Chupucabra in Georgetown

“You know, I think this shows that God is answering my prayers” – Headmaster Mr Marcus fixed me with a stern look, which seemed out of keeping with the outsize badge he sported in the middle of his tie – Teachers Make a Difference, in jolly typeface and bright colours. “I didn’t know how I was going to make this happen, I prayed to God, and now, you’re here.” And his stern face cracked into his characteristic expansive grin.

I was in Mabaruma Secondary School’s head’s office, having offered my services during our stay here. He whipped out a piece of paper showing a school calendar year with the 3 months to July sketched out with a rehearsal schedule for the National Schools Drama Festival. How fortuitous, I thought – 3 months is long enough to do some good work here.

Next morning, having spoken to the Education Ministry, I had discovered that we had 3 weeks, not 3 months. Blimey, I thought – but still – why not – its an opportunity to motivate the kids to take part with the possibility of a Georgetown trip ahead of them.

In the next 3 weeks, with a crazed look in my eye, I rehearsed 3 groups of children in 3 plays (one for each house in the school) at the end of which they were judged by the local great and the good at a “school drama festival”. And to realise that there hasn’t been drama here for 18 years made it feel like quite a meaningful event. The winning show was Chupucabra, by Guyanese writer Paloma Mohamed, an HIV awareness play which features a crisis meeting amongst all the vampires of the world (you’d be surprised how many there are) because the blood is going bad.

When they first read the play, most of the group hadn’t seen a script before. In the process of rehearsal we had been through various dramas – Abigail, a pretty 14 year old, in tears because she didn’t want to play Ol Higue, the Guyanese bloodsucker; Lennard threatening departure over creative differences, and our star, Denicia, playing the African vampire, Obayifo, unable to come to Georgetown as her family are 7th Day Adventists and so travel on a Saturday is forbidden. We got thru’ though, and on Weds 14th May, the group arrived in Georgetown, having travelled since the day before, overnighted in Moruca, used 5 different forms of transport, lashed by the wind and rain and all a bit sunburnt. And still smiling.

We rocked up to the National Culture Centre – a modernist theatre complex the equivalent of our National Theatre – and sat in the auditorium waiting for our rehearsal to begin. And we waited. And we waited.... After 4 patient hours we were told we could use the stage space for an hour. Travelling so far we had been unable to bring our set with us, so were cobbling it together from scraps backstage – at this point it was looking pretty sorry for itself.

We then had the worst rehearsal I can remember them ever doing. Its an ensemble piece, which had meant copious amounts of energy trying to get all the group focused and supporting one another onstage instead of drifting off, eating food, texting their friends or giggling. For my first rehearsal on the stage at the National Culture Centre, I came close to tears as my (admittedly sleep deprived) group proceeded to mumble, forget lines, yawn, upstage themselves and in the end (the point at which I had to stop them) hide behind a bench and giggle. Its was pretty mortifying. It was also the first time they had been into (let alone onto) the stage of a theatre, full stop, let alone a theatre of this size.

We trailed back to the YMCA despondent, and then began the strange procession of kids' relatives who wanted to take them off to visit other relatives, cousins, deliver crabs brought from Mabaruma, and various other important duties. I became increasingly frustrated, feeling that the children were more interested in running errands than in the piece they had come here to do, and also a bit perplexed. Why were there so many older male relatives wanting to take the teenage girls away? Where were the women in this, who usually carry the far heavier load of family commitment? Adolescent sex begins young here in Guyana, and its not at all clear to an outsider just what is going on, but I made myself pretty unpopular by insisting on HM’s ban on any children spending the night out.

Next day I went on a mission to borrow a steel drum for our show – I had managed to beg, borrow and steal all the other parts we needed (including a beautifully painted Silk Cotton Tree painted onto a flat). The steel drum was the last thing I needed.

I had tracked one down to the prison service –apparently they have a good band there. I am guessing they have time to rehearse. So next morning I went to the prison director’s Mr Erskine’s office to ask to borrow one. He was fine with me borrowing it and sent me with an escort round to Georgetown prison.

