 That's although I'm a sailor. I'm a port. But I'm true only to you. The sparsing guy, guy is not she. This is not she. But Morgan, you can't go to Panama. I don't finish your socks. Good afternoon and welcome to week two of 10 Weeks in Jamaica, the interconversations from Jamaica to the world. My name is Akiba Abaka and I am a co-founder and co-artistic director of Akiba Abaka Arts. We're an international theater production company and we create plays, concerts, talks and processes for plays, concerts and talks for the global stage. 10 Weeks in Jamaica is presented in collaboration with raw management agency and esteemed talent agency representing artists and groups across all genres of film, television, theater, voiceovers, branding and endorsements. We are grateful for the support of Ms. Nadine Rollins, raw management's managing director and a powerhouse connector of Jamaican theater, film and everything in the arts. Ms. Rollins also served as a co-curator for our series. We are also thankful for the support of our publishers, HowlRound.com. HowlRound is a free and open platform of theater makers worldwide that amplifies progressive disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connection between diverse practitioners. We are also grateful for the support of the Martin E. Seville Center at the City University of New York, Cooney. The Seville Center is a home to theater artists, scholars, students, performing arts managers and local and international performance communities. In this series, we link with our colleagues in Jamaica, the beloved island nation, cultural hub and one of the vacation capitals of the world for 10 weekly lively conversations about the subject of theater. Jamaica's theatrical legacy dates back to the 15th century and represents a diverse collection of stories about a people and its culture that have converged on the islands for over 400 years. A bit of a disclaimer before we start this afternoon. So those of you who grew up in Jamaica or visited Jamaica at this time of year, you would know that it's rainy season in Jamaica and so parts of the island is experiencing a lot of rain. So during this conversation, we may experience some technical difficulties as a result of the rain. If anything happens, we are prepared to carry on in the best fashion, working with technology and the weather, mother nature. At this time, today's topic will focus on two great pillars of Jamaica's theatrical legacy and Jamaican culture in general, the little theater movement and Ms. Louise Bennett. We are joined today by an esteemed panel of speakers whose careers have been shaped by their engagements with the little theater movement and Ms. Lee. At this time, it is my honor to introduce to you Ms. Faye Ellington, C-D-O-D. Ms. Ellington is a Jamaican media personality and lecturer best known for hosting the television series Morning Time on the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation for more than 12 years. In 1974, Ms. Ellington joined the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, JBC, eventually hosting Morning Time for over a dozen years. She also served as one of the main news anchors on Jamaican radio and television for decades. In 2005, she made her directorial debut when she staged a one-woman show, Who Will Sing for Lena? She is currently hosting the program profile on television Jamaica. Ms. Ellington also started her career as an actress on the stage of the little theater movement in the pantomime. Welcome, Faye. Thank you very much. Good to be here. So good to have you. Next, I'd like to introduce Ms. Ania Gludon Nelson. Ms. Gludon Nelson is a graduate of Edna Manley School for the Visual Arts, now the Edna Manley College. She is a freelance graphic artist producing print and web-based artwork for various organizations and companies with particular interest in behavior change and social issues. Ania is a board member of the little theater movement. She is an integral member of the production team with responsibilities for managing and coordinating the activities of the pantomime company. Her involvement in the little theater movement began as a costume designer for the 1991-92 production, Mandaya, as she has continued for more than 20 other pantomimes. She has been recognized by the actor boy awards, Jamaica's highest Critics Circle Award, with several nominations and an award for best costume design for the 2003-2004 pantomime, Ms. Ani. She also serves as archivist and public relations and social media manager for the little theater movement. She is responsible for the content and creation on the pantomimes website. And to learn more about the pantomime, you could go to ltmpantomime.com. Welcome Ania. Hi, nice to be here. So great to have you. Our next panelist is Dr. Deborah Hickling-Gordon. Dr. Hickling-Gordon is a communication and culture and development strategist and commentator. Dr. Hickling-Gordon has been involved in cultural and creative industries and tourism as a researcher, policymaker, and practitioner, having worked across the disciplines of integrated marketing, communication, broadcasting, and theater for 30 years. She is a director in several private sector companies, including Inc. and Vision Limited, facilitators of cultural and creative industries projects. She coordinates the UWI Mona, University of the West Indies at Mona, Bachelors of Arts in Cultural and Creative Studies, and the Bachelors of Arts in Entertainment and as Caribbean Studies at UWI Mona. Dr. Hickling-Gordon also supervises graduate studies, coordinates and delivers postgraduate courses in cultural studies, and at the Mona School of Business and Management. Deborah holds a PhD in cultural studies with that focus on transnational media and cultural economy. Welcome Deborah. Thank you. It was wonderful to have you. Thank you very much. So our series will focus on the history and the experiences and the vision of the little theater movement. And as such, I'd actually like to start off with a question for Anya. Your entrance into the little theater movement happened in Vitro, is that right? That is correct, I was actually in the belly of my mother's barbecue down who has authored several pantomimes. And she was actually working on a show called The Witch, which was based on the White Witch of Rose Hall. And I was in the belly for her working on that. And after my entrance, I've been backstage ever since. And you've been more than backstage. You've been coordinating all of the activities and running the program essentially, both technical and in the archives of the little theater movement. Tell us a bit about how the little theater movement came to be. Who were Greta and Rita Fowler? Okay, so Henry Fowler and Rita Fowler, at the time she was great at work. They were both teachers at the Prairie School, which was a kind of expatriate school where a lot of expatriates sent their children. So they had connections with Britain and British history and such. And they wanted to harken back to their earlier days and have a little fun at Christmas. And so they wanted to stage a Jamaican pantomime. So they put together their money. And I think her sister, Greta's sister, gave her some money towards that. And they pulled together this script, which was Jack and the Beanstalk because it was very traditional British type pantomime. And they staged it at the World Theater. It did very well and it became a decision that they would do this every year. And since 1941, December 26, Boxing Day, 6 p.m., since 1941, every year there has been a pantomime on stage. It further went on to become more Jamaicanized when Louise Bennet Covalier, the Honourable Louise Bennet Covalier, and Granny Williams and a couple of other Jamaican names who persons may know. Decided that it really had to reflect more of who we are as a people, who the society was at the time. This was still before independence. So it was a kind of point between pre-colonialism and post-colonialism in the middle of that, as we're beginning to find ourselves as a Jamaican people. So they began to Jamaicanize the stories. They brought in Annancy. They brought in the folk songs. So the songs that the people sang going to market, the songs that they sang at nine nights, what they, the words they spoke to each other, the proverbs that they told, the stories they told, those were all woven into the stories of the pantomime so that it could be a reflection of who we are as Jamaican people. And this is how it has developed over the years, which are a reflection of just who we are. It's Jamaican culture, the culture we want to be, the culture we are, and the culture we aim to be. So after about, so this has been going since 1941. And so every year it is done. We have, they've had many different authors and creative persons throughout the years. It's bringing a list of who has been involved in the pantomime. It's like a list of Jamaica's creative history. So you had Albert Hewitt doing sets in the background, and he's one of our famous creative artists. You would have Colin Garland, who's another great Jamaican artist also doing the sets and the backdrop and the costumes. Then you had the musicians. They primarily drew from the Jamaican military band. So that formed the basis of it, but then it grew from there and other Jamaican musicians came into the fold. So persons may know Rob Cooper from Fabulous Five Band. Rob is an integral part of the music scene with the pantomime. He has been musical director for many years, has created many of the songs. The wonderful late great Noel Dexter, founder of the co-founder of the University Singers. He was also very integral in shaping the sound of what the pantomime was. Madri Wiley, who worked with MDTC, has