Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the spread of monkeypox, many have left the current National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) shows at the Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, with their spirits lifted. For them, a major company objective for the...
The first phase of a Save Ormsby Hall initiative which began some four months ago is winding down. It is “an immense project” says the conceptualiser, the well-known artist Laura Facey, who is spearheading it, and the movement to save the venerable...
“Welcome back to live theatre.” That was the greeting given by Marlon Simms, artistic director of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC), to the audience last Friday night at the Little Theatre. He was opening the company’s first full live...
On the face of it, the paintings of the late Cecil Cooper and the fiction of Ferdinand Dennis are unrelated. But the works of the two are featured together at the Olympia Gallery in Papine, St Andrew, and the creators both referred to as...
Although Robert Johnson Jr is an experienced playwright, with 15 plays produced in the United States and Kenya, he is treating his current play with extra special care. And it is taking him longer than usual to complete. He has been working on Bar...
At the end of its concert at the Church of the Good Shepherd last Sunday, the Jamaica Youth Chorale (JYC) got the ultimate accolade, a standing ovation. Minutes later, this Gleaner reporter and several others gathered around the JYC’s founder and...
Theatre is back. Hurrah! You lovers of the live stage now have a chance to see the first commercial play produced in the island during the COVID-19 era. On any evening, except Mondays, you can go to Kingston’s Little Little Theatre for Hide Your...
Of course, the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) did not die in the pandemic. But they had refrained from giving live shows for the past two years, so their return to the stage of the Little Theatre on Easter morning was a resurrection of sorts...
“CAN YOU imagine the surge in writing that will come out of the enforced isolation and increased anxiety of the COVID crisis?” That question was asked this week by Dr Rachel Moseley-Wood, head of the Department of Literatures in English at The...
JAMAICA’S CULTURAL and creative industries has been thrown a lifeline in the form of a stimulus package for COVID-19 relief. This is available for individuals and businesses which are registered with the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment...
(Part 2 of an article based on an interview with Dr Edward Baugh, author of a recent biography on Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. Part 1 was published last Friday.) BAUGH’S “FIRST encounter” with Walcott excited him, he told me, but it was really a...
(Part 1 of an article based on an interview with Dr Edward Baugh at The UWI.) “DEREK WALCOTT was one of the makers and changers of West Indian literature.” This was University of the West Indies Professor Emeritus Edward Baugh’s summation of the...
In a book that soars with poetry, American author and journalist Ross Kenneth Urken metaphorically describes his Jamaican nanny’s past as being “a fortified city”. But it was one he felt compelled to explore. This I learned when he and I chatted...
The past seven days saw two very significant events in Jamaican film occurring. One was the re-screening of an iconic movie; the other was the launch of a book on film. Had author and film-maker Perry Henzell been alive to celebrate his 84th...
February, celebrated as Black History Month, was chock-full of directly and peripherally related events and it ended in a week with an increased flurry of cultural activities. The three functions that I was able to attend included one on the...
On Sunday, various colleagues, friends and admirers of the late historian, essayist and poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite paid tribute to him in poetry, prose and music. The function held in the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre (N1) at The University of the...
Over the last 90 years or so, Jamaican ‘patwa’has gradually become a legitimate, even respectable language. That’s the essence of the thesis argued in the 2020 Philip Sherlock Lecture by educator and theatre practitioner Carolyn Allen last...
Though the Chinese involvement in Jamaican music is quite well known, many who have been attending Grounation 2020 at the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ) have been learning and expressing surprise about its depth and breadth. The Ninth Annual Reggae/...
“Where does she find the time?” would be a reasonable question for you to ask before entering the Jamaica Shopping Club Theatre on Cargill Avenue to see the current play, Hell and Powder House. The question would be about Dahlia Harris, who has...
In order to join in the conversations taking place this Black History Month, many people will be trying to learn a bit more about our national heroes. Their quest for information about the most popular, Marcus Garvey Jr, will doubtlessly cause some...
‘Jamaica Jamaica! How Our Music Conquered the World’ is the quite immodest title of the exhibition that opens at the National Gallery on Sunday. But there is a lot to be immodest about. As an international exhibition series, it is the largest one...
Because of the approach taken by the Edna Manley College’s School of Drama and the Sistren Theatre Collective, community drama in Jamaica is about helping communities to solve social problems. Often, the dramatic work is created through discussions...
The Cathedral Singers of Ontario, Canada, and their organists flew out of the island on Monday after helping out two local churches for 10 days. A spokesman said they all had a “wonderful time”. Members of the group conducted workshops with local...
“Basil (Dawkins) doesn’t create superficial characters,” says theatre director Douglas Prout. Fans of Dawkins’ plays will probably agree, and the playwright has accumulated hundreds, perhaps thousands, since his first production, Flat Mate, in 1980...
Just three months shy of its 40th birthday on April 1, Chalice remains one of Jamaica’s most popular bands. Not surprisingly, then, there was standing room only for its lunchtime concert last Friday at the Bank of Jamaica. One of the 15 or so...