The prison is a grim, steel and barbed wire fenced compound in the middle of town. Tired and quite scary looking prisoners were lining up in handcuffs ready to go to court when I arrived, looking, I suspect, ridiculously out of place in my summer dress. There were a few proposals from prisoners (not all of marriage) which I studiously ignored, but couldn’t help being fascinated by the figures I saw running round the compound in the stifling heat, each with another prisoner riding their shoulders. What were they doing? Training as boxers, of course.

Heading with my drum back to the cultural centre, I met the kids, and we watched some of the others entries – they were good. I pointed out to the kids strong points in other performances – voice projection, characterisation. They nodded. Yes Miss.

It was coming up to our slot, and I gave them their pep talk. They were buzzy and excited, and so was I. In four weeks, we’d come a long way together. Behind the closed curtains we set up – our tree, the drum, benches taken from backstage, a huge bin borrowed from another show, a load of grass strewn about from the play before, and brilliantly, at the last minute, a stage hand turned to me: “you want a shallow grave?” I was hearing things. “Huh?” “You want a shallow grave? We got one”. Was this a Guyanese technical term? What did he mean? He led me to the back of the stage where, leaning against a load of flats was a foam gravestone headed with RIP. A shallow grave. Fantastic.

The curtain went up, I cued the music and over the system blasted “you wanna be starting something” by Michael Jackson. “Stop” I hissed over the cans. “Thats the wrong song, the wrong song – its Thriller – the bit with the scary man’s voice” “Sorry, sorry” the sound guy mumbled.

And so began our first and I suspect only performance on the national stage of Guyana. It was shambolic, it was halting, it was a bit giggly. It was also brilliant – it was the first time I’d seen this group of 15 kids from the remotest region in the country perform with costume, set, lights, sound. They looked pretty scared, but they carried on. They were nervous, but they got through it and started to have fun. They began to get a few laughs for their lines. They got off on the wrong line and managed to correct themselves. They were an acting company. They did really really well.

The show came to an end and they were called to the front of the stage. Up came one of the judges – he is a Guyanese comedian, I think, and had given feedback after each piece. He’d already had complaints from other teachers, but what he did to my lot was infuriating.

He gave a critique as if they had just appeared on Pop Idol and he was Simon Cowell. He flounced around the stage telling them off for not projecting enough, he made jokes at their expense, at one point he began mimicking one of the kids. Their body language went from glowing excitement and growing self esteem, to beaten looking and angry, regretting they had even come here. I was furious and complained to the organisers, as it seemed to me he completely undermined the purpose of the entire endeavour.

Anyway – my lot weren’t downhearted for long. I think there is a bit of a tough-love culture here, which the kids resist passively by secretly realising that these so-called authority figures haven’t necessarily earned that authority, and not really respecting what they say. What saddened me was that it might have undone all the work I had done in getting the kids interested in theatre, and so halted the rewards that were beginning to show through increased self-confidence.

We spent the rest of the trip enjoying the city – the National Museum, where an eclectic collection places a Rolls Royce beside a giant anaconda, and later to the zoo, where we were all transfixed by the real life anacondas, not to mention the mating tortoises and the spider monkey that had escaped and was running around on the roof. And when we get back to Mabaruma, I hope the group will form the core of a community theatre group in the coming months, or even, fingers crossed, years ahead.

First time in the Amerindian village

Within days of arriving in Mabaruma, we were excited to hear that an outreach trip was going out the following day to one of the villages in the region; Sam would get his first genuinely remote medicine experience, and I could tag along for the ride. It seemed like a great chance to get a feel for Amerindian culture, and to see how it could be running workshop sessions with them.

To elaborate – when we met Minister Ramsammy, confusingly, his vision of what I could do in the villages seemed clearer than Sam’s role. The Department of Health had had a breakthrough in some of its education work, through the use of drama games. They’d realised what its sometimes easy to forget in the cut & thrust of theatre in London – that the shared experience of making and watching drama creates powerful and memorable and sometimes life changing experiences, and is almost definitely more effective than lecturing a group of secondary school students about safe sex. Therefore, the focus was on how to roll out edutainment to the regions. The problem here is that essentially very few (read zero) Georgetown professionals will dream of heading to the regions for more than a day at a time. Sam and I had agreed to be there for 4 months. Thats why the Minister had a glint in his eye.