also assisted with the pantomime. I think she was on stage as well for one or two, if I'm not mistaken. Persons like Professor Rex Nettler, creator of the MDTC, he both both danced in directed, co-directed pantomimes in the past. So it's really like an amalgam of all of Jamaica's foundation creative people and an upcoming ones too, because we've made it our intention to make sure that the new upcoming talent is allowed to come on stage, to be a part of the history. So that a student who is currently at Edna Manley College can walk along the same path that Oliver Sam was walked along, Neon Forbes walked along, Charles Hyatt walked along. So we've made sure that this continuity is happening, making sure that we also remember who they are and what they did. So each year as we produce what we're doing, we hearken back to what was before and meld it and shape it into what should be happening now. So we always make sure to include parts of our traditional culture, whether it's folk form or songs or music or just bits of things that are typically Jamaica whether we speak about pudding, which is pudding, a big sweet treat, which is a classic for Jamaica. We don't eat cake, we eat pudding. So we build a scene and a song around that so that people can feel a part of their history and their culture when they come to see a pantomime. So it's really an embrace of Jamaican culture and community. That's really what the pantomime is worth and will continue to be. You know, thank you so much, Anya. As we started off the street, the program this afternoon, our viewers were able to get a taste of the sound of the Jamaican pantomime. The song that played All a We Are One from the very critically acclaimed August Maughan. And when we talk about the history, today's conversation is deemed decolonizing pantomime, the little theater movement and misloom. When we talk about the history, Jamaican history represented in this art form and this notion of decolonizing or reclaiming or claim to, I think about August Maughan because tell us a little bit about that production. And then we'll go to a different question. Sure, August Maughan is a very special work. It came about in 1997, the Jamaican government decided that we should return Emancipation Day, which is the recognition of the day when they read the freedom proclamation that freed the slaves in 1834, although we still had apprenticeship up till 1838. But the August one, which we refer to as August Maughan, was returned to our national calendar. So we needed a way to celebrate it, to bring awareness to it because there was a generation of persons who didn't really know what August Maughan was, as well as there were others who thought August Maughan was about the queen's birthday or something to that effect. So it was important for us to link it to our most particular cultural history. So with that, Barbara Gludon and director Brian Heaps came together, they drew pieces of poetry from persons like Philip Sherlock, drawn songs from Peter Tosh. And we wrote this story together with a group of runaway slaves who escaped into a king piece because freedom was coming and they had to see the sunrise and feel that they were free. So it's built around that. So it's part of our cultural history. And what that formed was, this wasn't particularly a pantomime, although it was performed by the pantomime company members and it was a pantomime and LTM production. It became part of what we were then referred to as our heritage series, which looks at pieces of Jamaica and history, persons in Jamaica who are important to us and we crafted into our work on stage. We put in our regular music. It has a little fun and laughter. And that production ran for 10 years unbroken. So from 1997 straight up to 2007, we did it without fail. Different cast members coming in at different times. And there were persons who literally grew along with us. And since then, every time they said, so when is August morning? It doesn't matter what we do after that, whatever that show is, it's always referred to as August morning, which is fine because it still draws on our cultural heritage, whether it's looking at the national heroes because we have another work that does that. So that kind of thing is how we build, not just the fun, but let them learn something. And I know they use the term edutainment, but sometimes that sounds a little too stiff for me, but it's just absorption of knowledge while enjoying it. So you don't really know you're learning, but you learn something when you're done. And that's really what the focus was with August morning. We're going to teach you about who you were when you were enslaved and how the Jamaican spirit of no matter how hard it is, you take kinti kiva hat bone, which means we take the challenges and the hurts and we turn it into a joke because it's far easier to laugh at our pain and to just wallow and cry at this very, no? So that's August morning. Thank you. So earlier you talked about some of the great luminaries of the Jamaican culture, cultural canon who emerged from the little theater movement stage. And one of those luminaries is on our panel this afternoon, Ms. Faye Ellington. I'm going to try my best to call you Faye, but the miss is going to stay there. So you are a young, young woman, country come to town, from Clarence and to Kingston. How did you end up at the little theater movement? I'm going to tell you this, I came to Kingston when I was nine plus because of asthma where I'm from in the hills of Clarence and then the valley was cold. And so I was sent to Kingston, which was warm. And while as attending St. Hughes High School, my interest in the performing arts took me to being a member of the pie, a member of the orchestra, a member of the debating society, which I became president, and a member of the drama society. And at that time there were productions that would be done by St. Hughes or a collaborative effort between Kingston College or Brother School and St. Hughes. And I remember watching a production being done, the Crucible, and I just sat there and said, wow, you know, because I've been performing, doing the things. And when I left St. Hughes High School, I went to the little theater movement because they had started classes, Jamaica School of Drama. Long before there was an Edna Manley College and before that there was a cultural trading center, but it was when it first started under the auspices of the little theater movement. So you'd go to work in the days and then after work you come for classes in the evenings. And we had some wonderful tutors, people like the late Wycliffe Bennett, Leone Forbes was one of our tutors. Bobbie Guy says, lots of interesting, knowledgeable people. So some of the students were there at the time, as Foundation students were Oliver Sam-Wills. Oh yes, Ruth O'Shing, Eloyne Napier, Michael Everett, all of us, Claudia Robinson and many more. And so we got wind that Trevor Roan has written a pantomime and called Music Boy. And Oliver, myself, and Ruth, we tried everything because as students we're not allowed to perform in commercial productions, whatever that meant. And so what we lobbied, and of course, Oliver led the way primarily, and we got accepted in the pantomime. Can you believe it? So Agnes- Now, the pantomime is the same- I'm going to- You wrote The Heart of They Come and Smiling. All right, I'm just going to put it. Can you believe it? Trevor Roan is the writer of The Heart of They Come, co-writer, that is. He was a writer of Smile Orange, right? And he wrote this thing. And then furthermore, wow, we were going to be on stage with his new and mass ran and Agnes Hibbet and Fitz Ware and so many others will be in our element. But, you know, Agnes said that the first pantomime was 1941. My first pantomime was 1971. And then the color, and I mean that in every sense of the word, had changed. So we're looking at Jamaican stories and we're telling them with passion and confidence and people like Trevor Roan were writing these things and the directors would have come and, you know, they're directing. And lots of things happened between 1941 and that time. But the story and the way it was written, the way it was directed and the group, we learned so much about just being around those senior actors and actresses. And so there we were in Music Boy. There we were watching and observing and learning and just becoming a part of what is now history. But I just wanted to add something to what Agnes said. The political movement in this country, Jamaica, when you're in a political movement like we were or any countries that you're looking for your own identity. So coming out of colonialism, what it was is that you're looking for your identity, the political identity, your cultural identity. And if you really examine it, they're working together. 