The Bahamas has produced Sidney Poitier and Calvin Lockhart. It has also produced a host of other talented actors, some professional such as Cedric Scott and Jimmy Nixon, others gifted amateurs such as Pandora Gibson, Winston Saunders and Sylvia Stubbs. Not only this, but the Bahamas can boast, over the past five years, a number of new Bahamian playwrights whose plays all have a relevance to their society and characteristics which are thoroughly Bahamian.

What has brought about this extraordinary flowering of talent over the past 5 to 10 years? Is there an indigenous Bahamian dramatic tradition? Where does Bahamian drama stand today and what does the future hold?

On February 19, 1942, the curtain rose on a performance of The Ghost Train, staged at the Dundas Civic Centre "Under the distinguished patronage of the Duchess of Windsor." The profits from the performance were promised to the Bahamas Red Cross and Our Boys Fund and the cast was predominantly white Bahamian. The programme advertised daily Pan American return trips to Miami for $36 and dinners at the British Colonial Hotel for eight shillings. And, on February 21, the Nassau Guardian published a polite and platitudinous review of the play underneath a photograph of its enthusiastic cast.

This, as far as many people are concerned, was the birth of drama in the Bahamas. It was one of the first, if not the first, productions of the Nassau Little Theatre, precursor of the Nassau Players, longest existing adult amateur group in the Bahamas. It was a group which produced all white productions of Blithe Spirit and Quiet Weekend. Decent British drawing room comedies. Occasionally something a bit more meaty.

If this, then, was the beginning of drama in the Bahamas, what lay behind the formation of those extraordinary Bahamian dramatic talents which have flowered over the past five years? Did they just grow, like Topsy, overnight, or were they the result of a long-standing grass roots tradition in the Bahamas, a tradition which produced accolades such as Daphne Wallace Whitfield's observation in The Tribune in 1973: "I think one would be hard pressed to find any other community of our size with as much potential talent as there is in Nassau," and barrister-actor John Carson's superlatives over the Bahama Drama Circle's production of Amen Corner in 1970 as being "the most impressive engagement of any production that I have seen on the Nassau stage in the last 10 years.” 

Something more than the Nassau Players lay behind this. And, in order to illustrate the lack of acknowledgement of an indigenous tradition, let us return to the early programmes again. A 1954 programme records a Nassau Theatre Group presentation of Quiet Weekend at St. Benedict's Hall. This time, the cast is more evenly divided between white Bahamian and white expatriate. In fact, one would say that the expatriates predominate and flourish under the direction of Noel Plant, who has had, the paper says, professional experience.

This Nassau Theatre Group was an amalgam of the already existing Nassau Little Theatre and the Nassau Players, as explained in a note on the back, which goes on to say that the group had come about "in order to provide acceptable theatrical entertainment in Nassau during the summer season."

But there was already a form of theatre in Nassau and, indeed, throughout the Bahamas.

It was indigenous, relaxed, informal and church-inspired. This theatre consisted of variety and talent shows held after Sunday evening services, as well as religious plays held at Easter md Christmas, always written by someone local. It is a tradition which is still carried on in the Family Islands today.

Jeanne Thompson, author of the popular soap opera series, The Fergusons of Farm Road, as well as of a number of plays written since 1970, is still contributing to this tradition. She wrote a play for Father Preston Moss for his 1974 Christmas Eve service at St. Bede's. Years ago, when Jeanne was eight or so she was writing plays for Miss Una Henry's Sunday School at Wesley Church Hall.

"Yes," agrees Canon E. W. G. Holmes, formerly of St. Mary the Virgin, "the Church certainly led the way with plays in those days." An idea enthusiastically endorsed by Bahamians knowledgeable in the drama tradition in the Bahamas. While 10-year-old P. Anthony White, now a well-known Bahamian writer, was shyly and admiringly watching, and Jeanne Thompson was writing, Winston Saunders, now the ebullient writer, producer and lawyer, was appearing regularly Sunday after Sunday from the age of seven onwards in anything from poetry recitations to skits.

"St. John's Cathedral on Meeting Street, Wesley Church and Epworth Hall were our cultural centres in those days," Winston explains. These Sunday talent shows which always contained indigenously written and performed skits, probably sowed the seeds of Bahamian drama as we know it today with a sense of comedy making a searing social comment with a rollicking grass roots wit.

