 Sirs, I am 60 years old. I spent all my life like a, no, no. Sirs, I am 60 years old. I spent all my life like a wolf in sheep. Take your time. We have all the time in the world. Sorry, I know it's just, okay, just give me one more chance. This is an ice-conic play! Quick, quick, before they all die. The hard-haven head of Arthur Jacobs. The bare pit. The broken teeth that make his grin more powerful. A man with no money, despite his tremendous presence. Light as a leaf and a delicate dancing. Cold black and like cold packed with inspiring fire. A diamond with its memory fading. Jesus. The beauty he contains. A beauty of soul, no less than that of wit and intelligence. The degrading indifference he has had to endure. Some of the best already gone. Wilbert Holder, Claude Reed, Irmin Wright. Against the wind for a long time, they kept a steady flame of devotion. They had to do what was right for their calling against their most polished detractors. Like those who claim they cannot be black and actors. I mean, mean minds who find a contradiction in their passion and sacrifice. But whom I cherish more than the most overpriced fiction. I must clear the house of my head. I must make room for a shrine before they all die. With fireflies and starlight. Maka, wake up, it's me, Mustik. You didn't hear me calling you from the front of the galley? Look, I bring a next bag from my Alcindor cafe. Today is a market day. And time and time wait for no man. I tie Batylia to a Gomye tree by the waven. Batylia? Which Batylia? Listen to him. Which Batylia? The donkey, you and I buy from Telysier. A rare blend of passion and humility. Arthur Jakes Jacobs is described as an artist in the truest sense of the word. A creative with a profound and centric talent, honed to its sharpest peak. Make a white mist in your mind. Make that mist hang like the cloth from the dress of a woman. On prickles, on branches. Make it rise from the earth. As I brush through the bushes, shaking up the dew, a man walking through smoke, a bandage of fog and peel my eyes as I reach this spot. I see this woman singing. My foot growls. I couldn't move no more. I knew him on the stage. When we acted in different plays, see a dofer, I think it was. That's right, many years ago. A request of, mostly Derek Walker's plays. I was part. But he was always a lead actor. That was his strength. He had a fantastic memory. And to be a good actor, you have to have a good memory so that you can explain here, express it in a very convincing form. Ah, good morning, youngster. It's a damp, mournful walk through the forest, isn't it? And only the cheap of a bird to warm one makes the old bones creak. Bonjour, vieco. My name is Tizio. What I can never forget about Jake's on stage, there were two little children who were supposed to be the offspring of the princess. And the princess is murdered in the play. The play, which is played, a part played by Zinn. Zinn Thibbles was another famous arts girl actress. And when Jake's thundered out in one of his lines, the children started to cry. They were supposed to be dead. They were frightened out of death. He won in the war, I think, best supporting actor for that. And that was my first experience with Arthur Jacobs. Arthur Jacobs had a love affair with stone and wood. He was a self-taught craftsman and sculptor. Using salmon and mahogany found naturally in Zinn Lucia. Creating unique North American pieces, some of his commissioned work can be found in government of St. Lucia offices, royal palaces, foreign diplomatic offices, and places of high esteem. As a sculptor, he created bronze bus for famous St. Lucians like Garnet Gordon, Louis McVein, and Dr. Carl Le Corbinier. He studied sculpting, right? He had gotten a scholarship, a fellowship to go to the United States. I think this would have been way back in the, oh boy, maybe early 70s. I'm not even sure. No, earlier than that. I mean earlier than that, I think. I'm not sure. To study arm. So you did sculpting. But I mean, you couldn't really make a living as a sculptor here. And so you went into making gravestones and plaques and that kind of thing. And also the clocks in shape of St. Lucia and that kind of thing. And that's what he put his skills, the use that he put his skills to. But I've wondered on more than one occasion what his sculpture would have been like. You know, what it would have been like. If he had really had the freedom to do it, you know, what that would have been like. Really phenomenal, you know. As often the case with creatives, Arthur Jacobs' talent bled into music and theater. He joined the St. Lucia Arts Guild in 1959 at the age of 22. Under the tutelage of Guild founders, Roderick and Derek Walcott, Jacobs blossomed as an actor. My eldest brother, Hogarth, who would have been a few years younger than Arthur Jacobs, he's ten years older than I am. Younger than Arthur Jacobs. He was in the St. Lucia Arts Guild. And from time, when he was in that, that probably would be late 50s, probably early 60s. Late 50s, early 60s. And he used to be coming home with the scripts of the plays that he was performing in. I would be helping him to learn lines. And then I would go down to the town hall, to the Castries Town Hall, where Roderick Walcott would be directing. And I would sit at the back there. And I would watch the actors performing. Well, you know, rehearsing. And Jacobs would have been there among some of those early plays. I've seen him perform. I've performed the film. I think once or twice I've directed him. At least I know I've directed him in workshops. I may have directed him. Very easy to direct. He doesn't have the heirs of a prima donna, or pretensions. You pay me, you tolerate