1941, the first pantomime. But before that, 1938, the riots, right? This is for people to be paid properly and to be workers of which the labor riots. So we have 1941. Then we have 1944 in Jamaica, universal adult suffrage when people were allowed to vote. No pride about if you didn't have money and land and color, white, you couldn't vote. And then we started working on self-government and coming up to independence in 1962. And so you see the work of the artists, the performing artists, the writers, the people in the cultural arts working along with what was happening on the political landscape because it was all about identity. And before I let me allow you to bring our other presenter in, but let me say this. With identity is language, language. So we were now using the Jamaican language and feeling proud of it and not having people tell us it is broken English because it is not or looking down on us. So they travel Rhone's place, right? He has three plays in one book, Smile Orange, Old Storytime, and I think Schools Out. But a wonderful playwright, producer, director. So that's how I started, 1971. And my goodness, that has opened up doors for me. I did four pantomimes, but then my life as a performer, as an actor, took off as to those early beginnings with classes at the Little Theatre Movement and all the persons who taught me and then getting that opportunity to get on stage in 1971 in the Music Boy. May I just say this? Whereas prior to the Music Boy pantomime, and I don't think it has ever happened since, there was an orchestra pit because the ward theaters where pantomimes used to be done. And if you go to the West End in London, it's the same design, a real theater with a proscenium arch and all of that. So there's an orchestra pit and the players and musicians would stay there. For Music Boy, there was a live band on stage. It was a real life. And that was a Boris Gardner happening. Amazing, amazing. What a picture you paint. And thank you for the timeline. Talking about some of the socio-political unrest from 1938, leading us to independence in 1962. And then also talking about the significance of a move out of colonization and into a cultural and national identity being centered in language, it's centered in our identity, our culture from different parts of the island, our African culture. One person was very, very significant in moving that movement forward. And it was Ms. Louise Bennett-Coverly. And Dr. Hicklin Warden, you, like Anya Ludon, entered the theater in Vitro. And also as a child, essentially, of the work and the storytelling of Ms. Lou. Tell us about your childhood experiences or your entrance into the little theater movement and then also your experiences with Ms. Lou. So it started long before I entered the little theater movement in 1991, 41, 71, 91. I know what numbers to go play, okay? I'm gonna line them up. I'm gonna line them up. My entire family was involved in theater and theatrics. And my grandmother was a music teacher and she and Lois Kelly Barrow Miller were very, very good friends and Barbara Gludon. And there was actually an entire crew of them, Norman Ray, Pauline Stone, Mary, and they would have these huge parties and excitement at each person's house. They would go from one house to the next and they would have these huge things. It was one person on Christmas Day, one person on New Year's Day, one person on and so on. So I grew up going to all of these parties with all of these experience. So there was that. And then there was, when I went to St. Andrew Preck, the first thing I remember, I remember after we spoke the other day, my actual entrance into theater was through a pantomime at St. Andrew Preck in 1981. Yes. I called Jack and the Gungo Tree. Now that's important. I'm gonna write that down too. Jack and the Gungo Tree written by Barbara Gludon. And it was behind me at Preck School and it was in my sister's year. And Bobby Clark of Blessed Memory was the director. My memory of that was, we heard that there was going to be a pantomime. And I had just passed my common entrance to go to Queens. And I remember I was the first person in the hall to go and audition for this thing. And I wanted to, and I knew I was gonna play the lead because I was so into theater. And I did the audition and I did well and I felt great about it. And I came back the next day and Mr. Clark, this wonderful debonair, good looking young man. Said to me, you've gotten a part, you've got a great part. And I said, great, I've got the lead. And he cast me as Oink Oink the Pig. I was a portly little girl. And my mouth dropped open and I wept for days upon hearing that I was a cast that's Oink Oink the Pig. And I went home and my mother said to me, you're gonna pay the grunts of that pig. And the rest is history. I said, thank you. You were brilliant. Yeah, I did. It was great. It was great fun. So I wanna thank you for sharing that story. I went listening to your stories of the pantomime. Tell us about the elements of the pantomime that has made it so successful in Jamaica. As far as being able to be accessible to people of multiple generations, from your perspective. Okay, so there are a number of things. First of all, there was this thing that's still done called topicalities. So it was an opportunity for the lead to explore the issues of the day and the writers to explore the issues of the day. And what would happen is that while the set was being changed, a curtain would come down in front. So the lead would play front of curtain and they would have a discussion with people in the audience. So there was always some, you talk about interactive nowhere. They were in the digital age. That was the beginning of interactive, yeah. And Oliver did it well. And Lenford, Simon did it at a point. And about Carl Bingham. And they traded insults and they had discussions. So that was an important part of the pantomime. Another linkage to the pantomime that I wanted to bring up when Aunt Clare was talking is the notion of the issues of politics and topicalities. One thing that we need to remember and just to bring in Miss Lou, that Miss Lou wasn't involved in a movement at the time in the 1940s, not, I mean, way before, I came to the process called Jamaica Welfare. And Jamaica Welfare was a movement started by Norman Manley. And he got a number of people who had been trained in a number of different areas and got them involved in social work. And they went to the highways and byways of Jamaica. They brought language and identity and they harvested stories as well as they told stories and got people to remember who they were. And again, this is the 1940s, 1930s, 1940s when identity was a huge part of that process. So all of that was woven into this process of the development of the pantomime right up to when I joined the pantomime movement in 1990, 1991. And another thing that was important to me as we move forward on the timeline was I joined the pantomime. I was a student at UTEC. I was a business student having done very well at high school in drama. I decided I wanted to be an actress. And of course the pantomime would have been the first port of call. And I went to UTEC to kind of say to my father, I'm going to school. But I decided after a while that I couldn't take the matts and I couldn't take the accounts and I couldn't take the thing. And I went to him and I said, I'm going to join the pantomime. I'm leaving school. And to my surprise, he said, okay, I think he was trying to set me out. But I said, okay, you said, okay, I'm going. And I joined the pantomime but I had to also get a job. That was, he said that if I'm going to leave school I have to get a job. And I got a job in an advertising agency called Piazza Kelly. So for me, what was very important that in hindsight, I'm now able to say that that was the point in the 1990s when we were starting to transition to this thing that we now call the creative industries and the creative economy. So that was when we started to fight this balance or started to create this balance between the issues of identity and the issues of business and commerce. We haven't quite won the war yet. There's still a lot of tension and contestation about how we should do this or whether we should do this or why we should do this. What's the philosophy of it? What's the ideology of it? But essentially we were going through another element of what I call the process of change. So I always argue that we always say that especially those of us who are older and I'm guilty of it when I'm teaching, we say, well, it was this and now it's this. But we are not necessarily going through the process of explaining to people how and why things changed. What was it in 1948 when Louise got up and said, I'm not doing any more of these English pantomimes? It's been since 1941 and I'm really, we're not doing this and Xian and Ran decided, okay, and Mr. Vaz, Noel Vaz decided, we're gonna change the paradigm now. And that was the beginning of a process of decolonization and we talk about decolonization. We're talking about a process. It's not something that happens overnight. It's not something that's going to come today for tomorrow. It's not gonna happen because we say it. It's a process that's going to happen over a period of time. So that for me, I suppose if you plot it along the timeline 1941, 1971, 1981, 1991, right up to 2001, then you'll be able to see that process of change and it's always linked to our political history and always linked to the issues of the time. And there's a lot that can be said about that issue of decolonization, but I'm sure we're gonna talk a little bit later. You know, going right into this conversation of the issue of decolonization. You know, when we in the States, we are decolonizing everything in theater. I go to conferences, I'm at work and decolonize everything. And, you know, being a child who is from a country that was a colony a little bit earlier, closer than the US, the US was a colony a longer time ago than Jamaica. When I hear my colleagues talk about decolonize, I said, well, what exactly does that mean? Now you're trying to say decentralized whiteness, decentralized white supremacist culture, is that what you mean? But what do you mean by decolonize? Is it just to move us all into the theater as people of color? Or where is our identity? Where is our voice? So one of the reasons we're doing this series is because to be honest, you and Jamaica have, I wouldn't say figured out because Dr. Hicklin Gordon, you're correct that it's a process, but you're further along in the process when it comes to this question of decolonizing and our