"People were not as discerning in those days," said Winston Saunders, but they were entertained and, whatever we put on, they were laughing." Women played a large part in these school and church productions and in ensuring a continuing tradition. Names which often occur are those of Thelma Gibson, now a lecturer at the Teachers Training College, Mildred Donaldson, mother of the highly successful Donaldson brothers, one of whom is the Governor of the Central Bank of the Bahamas, and Una Henry, the Sunday School teacher.

There were no long rehearsals. "My mother used to deposit me at the Church Hall on a Saturday afternoon just to try out the hall for voice projection and so on," explains Winston, adding, "Mind you, my mother would always make sure I knew my piece. She would make me go over a poem again and again."

These poems for recitation were taken from anthologies of poetry and were heavy on poets such as Wordsworth. Learning and reciting them must have contributed towards the extraordinarily good articulation and rhetorical talents of many Bahamian barristers today and there was certainly no harm in studying the British classics as long as the vernacular was given full play as well. This certainly happened during the skits which were satirical, semi-improvised and naturally spoken and expressed in the vernacular.

Such were the roots which have produced some memorable moments over the past five years, from Pandora Gibson's religious rantings in Amen Corner to Winston Saunders' anguish in Blood Knot and from Susan Wallace's eye-rolling outrageousness in Single Seven ("I ain got no husban to be hidin nothin from, nor to be sharin nothin with") to Angela Scott's frustrations in Them, and Patrick Rahming's thoughtful and striking interpretation of 'Randal’ in William Henley's Slow Dance on The Killing Ground. Many superlative evenings of drama have been produced by predominantly Bahamian talent, including the playwrights.

There were other events which helped mould a Bahamian theatre during the 40s, 50s and 60s.

During the 40s a talented Bahamian with grassroots background wrote a number of plays and eventually went to Columbia University in New York to study playwriting. He switched to the Church and returned briefly to Nassau as an Anglican priest. His name was John Taylor. And, although he has been living and working in the States for some time now, his influence is still strongly felt.

"His were the first locally written plays with real plots," explains P. Anthony White. "Before that, we just had our skits, but his plays had a story and there was always some kind of moral or social comment in them."

This, again, is true of present-day Bahamian playwrights. All their plays have a purpose, from Susan Wallace's message about the human waste in the numbers racket in Single Seven to Jeanne Thompson's condemnation of a society which breeds crime in Vicious Circle; from P. Anthony White's questioning of accepted social values in Five Miles From Fox Hill to Winston Saunders' examination of racial attitudes in Them.

John Taylor's plays ranged from Jailbird, a piece about an ex-convict who tries to make good and is wrongfully accused of another man's crime, to The Old Man Died, an out-and-out murder mystery.

Plays such as Man With Maid and The House On Calamity Street contained palpable social comment and were written in straight English rather than the vernacular, because as Anthony explains, that was "the thing" in those days. John Taylor's work has had a profound influence on many, in spite of his plays being excessively long by modern-day standards. This, however, did not detract from the pleasure experienced by an uncritical Bahamian audience.

In order to sharpen the critical faculties and raise standards it was necessary to expose Bahamians to first rate professional drama and serious theatrical criticism as well as to promote a sense of competition and a sense of pride in things Bahamian. 

Serious theatrical criticism has been undertaken over the past few years when writers such as P.

Anthony White, Cedric Scott, John Lambert, Daphne Wallace Whitfield, Janet Byles, Winston Saunders, John Carson and Nicki Kelly have attempted and succeeded in writing constructive and thoughtful reviews. Healthy competition and further constructive criticism have been provided by the annual Drama Festivals which grew out of the Nassau Festival of Arts and Crafts.

Things Bahamian were given their proper place in the education scheme with the establishment in

the early 60s of the Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education and Culture, with Clement Bethel as Education Officer for Music and Drama. Now Cultural Affairs Officer heading the Community Development Division, Clement has ensured the continuing of the important music and drama festivals and has gathered around him a team of internationally trained and acclaimed Bahamian artists. The aim of the original Curriculum Division was the Bahamianization of the schools’ curricula, a process which continues today.

Finally, exposure to first rate professional theatre was provided briefly but memorably during the 40s and 50s by international companies performing mid-season in the British Colonial Hotel Playhouse and, in the early 60s, by an excellent Canadian repertory company which produced plays of high standard by writers such as Christopher Fry in the Royal Victoria Hotel. 