me. I amuse you like some pretentious servant, a fellow dressed in his master's outfit in front of a mirror. Alors en général, commander, you're more than that. I'm not a commander general. My name is François Domenique Toussaint. I am a coachman. I was employed under the kind care of Montseil-Calix-Brida. Jacobs was, he was a very quiet person. In a way. In the sense that he didn't speak. Much. But when he did, he exuded a very strong area of understanding and thought. He had strong expressions of how he felt. And he had a good voice that made it very interesting and thoughtful. He was a consummate performer, one of Derek's favorite. And I just quickly put a list together of the plays that I have, the only one I haven't seen them in is Haitian Earth. But he was in Macaque, the lead in Dream of Monkey Mountain. He was Papa Bois in Tijan and his brothers. Then he was one of the three, three in a rain, also called Sea of Dauphin. He was one of the actors there. And then we went all over Europe with the Odyssey. Derek did play the Odyssey and that's Odysseus, the Homeric tale of Odysseus. And Jacobs was Billy Blue, the narrator of all the events and tales of Odysseus. So he was always on stage. You never see a man in a book tank. They are making a little... Beautiful. This is good. As a little girl, I remember being very excited When there were plays that were being staged for the first time, you know, I remember Shaso Marianne, Banjo Manne, when they were first staged, I remember at that time the radio and the newspapers featured a lot in terms of promoting the plays and anything that was happening with theatre. So you'd hear excerpts from the plays being used in advertisements on the radio, you know, particularly after the news or around that time. And it was very exciting because I could relate considering that I had for weeks heard my father practicing his lines, you know, and seeing the script I would go through the script and read the script and I just thought it's so interesting. My father was not an actor who acted as if he was acting. My father is a natural actor. When he went on the stage, I mean he had the mood he had he channeled the character, you know, that he performed. So in my young years that always fascinated me how it is that you could do that. After the revolt of Bukman, such a series of savage vicious scenes of hatred and revenge, such godless brutality that I felt ashamed of my own race for what they could not inflict on the army, they took out on the citizens. And all the hatred and humiliation of a hundred years, you know, of a hundred years is being accounted for. They saw an old plant in half between boards. They nailed a slave who tried to save his master. They nailed him to a door. They are killing women, children. The slave they nailed, I knew him. His name was Bartolo. Among his most memorable portrayals are that of Makak in Sir Derek Walker's dream on Monkey Mountain, Harold Antipas in Salome, and Methostopheles in The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus. Dreaming of women? Because you're so damn ugly. You should walk on all fours. Sirs, I thus catch fit. I thus fall in a frenzy every full moon night. I thus be possessed. After that I'm not responsible. I'm responsible only to God who speak to me in the form of a woman on Monkey Mountain. I is God's warrior. You have been charged with certain things. Now let the prisoner make his deposition. Sirs, I am sixty years old. I live my whole life like a wild beast in hiding, without child, without wife. People forget me like the mist on Monkey Mountain. Of all his performances as part of the St. Lucia Arts Guild and through his career, it is unanimously agreed that his most iconic and acclaimed performance was as to Sir Luverture in Sir Derek Walker's play, Haitian Earth, produced by the government of St. Lucia in 1984 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Haitian Revolution, the first successful rebellion by the enslaved people. You've hidden all these years. I suppose they would call you a good nigger. You saw what I had to do. All that out there. I myself thought that war would be so, so neat. You're watching my eyes to see if they will reign. I'll cry, but in the privacy of my own tent, you forced me to this decision. Well, all right, I obeyed the rules and pieces I obeyed them in war to destroy the enemy and destroy the past. Through the cannon smoke, the rain, marching over the mulch of corpses. I had one target. I kept pumping as the pivot of the war, the axle of the revolution. You commanders, our cause could have come home, but the peasants tremble at us more than they did with the French men, like canes in expectation. I had just come out of St. Joseph's convent and I was very familiar with the history and I was very enamored of the significance of the rule of Tussaud-Luveture in terms of that whole consciousness and, you know, the consciousness that Haitians have even today, that they stand out in the world as that society in this hemisphere that really pushed back against, you know, slavery. So I was fully aware of who Tussaud-Luveture was and it was very sobering for me. It was very exciting and thrilling for me that my father was selected to play that lead role of Tussaud-Luveture and, you know, that he was not, that he was in his what, 40s, 50s in those days, perhaps 50s, so I imagine Tussaud-Luveture may have been slightly younger and I was kind of impressed that, that he looked good in those days. You know, he was slim, he was trim, you know, so that he could have taken on the role of a younger man and he could have delivered it so commandingly. So yeah, definitely the Haitian look, but in terms of that