identity. And I just, please jump in. And then I wanted to bring up another part of this. I think it's the pen, that depends on where you sit. Yeah. So we've had a long history of the process of decolonization from before the pan-African movement through negative and through all of the political history that we've been through the 60s and 70s where we had another golden era of thought and literature. But it's a little bit, to me, for me, there's a bit of a contradiction taking place because once we went into the era of neoliberalism and globalization in the 1990s, it seems to me that the process of decolonization in Jamaica started to become, the word that comes to my mind is retarded, but it's not necessarily the right word. It started, we started to move backwards from this issue of decolonization as we got into the issue of making money and subsistence and staying alive and keeping the theaters open and creating things that were commercially viable. So there was less and less of this notion of the colonial imperative, which is a part of our DNA. Now, that's not an indictment. It's just, it's a thing that happened along the process of change. So when you say we got it all worked out, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I agree with you that we have it in our spirits and there are those who will continue to fight the fight. But it moved a little bit more from creating an epic to finding theater space that we could afford for a run of three weeks. So a lot of the issues around theater and theatrical process began to change and decolonization started to take on new meaning. But for me, the notion of decolonization means this. It means that we make our decisions and make our own decisions as to how we're going to get this thing done in the process of sustainably and as a process of development. It is decolonization by its very definition is undoing the effects of colonialism and neocolonialism. So what it means is that we are gonna decide, we're gonna work out collectively. In the 21st century, so we're not talking about 1960s decolonization or 1970s decolonization, which was also a different color. We're talking about 21st century decolonization. I call it B2K. And it's about the side, and I think the cultural economy is becoming central to that process. That process is about restarting the groups that label organizations, the unions, the representative organizations. It's about collaboration. It's about doing things. I think decolonization is something like what Chris Daley has done. He has found a space and he has built a theater. There were more theaters in the 18th century in Kingston than there are in Kingston in the 21st century. And so that's a retardation. Kind of a step back as we became more familiar. You know, connecting it back to the language, connecting what you're saying to the language and the ability to claim space in the narratives of one's identity or one's cultural narratives. We talk about a term called smudgization. Smudgization. Smudgization. Smudification. Smudification, yes. There's a famous poem. Well, it's actually... I used to recite it as a poem, but it was a speech. And it was a speech given by Sojourner Truth at the Women's Suffrage, one of the suffragist meetings. And it's, and it ain't I somebody, right? And it, you know, the poem, well, the speech, I always call it a poem, but the speech, in the speech she's saying, you know, everybody's talking about give women these rights and treat women this way. But what about me as a black woman? Ain't I somebody? And I a woman. And so I wanted to go into, going back to between 1941 and 1948, when Miss Lou is in some ways putting up resistance at the pantomime and saying, well, let's talk about this language. Let's enter into my language and how I speak and what I hear at the nine nights. And for those of you all who are not Jamaican or Caribbean, a nine night is actually a gathering to celebrate one deceased, loved one, nine nights, typically after they've passed on or within nine nights after they've passed on. And these are, if you really want to experience Jamaican culture, you want to find one of them, we'll call them a set-up. They do some, there are a lot of fun and there's something to experience. And you can understand if you've experienced a set-up, you can understand why so much of it explodes in our culture, from reggae to the stage, to film and so on. But talk to me about smuddy, smuddy, smuddyization. I'm somebody, smuddy, smuddy eyes. Tell me about that. Smuddification. Smuddification. It's either smuddification or smudification. So a gentleman by the name of Charles Mills, I believe coined the term in his discussion about our society, cultural and society. And of course, Rex Necklford ran with it as he had when he started to come down. As he started to look at issues to do with identity and culture. And of course, we know that Rex Necklford or Rex Necklford, the notions of identity and culture were deeply steeped in cultural institutions like the NBTC, like the JBC, the library, like little theater movement, all of which he had, you know, a hand in. And basically, he, with no terms, we had to be able to create, which are largely voluntary by the government. Through which we were, we were to enable and empower a Jamaican, the emerging Jamaican people. Because he was around at the time and was integral in the independence movement and the pre-independence movement and the university and so on. And all of those things were part of that decolonization of that time. And it was about making people into people, creating, making people feel like human beings, dignity, words like dignity, and so on. And I think I'll tell you about the characters that were developed at that time to do just that. I think I won't. How did that show up in performance? Pardon me? Yes, go ahead, please. I wanted to just, for brief wise, the Smadi in Jamaica is a word meaning somebody. Yes. I think we need you to say that for those persons who are non-Jamaican. So Smadi, that Smadi is not over there. So that person sitting over there, right? And so that is where this is coming from because it's very real and it's very personal and it comes to your core, to your soul. And so as Daniel, as Debbie says, Professor Rex Nettiford ran anything that meant identity and that was positive. And he would have worked with that both in his academic work and on the stage of the National Dance Theatre Company, what he brought. Now he will say, perhaps the only vice chance of any university anywhere in the world was also the artistic director of a National Dance Theatre Company. So you saw what is happening here. A Rhodes Scholar. He studied at Oxford as well. So he was able to look at the entire scenario. He was strong on culture. He understood the history and why we were where we are. So he would have understood Miss Lou and what Miss Lou did. But may I just quickly say that they still have this discussion and not speak about the work of Marcos Mazair Garvey. Absolutely. Garvey was not just a Pan-Africanist, but he was also a performer and I think I want to bring Ania in here because Ania, you know about it as well. So talk a little bit about it so we don't seem as if we're hugging the show. I'm going to go back one step for you with the decolonization. And it came to me that decolonization happened even while we were still colonized. When they taught the slaves in church to sing, shall we gather at the river? And we broke it into our tones. I said, shall we gather? Shall we gather at the river? Oh, the beautiful, beautiful river. That is what happened. Exactly. Exactly what it is. It was a way for them to claim, okay, you taught us this song, you taught us this language. We're going to break it into our way. We're going to make it ours. We're going to work it and turn it to it. It fits our tongue. It fits our mouth. It fits our soul. And that's pretty much the kind of thing that, that Gavi also believed into because he believed very strongly in understanding who you are and understanding your power and understanding your worth. And it tracks back to the pantomime in the sense that Rani Williams was a part of a troop that performed at Evelyn's Park, which was a kind of cultural center, which is on Slypen Road in Kingston. And he would. I'm just going to just contextualize a little bit of Rani Williams because we're talking about Miss Lou and we're talking where we're naming some very, very important figures here. And Rani Williams was a, what I call a journeyman actor, a real man of the stage. And if I were to put him in context, I would say in some ways he's similar to Bert Williams, the Renaissance, the Vlodzville, African-American Vlodzville Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance actor, Bert Williams. So just wanted to provide that context. Yes, continue. Right. So he was part of the troop that, and he would have to organize the concerts and his concerts would have Elocution, they would have Elocution concerts, which context so that you would stand up on who gave the best speech. They would have music. They would have drama. That was not, that was a thing, the music. Garby himself wrote a song that we use then. In a one of our summer productions, which is called keep cool. So he was Garby. As he said, was in fact a performer when he made, when he made himself larger than he was. Cause he was a short man. But when he spoke on that song came blowing out and the, the intensity in his words, if you, if you've listened to any recordings and he speaks with this rapid fire, it wasn't like he was running away with a message. It was like, I just have to get it all out and I need you to hear it. And if it comes at you, rapid fire like that, something must get in. And so that linkage of of Gavi to to the performing arts and the performances. So Rani was a Gavi, that was that was part of who he was. But that that kind of sense of understanding who you were was also this was also very strong in this in the world, because when she went away to England to study and she had to deal with the English situation, which was, well, this is what it is, was what it was and still is what it was and is. And she came back and she realized that it was even more important for our people to have a sense of value for what they have. So there was no shame in singing Hagi na Mekoko, I will talk Miminti. There's no shame in that. You can sing about the fact that your neighbor's pig is playing around in your garden and causing a problem. There's nothing wrong with singing that because you're singing what Hagi Hagi Ho. I mean, it's a sense of her saying that, okay, this is ours. