IN FOCUS
PLAYWRIGHT Urges Deeper Understanding Of Cultural Heritage As Caribbean leaders consider tapping into traditional and nontraditional resources to strengthen economies and emerge from the current crisis, they are being advised that decisions should not be made without a true understanding and recognition of the historical significance of arts and cultural heritage to the region.
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espected regional playwright and director Rawle Gibbons, who has been involved in the decades-long struggle for the legitimisation of the arts, drew attention to the matter as he noted the penchant of some administrators to view the creative industry solely through the lens of dollars and cents. “We’ve sort of headed pell-mell along the path of creative sector development as a way of boosting that sector and our overall economy and that can be problematic,” said
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CHILL NEWS
the Trinidad-born Gibbons as he delivered the annual Earl Warner Memorial Lecture on the topic “Caribbean Performance: Theatres of Being”. The virtual event, held on 4 November 2021, was organised by the Department of Creative and Performing Arts in collaboration with The Earl Warner Trust (Barbados). Gibbons said there were some critical questions that the authorities needed to consider. “What would happen if we paused for a moment ... and imagined instead how our economies can be developed according to the logic and principles organic to Caribbean creativity? What would be the economic arrangements for such a plan? What kind of social institutions would be required or what role would our existing institutions play in an economy that is built on the ancestral instruction of Caribbean creative necessity? Can we decode the creative imagination of our ancestors and secure, for intergenerational development, a vessel that can withstand hazards, whether from land or sea? How
