 Hello and welcome to the programme which was created to entice you to participate in one of the many events held during the Nobel Laureate Festival. Every year the festival has a theme. The prefix is Celebrating Excellence and the sub-theme for 2023 is nurturing our creativity, consolidating our legacy. Here's Drenia Frederick, theatre activist and director of events and production at the Cultural Development Foundation, reflecting on the contribution of Cedric Walcott and other contemporary St. Lucian performing arts artists both at home and on the international arena. I love all Walcott's plays. The first play that I encountered was Siad Dofe. I was 16 at the time and it was part of a workshop and although I was one of the characters in the chorus, when I read Siad Dofe I could not imagine, I said who wrote this? And that was like the name for me, Derek Walcott stood out because who could create that language? Who could create that kind of imagery? He uses an abstract concept to explain an abstract concept. For example, when we look at the poem Odd Job, a Bolterio, he's describing love and he's comparing that love to the depths of the sea and the silence. And for me, I think that he is one of the greatest writers of our time and for me, the older he got, the more the writing became more current, the better he got. And as Siad Dofe, I didn't even know what Dofe was and to have somebody create something that talks about a place near at the end of St. Lucia that is embodied in myth, that is also an Amerindian ecological site and create a story out of that is remarkable. And for me also, it's about that moment when I read Light of the World and I could see myself standing by the market jumping on a minibus and having that experience of waiting for the woman with the big basket and she gone off to do something and say, package me a tea and don't leave me on earth and to encapsulate those lines and that bus ride and I think for me what he said at the end, just that life of those people and he said there's nothing I could give them. There's nothing that he really wanted but that experience of being, for me, I took it as being part of a community, something bigger than yourself and that observation of the world of life. I mean, some people have referred to him as more than Shakespeare. For me, Derek has set the trajectory of standards in terms of how far your art can go and where it can reach. It can reach this pair of the world and it can impact people's lives significantly and whether it's the story of what we say the 21st century with respect to literature is considered to be the era of what is called the ordinary man. With respect to a story about an ordinary person, whether it be Ashile from Omarus, I could see Ashile, I could see one of those fishermen at Bunan, you know, tying his boat, that same stature, that same energy and how that relates to somebody, let's say, in South America or the world where they see some aspect of themselves, some aspect of their humanity in the character. And for me, what Walcott has done is taken what is Saint Lucia and shown it to the world and told our story using the context of, let's say, the structures that he has learnt and that has mushroomed into something beautiful. Most people, they come, they see the sun, they see the beauty of Saint Lucia, the forest, but he has recognized the beauty in the people and whether we think that it's a Saint Lucia of then with simple folk, it still represents the Saint Lucia attribute today. And that has influenced the work like Young Persons Like Myself. My first interface with Derek Walcott was a very long time ago during the 80s where I saw my first production of Teja and his brothers at the Cassius Comprehensive School and he did not use the stage. The entire production was staged on the ground floor of the auditorium where the audience, we were almost part of the experience inside of the set and for me that influenced me in trying to make the productions that I do interactive and in a sense still create what we call a fourth wall and break it, come out of that and come back to the reality of the fourth wall. And it allowed me to see that you can experiment and you can do things differently. You may learn the rudiments, the format, but you can give people a different experience and from his productions I learned theatres and experience. And it's that moment of that catharsis that you want to achieve, whether it's that message that goes out and resonates with the audience or whether it is the experience of being in another world and experiencing an alternate reality. And for me that's what Derek has done in terms of the influence. For instance when I did masquerade master to a large extent that first image of seeing Teja and his brothers as a sort of musical that influenced how I did things, creating not only context and theme but spectacle, something that gives the audience an experience. And I think in terms of the influence of Derek we can see it in the work of other of my contemporaries in terms of how we develop productions. Musicals are still very big in terms of productions in St. Lucia. We still enjoy that. We see that through the work of Dickson Tinde which I had the pleasure of directing. So you can see that there is a trend towards a particular standard and a particular style that really defines the St. Lucia context, the St. Lucia culture. He brought our people on a page then onto a stage in terms of persons understanding who St. Lucia's are and what you can achieve. It doesn't matter if you come from 238 square miles, your dreams are big and the world is entirely your playground so to speak and I think that's what he has showed us. If you're not in St. Lucia, here's an opportunity to participate wherever you are. Share festival events with family and friends on Island and internationally. To request a program of events, visit the Facebook page at Nobel Noide Festival St. Lucia. Email info at DDmediaRelations.com or WhatsApp 284 2111. You can also view events in real time on any of our partner platforms. I'm Delia De Law. Goodbye.