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, as she would say is a good good something. This is something that you can hold on to and become part of what is important to who you are, which links back to Debbie's point about how we are beginning to understand what the creative industries are. And although she says she sees that the process might have slowed down and it's kind of heading into retrograde. It's also shifting a bit because I'm I'm a little amazed that how in this in this middle of this pandemic, little part of all, makers have jumped onto TikTok like you would never believe they're creating content. They're making people see what we are about, what we think. There's a new story and they're regurgitating it and reworking it and showing us their particular style. They're working it with they're working it in with with things that are cultural and contemporary. And it's a sense that we might not be working along a particular structure or we might not have identified how that structure is actually going to work together. What they're still doing it. And sometimes we need to realize that sometimes we don't even know the changes are happening. We don't even know how it's happening. I can't say it's the same process. But this is the same process of change. Oh, this is the annual, just to link back and we're jumping back and forth. So that can be an A to Y part. A to Y part that he was able to do business in those spaces and to do with making a life. Very much so Debbie, but I want to bring something else about Rani into the picture. That's Rani Williams or Maas Ran. So yes, he was his own person, but he worked on stage in several pantomimes with Miss Lu. As a matter of fact, many persons thought they were married. But in addition to that Maas Ran, he was a total performer because he was part of what was the name of the the performance group that he was part of, a gentleman himself and another man. He was an Andy. But he was he also had his radio programs at the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. And when you spoke about topicalities earlier on, he was the first person I saw really master the art of topicalities front of stage at the World Theatre. And on top of all this listen to this Maas Ran either owned or managed a John Kuno group as well. And then they will go more performance. And this time, David also have a little bit to do the money making as well. I wouldn't want us to talk about the pantomime and not mention some of the standards in both in terms of performance and directors and choreographers. So we know we have spoken about Rex Nettleford. But Eddie Thomas was a brilliant director. He was also costume design, set design, musical director, director of the production. He did at least one production with doing everything, the late Eddie Thomas. And then people like Jackie Guy also choreographed and danced in the pantomime. And then you have so many people who either cut their teeth on the stage of the the World Theatre for pantomime or people like Sheila Rickards, a jazz, jazz singer. She performed in a pantomime at least one that I'm aware of, talking Jackson and not the tambourine and jazz singer. She performed in a pantomime. So I just want to mention Alma Mark Yen, Leonid Forbes, Carl Binger, Raymond Hill. He was a music boy when I entered the pantomime. And there are just many others, Madra Wiley with music, but she also performed. She was in rational or rational fight on the bull with a red cloth, you know, I mean, Pauline Storm, Mary, Faith Di Agolo. I think it's important to mention some of these people so we don't lose them. And then they were behind the scenes. They were stage managers like Audley Colton, Audley Colton and Lisa Carter. No, for Lactic, Lactic was George Carter. I spoke with Carter for about 4,000 years. He did the lighting for NDC, the lighting and the potato. There's Rufus Donald, you know, and then the many people. There are just so many people who made that happen. The wardrobe mistresses, those who made the design and made the set. And when you speak about set design, I know that Michael Lord did that for many, many years. But before Michael, and I mean, he must never be forgotten, before Michael, like Eddie Thomas, Eddie Thomas, when he designed a set, you know, Mercy Man, and there were several others. And then the people who directed, you see, it was a collaboration, a coming together. It was a community. You thought more people like Dennis Scott. Yeah. And, you know, Noel Vance. Definitely hearing the community and how some of the people that you're naming, how they branched off into Jamaican society beyond the arts, but what they brought with them, their experience in the Little Theater Movement, that cultural strengthening that they received in that process, how they essentially were decolonized and how they show up in other parts of our society. We're starting to see some comments in the chat. But before we open up our Q&A, one such, I just want to make some other really great connections or lean into the subject of decolonizing the art form and what Miss Lou really was able to achieve. Some of you may know one of her famous poems is Colonization in Reverse, where she talks about Jamaicans going to England and pretty much taking up space in the way that the British came and took up space. The only difference is that economically and social and political dominance that did not take place in England. But there was a comment from one of our viewers, Irvine. She asks about the impact on decolonization with the loss of some of our elders and the commercialization of the music. So it's interesting when we were putting the series together, we talked about Brand Jamaica puts out a certain aspects of Jamaican cultural identity. And one aspect it doesn't really put forward is its colonial history and that bridge across the colonial history that made reggae music and made, you know, being a man and bounty killer and all the ones that we celebrate on the Brand Jamaica, Usain Bolt and, you know, all of these people that we celebrate, the bridging and the moving from colonialism to now made all of these people possible, but we don't talk about that colonial history. What happens when we are losing our our heroes as an archivist? I want to toss this to you. And then I also want to would love to hear you, say, speak a little bit into this as well as Dr. Hickling Goren, Debbie. All right, go ahead, Ania. Well, I'm not so sure. Well, all right. Well, part of the thing about why we we are very conflicted about our colonial history and that has that it shows itself in many different ways because no one is pleased that there is a Queen Victoria statue in St. William Grant Park and St. William Grant was a union man. He was a man who fought for the people and his his park has Queen Victoria who erroneously they sing assignments as Queen Victoria set us free. So we are conflicted about that colonial history, but it's still there because there are bizarre things that will happen when you have a poll and people say, well, we should have stayed with with Britain and we should not have become independent because we don't alter all things for ourselves. So we are conflicted about our colonial history. But the information is there. If you choose to look for it, the National Library, the gallery, the Institute of Jamaica, the information is there. But maybe what needs to be done for us creatives is to find a way to work some of that information into how we can interpret it know how we can see its relevance. It's worth whether it's something that we would rather reshape because of how it affected us negatively or how we can say this is how it affected us, but this is how we worked through it. And this is how we got to where we are, because we believe very strongly in that when we have proverbs that says, stand upon cookie and cut straight, which means thing is not, thing is not right, but we're going to find a way to make it right. Donkey said the world no level because the donkey knows the weight on his back and he knows that he has to climb a hill, but he's going to climb it anyway. So we do look at some of those factors of our past, but we struggle with it and we struggle with it rightfully because we have so many contemporary issues with skin bleaching and not understanding the power of who we are and what we're about. I'm sorry for those who like this new brand of trap dancehall music. We are trying to follow people who originally followed us. Rap came from toasting dancehall and it came out of mentor, it came out of reggae, it came out of rock study and we sometimes lose focus of where we're going. But the important thing is that we keep a sight of it, but it's up to some of us to keep reminding persons, which is something that we do to a point in the