People like P. Anthony White remember these performances vividly, although he points out that the price of tickets was well beyond the pockets of most Bahamians in those days. Free tickets were, however, supplied to his small Bahamian drama group, the Literary Guild, through the kind offices of Trevor Marshall.

The name of Trevor Marshall occurs in many discussions on drama in the Bahamas. Living in Nassau until a few years ago, he was a talented and perceptive Englishman, a pillar of the Nassau Players and the only outsider at that time to take an interest in Bahamian actors. "It was the first time any of those had taken an interest in helping us," explains White. And it was Trevor Marshall who brought about the first joining together of expatriate and Bahamian talent in the Friends of the Bahamas’ 1959 production of Androcles And The Lion.

Many people still remember this play and the effect it had. Charles Bowleg was introduced to drama for the first time. Lead actor Jimmy Nixon went off to study drama and to become a professional actor, in the States. Maquella Cartwright, now Smith, was so enthused that she went off to study drama at the Guildhall in London and founded the Bahama Drama Circle in 1964. A number of people, who have since become leaders on the local theatrical scene, were taking small parts or helping backstage.

The expatriates who worked on this production were mostly newly-arrived and largely open-minded. They sincerely wished to help promote amateur theatre involving Bahamians in the Bahamas.

Producer was the late Clive St. George, a film and stage actor who had worked along with British playwright John Osborne in England. The F.O.B. Drama Club continued for two or three more years with productions directed by the indefatigable Trevor Marshall until the pressure of work grew too great when he took over the management of the East Hill Club. No other director could be found.

Running parallel with the early development of the F.O.B. Drama Club was the formation of the Nassau Amateur Operatic Society founded by Lady Arthur, wife of the then Governor, in 1959. This also combined expatriate with Bahamian talent and still flourishes today with performances of popular musicals enthusiastically attended by a large Bahamian following. The Nassau Amateur Operatic Society also includes professional Bahamian talent like pianist Hilda Barrett and internationally-recognized Bahamian singer Kayla Lockhart.

From 1962, the focus for Bahamian dramatic impetus was taken over by the all-embracing arts movement, the Nassau Festival of Arts and Crafts, one of whose principal aims was "to encourage local talent." Starting with experimental alfresco theatre in 1963, the dramatic development culminated in 1967 when a Festival offshoot, the Drama Festival, took place. It was then, for the first time, that one of the newly formed Bahamian groups, the Bahama Drama Circle, competed on the same terms as the formidable Nassau Players.

The Nassau Festival of Arts and Crafts was founded by Meta Davis and the Council of Women in the Bahamas. After its first few years of existence it spawned the highly successful annual music and drama festivals and was the first sincere attempt to gather together all the local arts and perhaps to begin to break down the polarization between Bahamian and expatriate in the field of drama.

In order to understand the main amateur dramatic groups as they exist today let us take a brief look at the history of each.

Spurred on by the presence of British troops in Nassau during the early part of the war, the Little Theatre and the Nassau Players were formed, some say before the war, some say at the beginning of the war. However, Mrs. Veronica Higgs, the longest standing member of the group, distinctly remembers The Ghost Train as being the first production and this was dated on its programme as 1942.

Herself originally British, Mrs. Higgs has made a great contribution not only by keeping all the costumes of all the productions of the Nassau Players, but also by helping when she first arrived in the Bahamas with small church and school drama groups. She describes the early Nassau Players as people who sought amusement and the social benefits of an amateur dramatic group. "There was many a romance between the English troops and Bahamians in those days, as a result of the Players' activities," she reports.

The Nassau Players' claim to uninterrupted existence, however, has been refuted in part by Benson McDermott who appeared in The Ghost Train himself. He explained that the original impetus was lost by the end of the war and was only taken up again in the late 40s by a teacher from St. Andrew's. Since then, the Nassau Players have been a predominantly expatriate group, benefitting from time to time from professional members such as the memorable Leila Cannon and Alex Peters.

Stimulated to a great extent by the enormous influx of new British teachers to the Bahamas in 1967, the Nassau Players productions have developed and improved from a steady diet of vacuous drawing room comedies to more thoughtful and modern plays by playwrights such as Pinter and John Arden. They have also delved into the ancient and the foreign from Shakespeare's King Lear to Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. They reached their apogee in achievement in 1971 when, invited to appear at the Florida Theatre Festival, they received a standing ovation and overnight international recognition.

