‘Be yourself!’
HENRY St. Cyprian Rodney is of the impression that the Guyanese audience is one of the most difficult to please. This notwithstanding, he has eventually come to be regarded as one of the country’s best actors and comedians. In fact, he is able to appeal to this same set of ‘difficult’ and fastidious people with the skills he has acquired over the years.
Now 53 years old, he says that apart from his “raucous” behaviour on stage, he is a saint, and that his middle name represents that “saintly thing in me (LOL).”
He doesn’t like using the name, because people invariably ask: “Is wheh you get dat  name from?”
Other than the “saintly name” and Henry, people call him all sorts of names when they encounter him on the streets. The names he had in certain plays, especially the ones that people loved, are the ones that they really know him by.
“Your stage names live on,” Henry explained in an interview with the Chronicle. “Some people would approach me and ask, ‘Man, what really is your name?’ Many times, walking down the road, I have a lot of explaining to do.”
In some instances, people have even written cheques in his stage names. “People write on the cheques the name ‘Franklin’, and then ask, ‘Franklin what?’ A number of times, I had to go back for them to redo the cheques.”
Long before he played ‘Franklin’ in the popular play, ‘Agree to Disagree’, he was George in ‘Jezebel’; and to this day, people who saw the show still call him that, or ‘Sugar George’, and ‘Sugar Baby’. “Like Hector Stout; he calls me nothing else but ‘Sugar Baby’.”
And to add to a good performance on stage, St. Cyprian believes in doing lots of exercise. “I do exercise a lot, so that I can keep my body like this,” he said, obviously referring to his well-toned physique. (Talk about vain!) “It is the most rugged thing to be flabby on stage,” he said.

St. Mary’s Young Eagles
Henry’s acting skills were developed during his school days, and back when he attended Sunday School. Having seen his ability, his teachers would often ask him to perform before the class and at school. They would also admonish his mother not to ever discourage him in whatever his pursuits were.
At church, there was a club called St. Mary’s Young Eagles, and only members could join. Soon, though, it was open to persons outside of the church, and then outside of the village. Before long, the group started to travel around the country.  “And that’s how it began; that is how I grew and developed.”
Acting is his first love, Henry said. And that it was what he had started out with. He only started being a comedian around 1996 or so, when he began touring New York. “The comedy came by the way. I’d visited a comedy club in New York with some friends, and it was ‘open mic’, and the guys were telling me to go. I went and I did my thing, and they loved it. They (the comedy club) gave me a season ticket. So, every time I go to New York, they would make reservations for me and whoever.”
Henry said he has a greater love for acting because it is more challenging. A good comedic performance, according to him, has much to do with good timing; using hardcore facts to produce comedy also usually works well.
He likes to “play up” women, in the sense that when he sees them dominating his audience, he speaks in their favour. “I play with them; I say women are the strongest creatures God has ever placed on the face of the earth, and they say, ‘Yeaaaaaaaaaaaah!!’ So I can’t go wrong. It is easier to lambaste the men than the women.”
St. Cyprian doesn’t like to prepare much before he does a performance. “Sometimes you go with a prepared routine, and it’s not that kind of audience. You might prepare an intellectual routine, but when you go there, you find ‘yard people’… ‘grassroots’… So, I go look at the audience and then decide my performance.”
And in his backstage area, he likes it when people allow him to concentrate just before a performance. “All I need is relaxation. I would get a bit nervous when I go abroad, because it’s a fresh audience and new people; so you don’t know what to expect.”
Commenting on who helped shape his career, Henry spoke about people like Anthony Stuart, Kwesi Ojinga, Allan Cooper, Margaret Lawrence, Pat Cameron, Diane Cameron, and Dawn Shultz.
Some of those individuals questioned his ability and recommended serious training for him at the beginning of his career. But they are the same ones who today are patting him on the shoulder and performing with him on the same stage.
“I used to look at them and say I got to be like them one day. It feels good to see them tapping me on the shoulder now.
“I was under Ojinga’s tutorship; I’m really thankful to him, because he was a very harsh teacher. (There were) long hours of rehearsals, and he had me doing it over and over again. He would never tell you you’re excellent, and he pushes you to the limit.”

‘One-foot-fowl’ cook-up
A lot of people do not know that Rodney has been a teacher for nearly 20 years. He has taught at St. Joseph High School, St. Rose’s High, North Georgetown Secondary, Apex Academy, and the Cyril Potter College of Education, among other institutions.
Miranda Austin, Shelly Bancroft, and ‘rubber bullets man’ James Bond are among some of his students. The subject areas he taught included literature, drama in education, and physical education. To this day, he is still involved in workshops to assist teachers to become more effective.
Rodney has a nice family life, too. He has been married to his wife, Joan, for the past 29 years, and they have three lovely daughters and two grandchildren.
He loves to do things around the house, and would often bake the bread. “In fact, anything to do with flour, that’s me! I cook a lot. When my children need a nice folk food, or a ‘one-foot fowl’ cook-up, they will buy the stuff and ask me to cook…bake and salt fish, shine rice, one foot fowl (eddo leaf) cook-up, metemgee, soup, and fish head broth.”
His advice to people wishing to get into the business of acting is: “Be yourself! You cannot be a Jumbie Jones or a Henry Rodney; you have to be yourself. There is no place for haughty people. Humility and respect are the keys. People will, in turn, respect you for who you are and not just what you do. You should always have your audience wondering what you will bring to the table.
“And remember the three Ds: discipline, dedication and determination. These breed success.”
Henry and his family were among 12 persons rendered homeless in a January 12 fire on Waterloo Street, Georgetown.
He was subsequently presented with a cheque for $870,000, which represented the proceeds of ‘Cooling the Blaze: The Henry Rodney Family Benefit Concert’,” a collaborative effort between The Actors Action Association and Artistes in Direct Support.