By Tanya Batson-Savage, Staff ReporterIF THEATRE reflects the world, then the ugly picture being painted by the young shows a Jamaica and a world warped and fraught with social issues.
The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's (JCDC) national speech and drama finals were held at The Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Drive, St. Andrew on Monday and Tuesday of last week. The competitions featured students from all across the island.
Strikingly, far too many of these performances (one being too many in an ideal world) focused on violence. The world they presented often had nothing in common with the Jamaica of the tourist board ads. It suggested that someone had mangled the rose-coloured glasses that all children should possess.
It would be easy to simply argue that the person's creating the pieces lack imagination and so simply rip their topics from headlines and television or radio news. However, this simply points out that these poems and plays are reflecting a horrific truth. What is particularly troubling is the age of some of the participants who dramatise these realities. One can only cling to naivete and hope that it does not reflect any truth from their own lives, or that of anyone they know.
During the speech competition, several of the junior items focused on abuse and death. One of the most moving was Sidine Nunes' performance of the dub poem How Much Longer Jamaica. Although she failed to earn a trophy for her performance, those close to the stage could not ignore the glistening of tears in her eyes which lent an air of reality to the drama she depicted.
Nunes' poem spoke of violence by the gun and ended with her hiding behind a chair, terrified of coming out. Nunes competed in Class 2 (nine years and under). Class one (six years and under) also featured a look at violence through Toni Ann Cameron's performance of War. In class three (12 years and under) Micah Spence spoke of verbal abuse with A Child's Cry.
Intense social criticism later came through the performances of the students from Kingston College. Everaldo Creary performed the dub poem Unfolding It Palitically, while the group of students, under the name Nomaddz, performed Unfolding Truths. Creary's performance included a pick-axe as a prop which he wielded as an axe, a machine-gun and a handgun. The drama finals also featured a shattering number of incidences of violence against women. In at least three productions, women were slapped a minimum of twice. On one occasion, Dancehall Romance, it was meant to be funny, but coming on the heels of all the other violence it struck quite a note.
Edwin Allen's community drama, Table Turn, seemed to feature a woman being 'boxed' in every scene. On the few occasions when a woman was not being slapped, violence was being done to someone else, with one character being eventually shot in the throat.
It may be too late to return the innocence to the children, but maybe we can at least listen to their pleas to end the abuse of drugs, women, children and ourselves. Is it not time we listened to what comes from the mouths of babes? As Nunes asked, How much longer Jamaica?