More important still is that a few of their members over the past few years have joined in with the Bahama Drama Circle to produce a fascinating cross-fertilization of talent. An example of this was Tony Orman and his memorable performance in Slow Dance On The Killing Ground.

The Bahama Drama Circle was founded in 1964 and, along with the University Players, grew out of the U.W.I. Extra Mural drama workshop, predominantly Bahamian, the Circle nevertheless has always welcomed talent from anywhere and almost from the beginning has had talented British members such as John Hester and Norman Berry. Most of its members are Bahamian graduates who returned to the Bahamas during the 60s as well as Calvin Cooper, a superbly seasoned actor from the days of John Taylor’s plays. Its early members included Cedric Scott, who has since become a professional with experience on the British and American stage behind him.

The Drama Circle, after some initial garden productions, swing into full scale production at Government High School in 1968 with performances of the thoughtful black American play Raisin in the Sun, with a cast which involved many of the local "star" amateur talent. In 1969 they produced the West Indian Moon On A Rainbow Shawl and in 1970 to 1971, launched into their heyday.

In 1970 they tied for first place in the one-act play competition in the Drama Festival with the Nassau Players, and Jeanne Thompson with her play, The Decision, the first she had written since childhood, walked off with the playwriting trophy. The leading actors of the Bahama Drama Circle were, in the meantime, popularized by the newly-begun soap opera series on Radio Bahamas, The Fergusons of Farm Road, written by Jeanne Thompson in collaboration with Sonia Mills.

Enthusiastic full houses awaited such deserving productions as Amen Corner produced by Winston Saunders in 1970, Bread, Oil and Standard which was written by Jeanne Thompson for Mental Health Week in the same year and Slow Dance On The Killing Ground. Lapsing briefly into irrelevance in 1971 with There's A Girl In My Soup, they quickly made up again with Jeanne Thompson's indictment of capital punishment, In Final Judgement.

The group then exposed Bahamian audiences to some of the finest of West Indian writing with a production of poet Derek Walcott's Beach at Dauphin and again produced packed houses for their production of Susan Wallace's Single Seven.

Finally, in December of that memorable year, with the production of two one-act plays, Junction Village, and Suppressed Desires, P. Anthony White said in his review, "As far as the Drama Circle goes, last weekend's productions further proved that the Bahamian theatre has come of age..." and described his pleasure at feeling "... a proud understanding of what the Bahama Drama Circle is trying to accomplish in Bahamian theatre and an even prouder knowledge that they are succeeding quietly, beautifully and thoroughly."

The Bahama Drama Circle completed their magnificent year with Neighbours, a play in which Bahamian actor and film star Calvin Lockhart starred in London in 1967, with Cedric Scott in the lead, together with Jeanne Thompson's Vicious Circle. In 1972 there was Winston Saunders' powerful play, Them, as well as Susan Wallace's first attempt at serious drama rather than comedy, Alicia. But it was in 1972 that the Bahama Drama Circle seemed to begin to lose some of its freshness and sense of direction.

The University Players, from the beginning, had the strong U.W.I. backing of Margaret and Colin Hope. This was a fiercely nationalistic, Bahamian-West Indian group and its early aims were clear cut: to present black American, West Indian and Bahamian plays. Among their productions was E Anthony White's Five Miles From Fox Hill, as well as plays by writers such as Ed Bullins and Sonia Sanchez. And their members, as Fritz Stubbs, a leading light of the group, explained, were mostly a younger group with a highly transient membership on its way to and from college.

The University Players have always appreciated the need to learn, but rather than inviting expertise from other groups, they have tried to organize as many professionally conducted workshops as possible. They have unearthed some fine acting talent from Loletha Saunders to consummate comedienne, Sylvia Stubbs. Three of their members have been studying drama abroad and Hexon McPhee has just returned from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. In 1972 and 1974, two more groups were formed. One, a kind of spinoff from the Bahama Drama Circle, led by Charles Bowleg, is called the Commonwealth Players. In this group Charles, acting as director and lead in most plays, attempts to pass on to his members what he has learnt of acting. Vice President of the Commonwealth Players is Gordon Leam, an excellent character actor and long-time member of the Nassau Players, who is assisting with a current production.

