“THE JOUVAY POPULAR THEATRE PROCESS”:From the Street to the Stage (Jouvay Poetics)
... a Caribbean perspective, drawing heavily on carnival pageantry and poetry. Beryl McBurnie with her Little Carib Theatre and Molly Ahye were among the first, in the 1950’s, to produce dance dramas based on their research into folk traditions and the struggles for freedom of the Amerindian, African and East Indian peoples of the islands. Later in the 1970’s Astor Johnson took over the mantle with his Repertory Dance Theatre and Helen Camps, in the 1980’s, through the Trinidad Tent Theatre, successfully produced spectacular plays, using the performance traditions of the carnival. And, in the 90’s, we have the work of playwright Rawle Gibbons, whose Calypso Trilogy has been influential, and of musician/composer Geraldine Connor, whose spectacular Carnival Messiah produced in England in 2001 and again in 2002 has taken carnival theatre to a new level. As Hill points out, the theatre that wants to be created is taken not just from the performances of the streets, but from the basic essence of all the elements of the carnival – from the essence of the mas itself on the road, as Peter Minshall has demonstrated; from the swirling vortex of steel orchestras in the pan yards (as in the offerings of Boogsie Sharp and Clive Bradley); or from the essence of the extempore, celebratory call and response and social commentary of calypso, soca and chutney, as André Tanker and David Rudder have projected. Working with Peter Minshall, I was able to observe him adapt and transform traditional mas characters through his own meticulous designs – the basic bat, the Midnight Robber, the borokit, moko jumbie. I witnessed how he incorporated history (particularly the social and design history of the mas) into the present reality of performance without the hampering clogs of nostalgia. From this I learned that traditions are most meaningful when they transform and evolve with the culture that produces them. Therefore, the value of traditional, culture-bearing, mas characters, who embody the history of emancipation and the struggle both for independence and self definition: characters like the Midnight Robber with his rapid-fire grandiloquent speeches of revenge and imposing hat and gait; the baby doll with her instant social action theatre which insists, right there on the street of carnival day, in shaming renegade fathers into child support; the bad behaved sailors satirizing the gay abandon of the Yankee sailor in drunken choreography along the street; all these and more I am now driven to look at more closely. All over Trinidad, at the present time, John Cupid and the National Carnival Commission have established schools in which children learn to embody such culture-bearing characters – so much so that the Traditional Carnival Character festival, that takes place on Friday of Carnival week, has in the last few years virtually become an alternative children’s carnival, in which masses of children outnumber the old timers performing traditional masquerades. Such an effort of education empowers these children. It gives them a sense of purpose, teaches them valuable lessons from their own history, and helps to preserve and transmit vital cultural traditions, even at the risk of encasing these renegade traditions within the marble vaults of pure mimesis – traditions memorized but not always experienced. Here emancipation can be seen as the organizing principle around which we can chart and triangulate all our daily efforts. Therefore, when any of these creative impulses, embedded in emancipation cultural traditions, are invoked, a new realization of self emerges, a new understanding of independence “in that self- defining dawn” manifests a jouvay of the collective spirit. These manifestations I call Jouvay Process. This is what we are involved in, a Jouvay Process. It is on-going. In this context the theatre wants to probe and bear “witness to the early morning of a culture that is defining itself.” (Derek Walcott -The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory [Nobel Lecture, December 7th, 1992]. What the Twilight Says: Essays/Derek Walcott, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1998) But, as a dramatist, for this to have any concrete meaning, I need a “performance model” based on this formulation. What I call the Jouvay Popular Theatre Process (JPTP) is such a “performance model.” This model assumes the existence of the traditional masquerade characters, not as specific historical figures but as archetypes of human behavior defined within the evolving context of the survival systems [strategies] of the emancipation tradition in Trinidad. These systems [strategies] involve processes of creolization, of hybridity, of betweenity, of assimilation, and the history of resistance and affirmation of a contrary, paradoxical sensibility also, at the same time, the colonial and post-colonial search for personhood and identity. A JPTP workshop begins by assuming that the daily life of each participant reflects the essential drives and energies of any one or any combination of the hundreds of traditional mas characters, seen as archetypes rather than historical figures. Next, workshop participants begin their search for the right character or characters, for which they may have an affinity - their daily “guardians” or “guides,” through an introduction to the history and sociology of the original characters and mas-makers of these characters. Secondly, we go through a range of theatre exercises and games, based on the street performances of the characters, to assist the participants (theatre artists, students or community persons) in their discovery. In the third stage of the workshop, JPTP participants are asked to create short, improvised dramatic presentations using elements of the street performances of their chosen characters. In these presentations they must play themselves, as the characters, in their own normal everyday life situations. This can be related to the process of spirit possession, which is an important part of the traditional religions of many of the peoples who settled in the West Indies. The traditional mas characters therefore, manifest in contemporary situations through the JPTP workshop participants. So you end up with, for instance, the bank manager as Midnight Robber. Only it is not satire, the person playing the Midnight Robber is a real bank manager. It is a way for actors and drama students to understand drama and create theatre, and for community people to better understand themselves and their cultural history. The Jouvay Popular Theatre Process, therefore, is a direct way to meditate on Jouvay Process through a “performance model.” Jouvay Process manifests when principles of creativity embedded in the survival systems [strategies] of the emancipation tradition are invoked. In 1956 the Mighty Sparrow won the Calypso Monarch title in Trinidad when he sang: Jean and Dinah Rosita and Clementina Round the corner posing Bet your life is something they selling And if you catch them broken You can get it all for nothing Don”t make a row Since the Yankees gone, Sparrow take over now. (P) Ice Music Limited © 1956 Slinger Francisco – The Mighty Sparrow This heralded a new voice in the calypso arena as well as the new nationalist movement of Premier Dr. Eric Williams that was to point the way for an independent Trinidad and Tobago. By 1962 Trinidad and Tobago gained independence from Great Britain after a West Indian federation of nations, mired in political ambivalence, had failed. Yet, after forty years, Sparrow”s voice remained the only one on this issue of the women who were left behind by the Yankees who had occupied the island on the Chaguaramas Naval Base during World War II. The presence of the soldiers on the island with their “yankee dollars” and the resultant power had thrown the local men into dire insecurity. But by ‘56, the year of the calypso, most of the soldiers had left for their home, leaving the women behind to fend for themselves among their wounded men folk. Sparrow”s song speaks of the masculine revenge. T...