NO ONE could have told me when I flew out of Jamaica on the April 15, some 40-odd years ago, on my way to England to take up my acting scholarship, of the metamorphic change that experience would bring about in me.
Yes, I was going to school, but what was there that they could teach me that I hadn't or couldn't learn here? I had seen it all in theatre. I had been a household name for years on radio, stage and in cabaret. I was acclaimed a good actor and awarded actor of the year. I was large!
I was a one of the big fish in this small pond. Moreover, I was well aware of what it would be like living in England because I had spent many hours in the company of my ex-Royal Air Force friend, colleague, fellow thespian and drinking partner, Bobby Lee, who had many stories to tell me of his time there. The difference though was, he was there in war time (1941-1945). I was going in peace.
No one would have been able to make me understand that just being there would have such a profound effect on me. No one could have told me what it would feel like being an amusing M.C. inside and under the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral making bishops and archbishops laugh.
How would anyone know how many times I would cry and not be ashamed of it. And who could prepare me for the most profound lesson I was ever to learn: 'Being self-righteous doesn't give you the right'. It happened this way.
BIG ENDEAVOURS
One of the last big endeavours in which I was involved before leaving England was directing a play R.A.A.S. (I forget now what the acronym stood for) written by a white American who was in England as a student of advanced mathematics. The amazing thing was how much of an insight he had about, not just a Jamaican matriarchal family but a black family living in England.
My dear friend Frank Cousins, who was quite active in amateur theatre in Jamaica and was now married to a Caucasian army officer, was a tireless advocate for the community relations between African and Caribbean peoples and their hosts to be friendly, peaceful and educative.
Through his efforts the County Council made a present of premises in the heart of Brixton in London as home for the 'Dark and Light Theatre' to present multiracial productions in. We went about having auditions and I was able to cast the play in no time at all.
Now, in England when casting a Jamaican play it wasn't necessary to cast Jamaicans or only Jamaicans in it for as far as a British audience was concerned all Caribbean accents were the same, or for that matter, all black people looked the same anyway, so I found myself with a good mix.
The father and supposedly head of the house was Guyanese, the mother was Jamaican, the two sons were Jamaicans if memory serves me right, there were parts for three white people (one female) and the prize pick of the lot was the grandmother (the real head of the house). She was from South Africa. She was so right for the part it was unbelievable. We went into rehearsal and the production was developing marvellously. It was going to be just fine. We were scheduled to open at the end of four weeks rehearsals.
As time went along the members of the cast got to know more of each other offstage. Of the many stories exchanged, to me, the most interesting came from the South African. She got pregnant in Johannesburg but didn't want her baby to be born inside an Apartheid regime so she managed to buy herself a passport and set out for England.
BLACK SINGLE PARENT
Being a black single parent of a boy child was not an easy life those days. The only work she could get was in the sweat shops of garment manufacturers and she had to put the child into foster care soon after it was born. When the time came for him to go to school invariably he was the only black child in the school and truancy seemed his best subject.
As he grew older it got worse. He kept being sent from one foster home to another and his days spent away from school increased. One thing about him, he showed great artistic potential. He could draw. His constant companion was a sketch pad. From infancy through to adolescence his life was a struggle with authority. As a young man he began petty stealing. This now brought in the police.
Her life story had a better plot than the play we were working on. Approaching the final days of rehearsal I found that she was forgetting her lines and missing her cues, something that wasn't evident when she started out.
As director I was getting furious. The other cast members were more than a little concerned as she was coming to work reeking of the alcoholic binge that had taken place the night before. I called a halt to the rehearsal and in a loud voice asked, "Is there something wrong?"
She slumped in a chair on stage and in a tearful voice exclaimed that she couldn't think straight because her son was sentenced over the weekend to serve time in Borstol a correctional home for adult males for stealing a girl's wallet out of her purse at the foster home.
PHILOSOPHICAL CONTENTION
I called off rehearsal for the day and she and I sat onstage while she regaled me with the story of her life with her son. By way of trying to console her I, in my self-righteous lay philosophical contention, explained to her that if there was any fault or blame to be laid for the outcome of things it should not be directed at the boy but instead at the thought that caused him to be born in a society that knew nothing and cared less about him. If he was born in South Africa at least he would have had company in the struggle. As it was in England at that time he was almost on his own.
The next morning an agitated Irishman, much the worse for wear, came to the theatre to inform us that the leading actress would not be able to take part in the production any further as she had swallowed a handful of tablets the night before and was in a critical state in the hospital. I spent the rest of the day at her bedside hoping against hope that she would recover. She did. The first thing she said to me was, "I let you down?!" I told her "Not yet, the play opens on Thursday."
Wednesday afternoon she appeared at the theatre, looking like death warmed up, having discharged herself from the hospital, and ready to rehearse. The rest of the cast was nervous and pleaded with me to recast the grandmother's part.
What I did instead was to have a little typewritten note inserted in the programmes saying that "Due to illness the actress playing the part of the grandmother, will appear with a copy of the script from which she will read her lines."
Five minutes after the curtain went up on opening night, watching from in the wings, I saw her throw her script on the sofa onstage and a phoenix took flight out of its ashes. I cried.