His confidence in my ability to create blossoming drama in the villages was not shared by any people I discussed it with. Amerindian culture is not known for its exuberance or expressivity; they themselves tend to be quiet, unassuming people (which possibly accounts for their historical lack of representation politically, socially or otherwise). Though actually, more than anything, they generally live so remotely, their exposure to the rest of Guyanese culture – or any element of global culture – is frequently negligible.

Mabaruma, Region 1, is seen as almost the remotest of the remote in Guyana. You can’t get here by road – you can go taxi-boat-taxi-boat-taxi, as you weave your way through the profusion of rivers and tracks that wend their way through dense jungle. Or you can fly. When you get to Mabaruma, you find a single road, lined with rubber trees, so pleasantly shady, and at each side, the municipal buildings of the region. Its a tiny, sleepy town. Yet Mabaruma begins to look positively urban once you head out into the villages.

On our first outreach, we were bound for White Creek, a village maybe ten miles away, but a good hour and a half’s driving over the most terrible roads you can imagine. We passed through villages on the way – Hosororo, Wauna, finally getting to White Creek just before lunch. We arrived at the village centre – scattered buildings along the way get a little denser until you reach the Health hut, next to the cricket pitch and the local schools. The health team swung into action – Monica the local Community health officer showing Nurse Johns (the vaccinations specialist) and Sam to the spaces they could practice in, and Dentex (the equivalent of the Medex in the dental world – trained somewhere between a dentist and a dental nurse) set up his portable chair – it was his first visit to the village, as became apparent by the procession of terrible teeth that greeted us in gappy grins.

I went off in search of the captain. The Amerindian villages elect a captain for three year terms, and visitors to the village should seek him out and get permission for their activities. Norman, White Creek’s captain, was almost regal – gentle, quiet, with the most perfect posture I think I have seen, and thirteen children. The families here are very big.

I explained that I would like to run a theatre games session with some of the children – I thought this was the best plan, to get my first sense of how I could work with groups here. He suggested I use the local school hall as it was Easter holidays and sent me off in search of the Headmaster Lloyd, while Norman spread the word that there would be games for children from 10 years up the next day at the school.

That night we slung our hammocks in the Health hut – the opposite of taking our work home with you I suppose – and the next morning Lloyd let me into the school. Like a latter day Julie Andrews, I was all smiles as the kids drifted in – 50 of them in the end, and ranging in ages from 2 (Rocky a very smiley toddler) to 25. I guess it was something to do that day.

The session that followed was invaluable to me, though not the easiest or most obviously successful I have ever done. We played a wide range of games – from the very simple stop, freeze – when I found myself being followed round the room like a mother duck with fifty slightly confused ducklings behind me, to name games which were painfully slow (the children, and particularly some of the girls, were incredibly shy about using their voices in public) but great fun in the group parts when, en masse we would shout everyone’s name and action at full voice.

A big part of the shyness is to do with the educational culture, I think. Most lessons are “chalk and board” – teacher dictating, children copying – in the worst cases without really understanding. There isn’t a widespread participatory approach in any discipline as yet. So the blank, rabbit in headlights look when asked to invent an action for your name in front of a big group is quite understandable, and we got there with everyone in the end.

Also, as we’ve learned since being here, there is a language barrier. With most Guyanese in Georgetown and Mabaruma, the language is Creole, the common Guyanese language which has evolved through all the many groups here – African, East Indian, Portugese, English and Chinese. Its a vibrant, colourful and very expressive language. Most people, once they realise we are English, will slow down and speak more clearly (and sometimes more loudly). But in the villages, Creole is spoken with the local accent, and possibly the second language to the Amerindian local one (though more and more rarely, the original languages seem to be dying out). So the looks of incomprehension I found myself faced with were often due to my English accent.

Most successful were the group games – singing, chanting, and an adaptation of Whats the Time Mr Wolf (Whats the time Mr Jaguar) which was a big hit. Less successful were games which involved physical contact (People to People) or a vocabulary which included any sense of theatre (a sculpting game where you made your partner into any character or emotion you liked met with a nonplussed silence).

Still, what seemed clear to me was that the lack of expressivity I’d been warned about was, of course, just skin deep. Once they understood the games, and begun to know and trust me, the group were by turns highly focused, wildly exuberant and very characterful. Of course, this is just the first step, but it gives me hope that the edutainment project, when I get it started, will find a fruitful home here.