Theatre
Jamaica's earliest theatre was built in 1682. Several more theatres opened in the 1700s and 1800s, attracting performances by both professional touring companies and amateur groups. But performances weren't limited to official venues. Many took place in houses, stores, court houses, and enclosed outdoor spaces large enough to hold them. During this period, classic plays such as Shakespeare were most often produced. However, the Jewish and French communities became large enough to merit productions aimed at them, too.
After the abolition of slavery, Jamaicans began fusing music, humor, and dance into public theatrical performances. Although it took many years for true Jamaican styles to develop, eventually they became more prevalent than European works. Today's most popular theatrical form in Jamaica, pantomime, began in the 1940s as a fusion of English pantomime with Jamaican folklore. Another popular style, "Roots" (Grassroots) Theatre, evolved in the 1960s and 1970s. These riotous bawdy tales full of sexual innuendo remain crowd favorites in Kingston's open-air theatres.
One artist involved in root plays is Winsome (code name), a Jamaican writer and producer chronicled in Deborah Thomas' book "Modern Blackness". Winsome handled all the publicity for her plays herself, and ended up putting them on in the rural areas surrounding Kingston – the city theaters refused to house her plays because of their controversial nature. In her plays, Winsome explores how sex, money, and power interact everyday for Jamaicans. In 1997, Winsome wrote and produced a root play entitled Ruff Rider, in which family, sexual abuse, love, work, and friendship all intersect. According to author Thomas, author of, “In all of her work, the sympathetic characters are those she portrays as struggling to balance their own pursuit of individual gain with ‘living well together’ with others. As they negotiage the fine lines between egalitarianism and hierarchy, her characters also contribute to the public debate regarding the gendered dimensions of respectability and reputation.”
Other notable root play figures include Ralph Holness, Ginger Knight, Balfour Anderson, Michael Denton, Ian Reid, Paul Beil, Everton Dawkins, Buddy Pouyat and the late Hyacinth Brown.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Jamaica
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.”
—David Hare (b. 1947)
“The theatre is supremely fitted to say: “Behold! These things are.” Yet most dramatists employ it to say: “This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.””
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)