his maturity as an actor, I think that performance was just up and above, you know. It was in a class by itself. When all this is finished, treat him as your equal. No, even as your sovereign emperor. Serve him well, waiter, or else I will curse the Haitian earth from my grave that every furrow be dust and every womb in the soil barren. Jakes was a phenomenal actor. He really was. I mean, I've heard Derek say so that, when they were doing ex-hospital Haitian earth one time, that he's a world-class actor and he really is. He really, really is and very, very dedicated to it. People have stories about Jakes on the beach, closer to the cemetery side in the mornings with a mirror, trying out lines and trying expressions and that kind of thing early, early morning. And I would watch him sometimes like in rehearsals. So like rehearsals have been going on the stage. His time hasn't come yet and he'd be there. He'd try out a line, three, four, five different ways, different intonations, different speeds. He'd just, you know, just trying things and listening to himself, you know. He really had a respect for the craft that he was in. Idiots! These creatures are mine. A big man like you. Who you is? I am Papa Boa. You know why they call me that? Father of the forest? I don't care. No, you must care. Care for the brown frog that hops in your path, for the black bird drinking from a pool in the road, Grosjean. Bonjour of your Papa. What you have with your foot? Please, please. They acted with him in the Haitian earth as I played Christoph and he was Toussaint. Yeah, where is it? It's supposed to be my emperor even at six in the morning. The smell of hair. Toussaint gave it to you at Denry. We stopped fighting to watch you, crouched at the gulf, but blacks creamed for your back. You were then the sword and reason of this war. One by one you cutless legions of ragoons like sugar and wheeled around again like a tiger spinning on its heel till all the lances of the French Legion were piled level as it came. And there was nothing standing between your fury and the setting sun. And so it went from cap to armband across the region. The soldiers saw you half-weredened to your horse like a black fincher. And this is a land. Look, it was just an iconic situation because you had icons of icons in that. Just to give you an idea, you had Gandalf sentry in Desalé, excellent Desalé, diminutive, and he used his body weight to build the stature of Desalé as he was larger than life, including crying on the stage without makeup. You had Eric Branford, who very good actor, over in Norville, who just passed away, you know, of course, Arthur Jacobs. And there were some Peace Corps guys, there was a guy who played Anton, I don't remember his name right now, very good actor. You also truly played Kristoff and To Be Directed by Derek Walcott and his own play at that. So you can imagine what was happening. In fact, there was electricity on the stage in every sequence, you know, so much so that the director used to fly off the handle at times because these actors went into dimensions he never even saw in the script, you know, and Walcott always loved it to be in control. And sometimes I felt that he was feeling his lost control, so he snapped at his actors and there were disagreements, all of us, all of us had disagreements with him. But the next day we finished it up, it's just pure, like professional. Arthur was the kind of actor that he commanded the stage and he had an incredible presence and charisma on stage and he had a wonderful voice, a very deep, a baritone and clear, his English was perfect. And of course, Derek gave him the words to speak, so he was fantastic. He really was. And that was a hard role to play, of course, because it was about an old, beaten up old man who lived by himself and isolated, too, from women. He only had one friend, Mustique, and they would sell charcoal every week at the market. And that was, that setting is, by the way, in St. Lucia. I think one of the things from my father that we learned very early, it was that if you're going to do something, you had better do it well. If you, if your heart is not in it, or in other words, you are the best person to be the best of yourself. You know, you are an original, so you have, whatever it is you put your mind to, if it is worth doing at all, you have to give it respect. And so that is one of the things that has stayed with me in terms of the ethic, your work ethic. You know, my father worked at his lines, and he would rehearse and rehearse. The hoisting the sail, the longboat is ready. You must go. I know what I know. The oath is cracked. There's division among the soldiers. There must be peace. Call yourself a hostage to peace, General. And you promise the first concern to cooperate. That's when you are in exile, you will not try to make use of your authority. My authority? When this voice had authority lived in expectation of an echo, by the sea, armies, breakers throwing their caps in the air, lances of men bowed to it like the canes. But now it is an old man's cough, rattling gravel in a riverbed. My tongue is a dry leaf. The sun was set in my throat. My authority's a horse. A child would no bait. No, sir. You needn't worry about my authority any more than we's. In another context, in another country, and another thing, he'd have been like, he'd have been up there. The world would have been herring of him, really. I think that Jake's recognition is much belated. In fact, apart from people like Derek Wolcott, and those of us who knew him, very few St. Louisians recognized the magnitude of that star. Jake's, in my view, is perhaps the finest actor I have ever had the privilege to work with.