pantomime as well. We find the two ways of putting things back into context. And sometimes we don't realize that's what's being done, but when you dig a little deeper, you find the trend, you find the trends, you find the trends, you find the parts. But it's really just that conflict, can we? Because it's hard to embrace a time when they told you who you were, they told you what you were about and you have to find a way to reclaim your history, reclaim yourself. And so that's really why we might not spend a lot of time on it. We know it's there. We know it's there. And we find that that's where we live. And it's coming out, it literally bubbles out, but we don't necessarily give it the pride of place that it ought to get. Just like about a week ago at Cabin Poison and it's amazing how the themes are the same. We're talking about sun, sea, sky, sand, all of those. Instead of sharing the culture with ourselves and with our visitors. And it's about pride. And it's about how we need to package those stories and tell pride how it comes from the margins, how culture comes from the margins. And a lot of it comes naturally, comes out naturally, but we don't give it the pride of place that we show. Debbie, perhaps what we're calling the margin is not the margin. Okay, tell me about it. What we're calling the margin is what is dictating and determining how we are viewed. Is it tender for me to look back at what we call the margin? Because let us look at dance hall, look at the popularity of dance hall, not just in Jamaica, the Caribbean, but internationally, right? And so we have to be very careful that we have not ourselves got caught in a place where we don't understand the process of change to which you have referred. And you spoke about retarded. I don't quite agree with you there. I think what has happened is that it has shifted. And we don't even recognize what is underneath our feet. We don't really, some of us realize, myself included maybe some of the times, what is happening beneath our feet. But you know, I am a product of the, I was born in the 50s. I went to high school in the 60s. Then we have the civil rights movement, Black Power. Women were viewed at that point stepping up on standings from feminism came about. And sometimes I ask myself, between the 60s and the 70s, something went wrong. I asked myself that. But clearly, if something went wrong, then maybe it's those of us who came up through that period who have not been able to light that fire in the people who came after us to move through with an understanding of the smartification. Who am I? When all war or hair in the 60s and 70s were big after us, natural hair and war head wraps and caftans and all of these things. I think it's bigger than us though, you know, auntie, I think it is bigger than us, you know, because there was a final point Debbie, is that, you know, while we talk and talk and talk, so we have our thing here that is not for me, not really the managing to jump out down big long time, but we have cultural domination and penetration that has come out of the North, North America. And so many people have done, that's a new colonization. Thank you, please. Absolutely. And it is coming through media products. Say that we should know what you are moving with, that I was telling you, movies, cartoons, videos, all of the shows that we get on cable television. And for Debbie or Ania or I to develop, get a concept and develop something and try to get it on local television, it is costly. We understand that they have to pay their bills, but it is costly. So Debbie, I'm sorry I interrupted you there, No, no, no, not at all. I mean, I think that globalization bubble that emerged in conditioning, but some of the things like Ania said that we didn't even see happening while it was happening, but a great deal of conditioning happening, happening during that period. And it has resulted, I don't know if any of you have, I don't know if any of you have the advertising, but watched a film called The Social Dilemma on Netflix, which tells, which tells, and this is just this situation that has been happening since World War, since World War communication. So we've been conditioning our societies from that very, very, very, very time, you know. And if you can just allow me, Debbie, I'm sorry. One of the things that we've been conditioning and many things happening, because when I started out in theatre, going to theatre school or watching plays in the 60s, they were all foreign scripts, right? There was Shakespeare and Brecht, not wrong with that, you know, and Chaucer, not wrong with that. And then, because of this modification, and people start to find their puddings and scrape their shoulders and step up straight, you have people who may not necessarily have come through pantomime, but the thing we put out, Ralph Holness, Ginger Knight, Balton, then you come down like David Herron and Patrick Brown. And before that lot, you had Lloyd Reckard, Barry Reckard, Louis Marriott. Because if you think about it and think, yeah, if you think about it and think, ATM would have represented the establishment. ATM would have represented the establishment. So, Ralph Horan and the rest of it would have been those people who were knocking against Ralph Holness. I remember when we used to talk about Ralph Holness, people's eyes would open. When the pantomime could not fill every seat in the war theatre, he filled in the floor popped down and more people wanted more shows. And there were plays at nights a week. Can we contextualize a little bit for those who may not know? Ralph Holness came, it was termed Roots Theatre and what it would be is it would be very bold if it could be slugness according to the decent uptown people. So, it was very risque. It was very low brow humor, they would say. But what it was, it was that it spoke to the people. It was a kind of jokes that you would tell in a bar. It's a kind of jokes. You're walking in the market. It's a kind of jokes that Ahigla tells you when she's on a plane flight to Panama to bring things back. So, he was very powerful in the 80s and the 90s. And yes, it was a kind of reaction and a cross-current to the little theatre movement. But I will tell you that there was still a linkage there because he looked at how the little theatre produced a show, how they had a set, how they had set changes, how they worked on different things. And he turned that to fit his own fashion. Indeed. To work his own way out of it. To decolonize from the more structured act one, act two, act three kind of thing. And to make us take a look at bits and pieces and put it all together. And don't fucking frame learning from him. Be man bam. Be man bam. Right, because there were a lot of these on the street. And in fact, Rani had what was called a traveling medicine show, which they would go from parish to parish, selling things. So, they would say, I like this and I meant up that and the rest of that, which took him throughout the country. And this, so we began to understand how people could sell to people in different ways. And in a sense, that's that's really what Ralph Houlness was doing. He was selling this brand of theatre to the common man so that they could feel that they could be a part of theatre too. So, when the office... The business that... I remember. Let me tell you what I remember. I'm going to jump in here a little bit because this is really, really excellent what you're pointing out. When you're pointing out all the ways that part of the decolonization of pantomime essentially is to is where artists, Jamaican theatre artists, identify the pantomime in its structure as a tool. So, in its structure and its use of movement, in its use of language, utilizing the pantomime as a tool of resistance and also as a vehicle, a culture of forming a new cultural identity. You know, as I listen to the conversation, I'm reminded of last night when Kamala Harris walked on stage and she walked on stage to a Mary J. Blige song. And, you know, I'm trying to not be emotional about the election, the outcome of the election. But for that moment, as a creative, when she walked on stage in that white suit, as this, you know, the color of the suffragists to a Mary J. Blige song, and it worked that and in the song. And, you know, it's actually one of my favorite Mary J. Blige songs. And it was not until last night that I really listened to the words of the song and understood why that song was selected. And she says, you know, for you women who are becoming for your beautiful skin color that people are always pushing you to the side. And, you know, I always like the song because of the beat, you know, it's a very great, it's a great dance song, work that thing, you know, it's got a nice hook to it. But I hear that linkage in how art and artists, you know, as I watched her walk on stage, I thought to myself, wow, look at where we've come. And then you talk about the margins. And, you know, that a lot of the people who are shifting the world today are the people from the margins. And I think that the margins are just getting bigger. I mean, speaking about, speaking about center and margins, I remember the time that I heard that Ralph Paulus had moved into the world theater. And the entire theater community, it's like they completely exploded. I mean, everybody who had furrows clutched them because it was, it's a position right here. I mean, and every time there is a disorder he was doing, he knew he would come by the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, whereas I was an announcer at the time. And he would talk because he wanted to place his ads, etc. He was scientifically, he worked at all. He was a strategist. And at one time he said to me, which