The second group is called the Family Circle and Friends, whose leading lights are another Calvin Lockhart and his wife Gloria, daughter of Meta Davis who founded the Nassau Festival of Arts and Crafts. Gloria's offering of the only Bahamian play in the 1974 Drama Festival was in the Bahamian skit tradition and the group had been formed, partly by former members of the Bahama Drama Circle, in order to occupy the youth of Fox Hill.

Finally there is the exciting but sporadic Theatre Workshop Company led by professional Cedric Scott. They do not set out to be a typical amateur dramatic group but intend to provide a training ground for any actors from any group, hoping to form the nucleus of a national theatre. The Theatre Workshop's productions started with two very exciting evenings of experimental and abstract theatre at the Villa Doyle in 1972. These have been followed by productions of Sartre's In Camera and two contemporary British plays, Butley and Equus, starring the excellent British teacher-actor Mik Bancroft, who also directed an experimental production of The Trojan Woman.

The aim of this group is excellence and universal theatre. But they, along with the Commonwealth Players, Family Circle and Friends and other groups which form and dissolve within months, add to the fragmentation of effort which is taking place at the moment.

Among these smaller groups which have formed and disbanded over the past few years was the Bahamian poet Rupert Missick's brave Over-the-Hill venture, the New Heart Theatre on Hay Street. Started during 1971, it was an honest and creditable attempt to gather together young people from the streets and give them something creative to do in the form of drama. It did, however, add to the fragmentation in Bahamian dramatic effort taking place up to the present.

It is a fragmentation which distresses people like Winston Saunders and Telcine Turner. Telcine, a lecturer at the Teachers Training College, and playwright prize winner for her full length play Woman Take Two at the recent University of the West indies 25th Anniversary Literary Competition, put her finger on the present malaise when asked why she hadn't yet produced her play.

"I would like to see it done as a community effort, done by the best of all the groups put together," she explained adding, "At the moment, they're all too fragmented and that's a pity. Drama in the Bahamas is going round in circles at the moment. Something lights up and flames for a while and then goes down. We all need to be working for something bigger than a group and we need the impetus to go on."

What then is this impetus, this something bigger which will spur Bahamian writers and actors on? Most agree it is a national movement that is needed. A national theatre with Government's blessing but without Government's control.

"It's no use saying the Government should do this and the Government should do that," points out Winston Saunders. "Like Rex Nettleford's National Dance Theatre in Jamaica, we should aim at something which projects the Bahamas and we should seek the support not so much of the Government but of an arts council type of body, free of political control."

The nearest thing to a body like that had been the Festival of Arts and Crafts with representatives of the different art disciplines rather than the different groups. And the nearest thing we have to a national theatre building and site is the Dundas Civic Centre. With all its drawbacks and barnlike appearance the Dundas does, nevertheless, have an adequate stage paid for by the Festival in 1962 and designed by Bahamian architect Donald Cartwright. It has a large and valuable piece of land.

It also has $10,000 which was deposited with the Dundas Civic Centre Committee in 1971, the left-overs from the Lady Grey National Theatre Fund.

There has been discussion about a national theatre for years now and at least two attempts have been made to get building funds going, including the Lady Grey Theatre Fund. But a national theatre must first of all consist of people. Mostly Bahamian people. As Cedric Scott, who prepared a thesis on a national theatre for his University of Georgia degree, said, "The standards will always depend on the standards and enthusiasm of those involved—not a 400 to 675 seat building complete with wall-to-wall carpeting."

In the meantime, working towards a professional national theatre there remain many problems to be solved: the lack of a continuing tradition of Bahamian adult drama; the lack of teamwork and the understanding of the importance of backstage work well as of acting which characterizes Bahamian groups; the persistent fragmentation and thinning out of talent into smaller groups; the lack of a continuously organized drama workshop; too many different "festivals"; and altogether too much diffusion of talent.

A national drama effort could very well pay less attention, for the time being at least, to seductive girls in soup and gingerbread ladies, and concentrate more on Bahamian drama, giving Bahamian writers the fullest possible impetus to improve on what they have done already.

Bahamian drama could take advice given to it in 1972 by Trevor Rhone, the Jamaican adjudicator of the Drama Festival that year when he advised that at this time of evolution in the whole Caribbean, the Festival should make Bahamianization one of its strongest bases.

That a national effort can be made, with all the groups working together, has been proved by the triumphant Independence Pageant produced in 1973. That the talent exists has been proved again and again.