inextricably linked.”

Theatre engages with the words part of the mind, the analytical part, the emotional part—all of these things together. As such, theatre is ingrained in human societies, and ingrained certainly in Bahamian society. And Bethel said if one thinks about the professions that people go into and get fulfilled by—politics, law, religion, preaching—that they are all parts, kind of theatre. UA

Scene Shakespeare’s The Tempest at SiP 2009 Inagural Festival