One of the important cultural developments was the rise of professional theater in the Caribbean. This began in Jamaica roughly around 1970 and gradually moved south across the region to Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, eventually reaching Guyana in 1981.
But even this neat outline needs a qualification, because professionalism in stage performance and industry in show business had been booming for several decades before that. Moreover, the history of theater in the region will show two mainstreams that coexisted in a separate fashion throughout the centuries of colonialism. One was the performance of dramatic plays on a western / European stage, and the other was a folk theater that developed during slavery.
There was professional theater during that history. One was completely foreign and was performed by visiting professional companies from Britain and America up to the nineteenth century. The other was the thriving vaudeville industry and stage shows held in cinema houses from the early twentieth century to just after 1970, off the mainstream and working-class-sponsored theater.
The focus here, therefore, is focused solely on drama performance on a mainstream western stage. In Guyana, this was led and dominated by drama at the Theater Guild Playhouse, the main driving force in amateur theater in Guyana from independence to the 1980s.
Modern Guyanese drama – the production of plays on the mainstream (western) stage can be said to have developed in the 1930s, since the efforts of Norman E Cameron and the dramatic East India clubs in the 1940s. There were amateur groups in the bauxite company in Wismar-Mackenzie, around Georgetown, and in the sugar industry organized by Bookers from the 1950s to the 60s. Since the construction of its playhouse in 1962, the Theater Guild dominated and was the center of national theater and a strong amateur base that continued while professional theater became strong in the Caribbean and was beginning to threaten the status quo in Guyana.
The playhouse in Kingston was the nation’s cultural capital and the guild was the supreme institution for theater, also serving as the country’s unofficial drama school. Many of the “graduates” of that school went on to become professional theater leaders in other parts of the Caribbean. These included Eugene Williams who became head of the prestigious Jamaican Drama School, and Henry Mootoo, who became head of the theater and cultural organization in the Cayman Islands (a position also once held by another Guyanese – Dave Martins).
This was ironic because although Guyana made this kind of contribution to theater in the region, including the export of talent, the local policy of the “capital city” (Theater Guild Playhouse) on theater in Guyana demanded amateurism. Atlantic Ocean currents brought professional theater waves to Guyana’s shores, but these were largely opposed by local policy directions. Theater in Guyana preferred to stay on an amateur basis. That was the job of the Theater Guild, embedded in its constitution, and that organization dominated and largely dictated what happened in the country’s theater world.
Most of the leading theater practitioners were members of the guild, and even where they were not, no other organization was large and organized enough to have an impact on policy and practice. The University of Guyana produced drama, but had no role or influence, while the Guyana Government Department of Culture might have the authority to direct policy, but it did not practice it or show any tendency to violate the amateur status.
Members of the guild may have raised the issue of payments and there have certainly been debates as to whether the playwrights, actors and actresses, technicians were worthy of hire, but none of these were dominant. The organization made minor openings to various reimbursements and expenses, but as a promising not-for-profit organization continued to oppose the payment of fees. Besides, amateurism was a philosophical policy.
It was around 1981 that a few individuals began to move away from the Theater Guild to venture into for-profit theater, commercial productions and paying individuals. They remained members of the guild but also exercised their options to act individually to stage private productions in their own name. Notable among them was Ian Valz, who moved from St Stanislaus College to the guild, rising to a fairly prolific membership before branching out as a playwright, producer and director. One of his major productions was the classic French comedy The Miser by Molière, a play that exploits the old Italian Commedia Dell’Arte, a popular European pantomime. It began with an adaptation of this play, which later developed into one of Guyana’s early plays in the new commercial theater – a full-length comedy called The House of Pressure.
Another notable character in the commercialization of theater was Leon Saul. He grew significantly in the guild as an actor, appearing in major lead roles on the stage of the playhouse. Initially Saul branched into radio drama. He produced a radio soap opera series called For Better, For Worse, which had a popular run on one of the local radio stations and where many characters captured the public’s imagination. Saul also turned to the commercial stage to produce For Better, For Worse as a full-length play, another of the earliest plays in Guyana’s commercial theater.
The National Cultural Center (NCC) was now the chosen venue for these plays, and Saul was among the first to stage plays there. This was a much more suitable theater for commerce. It’s huge, sitting 2,000 compared to the capacity of 300 at the Theater Guild Playhouse and in a much better position for ticket sales. Until the construction of the NAPA in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the NCC in Georgetown, Guyana was the largest theater and auditorium building in the Caribbean. Popular theater soon moved out of Kingston to a place that began to attract a much larger, much different audience and introduced the working and lower middle classes to the Guyanese stage.
At that time, the most effective and significant development in Guyana’s professional theater growth was the establishment of The Theater Company (TTC) in 1981. It was Guyana’s first professional theater company with widespread and popular recognition as a company. It was founded by Ron Robinson, Gem Madhoo and Ian McDonald as the three company directors. Robinson has served more than once as Chairman of the Theater Guild and Madhoo also began his training in the playhouse. They were both guild members at the time of the switch to the commercial NCC. McDonald was a director at GuySuCo and a national poet, novelist and playwright.
What helped magnify TTC’s impact on the new development was that it announced itself when launching a new game in the theater – the satirical production called The Link Show. This was an adapted version of the satirical review led largely by Frank Pilgrim in the guild called The Brink. In 1981 this had ceased. The Link Show quickly and definitely became the most popular production in Guyana and hosted an annual production that (despite a few short breaks) is still running.
In addition, TTC was a company that helped start up and fund professional theater, setting examples with paying fees and employing performers and practitioners. He was a true companion to the development of commercialization. He also pioneered tours, taking plays to other countries such as the USA, Canada, Antigua, Dominica, and Sint Maarten. Robinson was credited with becoming Guyana’s Best Actor and Best Director, while Madhoo (who now owns her own company – GEMS Theater Productions) became Guyana’s undoubtedly most successful and skilled producer and manager of theater. In the early years, too, two practitioners came out of Linden. Grace Chapman contributed a horror thriller called The Green Bottle to the earliest commercial dramas. After running in Lichas Hall, she was brought to the NCC for another very popular run. Harold Bascom was the other Lindener who by then was already developing in Georgetown as one of the country’s most popular playwrights.
One of his groundbreaking plays on the professional stage was The Barrel, a coverage of a new and significant Guyanese social phenomenon that moved to the USA sending home barrels filled with gifts and staple items to their families and friends Guyana. Bascom went on to become one of Guyana’s foremost playwrights.
That, therefore, provides some insight into how professional theater developed in Guyana. Since those years around 1981, there have been several other major characters in the industry. Among the most successful were Paloma Mohamed, who held his position as one of the most popular while also producing serious studies; Ken Danns, who had a good run of popular drama; Ronald Hollingsworth, who has had one of the biggest effects with popular and memorable plays; as well as Sheron Cadogan and Sonia Yarde and others who are too numerous to list here.
But one factor is that most of them have a background in the Theater Guild. That organization continues to be the launching point of the nation’s professional theater, continuing to remain a solid foundation of amateurism.