I suspected it to others, when I left the regular theater, which is why don't you leave a lot of people, but you get money, you're gonna make money. And the truth and I know that I would have made money. Any relationship to the current head of state? He learned the art from working with Bim and Bam. Am I correct there, Anil and Debbie? But he built and he had somebody who worked with him as a playwright. I don't want to misquote anything here, but he did these productions that, as Debbie said and Anil said, had had appeal to a set of people who, from the normal circumstances, those of us in traditional theater might look down on if you see them coming in. I think we're not necessarily coming to traditional. That's right. And they wouldn't come because they're unwelcome. You know what, you know what, that's a whole other issue now. There was, there was, there were these silos where, silos within theater, silos within the performances, the performers, silos within the audiences. There were some there, the people who worked with them. There are several actresses today who, who went through the top of U.S. theater and then go into what we now call commercial theater. And there are some people who went into roots. Yes, absolutely. And then we had, and then now we have a kind of thin line where there, there don't seem to be, I mean, I'm not active as active in theater anymore, but the lines seem to be blurred. You bring up roots theater, which is a term that you've brought up a few times. And next week's series is actually entitled Jamaican Roots Theater, Then It Now. And we're going to be talking with a very, very, I would say probably the face of Jamaican Roots Theater, the world over at this time. It's Mr. Keith Shabata Ramsey. And we will be joined by Marilyn Lowe for that conversation as well. One of the, so just connecting us with Roots Theater, with kind of the, the then and now of our culture being formed locally in Jamaica and globally, the conversation of what is in the margins, how, what is in the margin is actually what's telling the story. The margin is the center. And the narrative, the actual narrative, the margin used to be that the both script and the subscript and all of those things, but the actual narrative is now in the margins. We see it, we see it in the social movements around the world. And we see it in the way that Jamaican culture is emerging. I want to go back to this statement of the process of change. And how, you know, if we, if listening to the conversation, I'm thinking that the, the, the pantomime came through, gave the culture a great, for help to form a great cultural identity for Jamaican people. And then there, when I use the term sophistication, I'm more, I'm speaking of frequency. So then there becomes more other forms of theater practitioners and styles of theater that kind of mushrooms off of the pantomime. And they take bits and pieces of it to create a new form. One of those forms emerging in becoming the roots theater practice. As we look forward, because we're moving now into our Q and A, and we have a question from Brian Heap in the chat. And the question surrounds what is, as we, as we move forward in this time, what is the way forward for the pantomime in this post-colonial age? And I'm actually going to put something else on it. What is the way forward for the pantomime in a post-colonial era where globalization, because globalization, climate change, pandemics, for economic, economic. So for example, for this is the, the, the pantomime has ran for 78 years, Anya. And for the first time in 78 years, there will not be a live performance. So what is, what happened? How do we vision forward? What is the vision forward for the pantomime in this era? Did you see me, did you see me crying? I'm just trying to get through 2020. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is, this is really something that we're, we're all going to have to work out how we approach live entertainment in, in this, this pandemic era and how we get forward from here. So it's almost like whatever you had planned as your next step is totally short-circuited because we don't have to figure out how do we, how are we going to survive with social distancing, mask wearing, restrictions to sizes. It's interesting to note that like for instance in Europe, it's where they, they, they had a performance where they, they got into gondolas and they watched up a show being screened on a, on a, on a building wall. So they were able to bring theater into, into a space that never really existed in just to make sure that it happened. And we're going to have to, we're going to have to seriously work out how we, how we keep that because I'm a, I'm a backstage person. So for me, there's nothing more glorious than watching persons come into the space. And when the lights go down around them and they're sitting shoulder to shoulder with somebody else and everybody might say, you hear what them just say and they giggle and say, you see that person on the back and how they're reacting to that, that kind of interaction which made change. It freaks me out because for me that excitement of theater, movies are movies. Theater is about the community of persons who are around you. It's the link between the person on stage and off stage. It's that point when the actor looks into the audience and makes eye contact with that person and knows that they have sold that role and they are into that moment. How are you going to do that in, in a COVID era? And honestly, let me tell you, when I did my master's program, I did it late in life because I was busy performing and teaching at the university. And my thing was on the tele-traumatic arts. And that is what it has come down to now. We can't manage the floorboards alone. We have to take it elsewhere. We have to use the technology to take the product to our larger audience. As a matter of fact, I'm going to use, I'm going to draw parallel with church. I have not been to church from March, right? And many people have, but there is the service happening. Please understand that there's a larger congregation now down there would have been if you are contained in that space of church. But I couldn't also speak about Brian here, but those persons who don't know, Brian Heap worked with a little theater movement and directed several pantomimes. I know you might be having him on in a series. I already had him on, but that's in context, right? So Brian understands this, this thing. And I want to also say, and this could be, could get me the trouble. There are some things that we have just not yet considered how to decolonize where pantomime is coming from. What are some of those things if you want to share one? There are some things that you see when you inherit something such as how the pantomime started there and they have moved away beautifully in some ways. But I can't even tell you that there it is specifically this or that what I can tell you and Anja has a burn of that now, which is the way things, the way things have gone have been a little problematic in terms of the business side that Debbie is talking about. It's not her fault. Yes, Debbie, it is the way things and that is you have to understand now the the the let me call it is when people started doing theater first, it was for the love of it. That was for the love of it. And so that is a that is part of what I'm thinking about. No, you can't do something if you're not paid because we believe you have to drive your car to go to rehearsals. You have to eat, right? But when it first started, it would give you a little stipend. It was for the love of it. So you are not forced the producers, in this case, to drop a serious business plan and move with it. Marco, not very many financiers support the arts, so we know the challenge with that. That is why we have to think really creatively and creatively. Okay, so we're so we hear about the the need to look at the the different platforms for presenting theater. As far as styles, location, we hear about the economy of presenting theater. How do you sustain a workforce in the Jamaican theater? I'm going to get I'm going to definitely get to you. But I just wanted to bring up one one point here. Regarding the the narrative, I think all of these things. All of these things are to be considered. How will theater change physically? Where will we go to see the theater? I'm I'm very excited that people keep wanting to go to the theater. It shows just how important theater is, not just film and also that that itch and that need and that wanting for theater to be, as you said, Ania in in space to share space with with other people that communal need that theater provides and definitely needing to look at what are the economic structures and opportunities there. Another thing is as I throw this to Deborah and definitely share your point is what happens to the story of the Jamaican people? How does what are the opportunities there? How does the story of the Jamaican people show up on the stage at the pantomime when it reopens again? Are new stories formed? How is how what what myths what myths will emerge from this era onto the pantomime stage just like the Anansi myths and the the pig myths and all these that we're going to admit that will emerge onto the pantomime stage. Don't get me started. We only have one minute. So I just want to respond to Brian Heath. Brian Heath is a man who sit down and watch opera and go to the go to um the palace of movement and watch opera being broadcast live from um from Russia at particular times into into Jamaica. So he's a man who knows exactly how we need to move the convergence. What we need to be doing is converging the the the media the various media so that we can um show the um the short film so we can have a live production being filmed in a way that it can be shared by hundreds of thousands of people. I saw the gondola thing so I saw that in um in in Colombia where there was a live performance but it was being shot in a way that it was being projected on a huge wall in um in a in a fort and um I told that that story to the CTR as well. It's about converging the elements and that's where the story goes. So you are now starting to integrate the heritage. You're starting to integrate the media. You're starting to integrate the production. You're starting to integrate the theatrics but it takes a vision and it takes a policy and it takes cooperation and it takes planning and it takes management and it takes all the resources. Gotcha and I'm gonna jump in and just try and and and do all of what you just said in a free plug. So this year um unboxing they were going to be um doing a virtual concert which is like bits and pieces from previous pantomimes inspired by what's happening now and um drawing on our pieces from the past so it's it's a kind of review sort of situation and one of the things that we want to do because every year after the Christmas opening when there's a slower period we host children's homes normally they come and they watch to show and these are kids who don't have a chance to come to many places and what we want to do with that same production that we plan to air on Boxing Day December 26th is we want to take that recording and go into the homes so that they can still see it so that they can still be a part of it so they're not left out of this in this COVID this COVID madness and we're seeking sponsorships so call me. But Aniel you want to take it to the homes and I applaud that but how outside of the seeking sponsorship how do you intend to make the business side of it work for you in terms of maybe a YouTube channel or something like that? We are on YouTube we have the social media so we are we are looking we are working those areas of course it can be worked better and that's part of what's going to be happening with as we prepare for this virtual concert that we're doing we're looking at options that we have but as you said the real difficulty is that it's really very hard to do some of those things when you just don't have the funding that you want and unfortunately for um for corporate Jamaica they don't want to spend money on some of these things they want to spend something on an easy thing. So there's an opportunity you know one of the things that I can see is that you know I remember when Miss Lu turned I think she turned 80 and um there was a big celebration for her um I believe at Jamaica House on the lawn and all of the um the the artists performing and I remember um beat a man who was a Jamaican reggae record the king of dancehall um you know they're made of crowns and he wears one of them and um he was singing and celebrating Miss Louise Bennett and I thought wow there's another hundred I would never made that connection there that's for though that would get people so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna start to wrap us up only because we are at the cause of time but one and I'll I'll toss it to you Faye for a last term last word but before we go um just to close us out at this time you know there what I'm hearing is that the pantomime what's really unique about this art form in Jamaica is its ability to respond to the times its ability in its form to respond to the current times and respond to the process of change and identity and um formation of narrative and to create back on that stage and then to to move it out whether it's other actors and directors and designers and producers who work on the pantomime stage and then go off and do their own thing um later on in the conversation I think in the next three or four weeks we we're we're going to be speaking with um some we have that you know in a few weeks the um series is titled leaders of a new stage and where we will be speaking with some of the next generation leaders managers directors producers and it will be interesting to hear what uh what part of their aesthetic what part of their vision the um where the pantomime lives in their collective memory and how that is influencing informing their work um before we go I do want to uh you talk about a plug on you I'd like to ask uh Deborah to plug her book there's a wonderful book that she if you have it on hand and you want to put it up in front of the screen around I hadn't I had not prepared to do that but um it's coming up towards the end of the year um it's the cultural economy and television decolonizing um 2.0 so it's really talks about the cultural economy as a catalyst for decolonization going forward and it hasn't been published yet correct it's coming out this month or next month so then okay excellent so as we close out um say I'll let you say uh your express your final thoughts and then I'll wrap wrap us up you ask the question about what do the Jamaican stories mean for the pantomime the pantomime will not be short on Jamaican stories because whatever happens becomes a Jamaican story so it's just the playwright and they are set right to put it together so Anna is not worried about how do we plan a story not out there to do with COVID to do with flooding to do with everything to do with the economy to do it to do with the Biden and and bring it back in because she has a Jamaican not story out there but I quickly want to comment on that you were really surprised when you heard Deanie Mann connected with the school most of our Zegge artists and dancehall artists and the poets speak about this low opening the door with a language for them miss move open that door because they're not singing any English at all they're not they're not singing like this they're not singing like Jamaican language I'm about telling a story because it's a story it is a story it's pretty solid a story it's piece of story so each of them you think of people like Mr. Clayton Johnson you think of of of um so safari right and you think of others they tell you and the and the Zegge artists the influence of miss move on their lives so let us understand that to open the door with the the opportunity for the acceptance of language but not just a few performers but for the nation there is a language unit at the Jamaican the University of the West Indies it's not a dialect unit it's not a creole unit it's not a it's a Jamaican language unit held in the Jamaican words and for those who don't know the New Testament of the Bible was also written using the Jamaican language yes uh-oh I'm gonna get the chart with tea and come to our table that's what I'm wondering you know it's interesting if you say that as we close out because I've lived in the in in the U.S. for since I was a very young child and one of the things that has sustained me actually Anye you said two proverbs that I live on stand on crooked and cut straight and um that one I got from my grandmother and then the donkey one I got from my aunt you know and I tell you growing up growing up you know you in in a foreign well this is more um growing up in the in a culture different from the culture you were born in or um came to be in uh you need these these these proverbs at times and I and I'm very grateful for them because they do help to keep us healthy um right yes yes and you can hang on to that monkey must know which part you have to put in till before other trousers do not want that again say that one again monkey must know which part you have to put in till before you are that trousers okay the monkey must know planning and strategizing and you have to know your circumstances the kind of canvass put down pants if you are and you have to know where you're going to be tail you're going to go and hold the drive so you're going to push that path you're going to have to run the ways where you're going to monkey must know which part you're going to put in till before another trousers and the truth is that we don't know what's going on everybody is in a fondue right now that everybody I tried to start out empty as we try to sort out our tail as I said measure twice cut once um that's another one we think about language and we're grateful for the little little theater movement for the pillars Ronnie Williams and Miss Louise Bennett Coverley for the ways that the work of the little theater movement has evolved throughout Jamaican culture in its music in its more rays in its fashions we're very very grateful for that and we will continue we will build on this conversation next week when we talk about the Jamaican roots the Jamaican roots theater then and now we will be speaking with Keith Shabada Ramsey and Marilyn Lowe two very prominent actors on the Jamaican roots theater stage at this time and I'm the big fan of Shabada I'm always there for Pinchall Fridays and Happy Corner Live and getting all of that rooting and growing because I have to keep my Jamaican I have to keep my Jamaican strong you know and I brush up on my language every now and then all right so thank you all so much for tuning in we hope that this has been not just an educational experience for the scholars and um for the people looking into this with questions what can we learn from this part of the world but we also hope that it's been a nice warming connecting touch points for the diaspora for those who want a little bit of home while we're so far apart listen walk good walk good on this is a term we say in Jamaica it's it's not a farewell it's just a walk good be well in life and we theater people we say see you on the board so I've put it together walk good on the board dear all right thank you thank you