By Jasmaine Payne

THE National Drama Company (NDC) will see a change in its Executive Membership this Sunday, but the fledgling establishment holds high aspirations for enhancing the local theatre industry.Outgoing President of the NDC, Mark Luke Edwards, in an interview with the Buzz said that the company will continue to raise the standards of theatre in Guyana in an aim to keep it relevant in the local realm.

“Theatre is not as glamorous as other aspects of entertainment in Guyana, but we want to keep the flame of theatre burning and to bring it back to the front burner, like it used to be in the 70s and 80s and maybe even the 90s,” he said.

Outgoing Public Relations Officer, Esther Hamer, echoed the NDC’s aim to ensure that theatre is kept alive and added that the Company will also strive to continue to produce work that is outside of what the public expects, despite the risk that it may not be popularly received.

“What I think happens, is that we look at what is popular and we try to attract the audience so we end up straying from our true passion just to please the audience. People are very timid about doing things out of the box … but with the Drama Company, we aim to do things differently,” she said.

It is then left up to adequate advertising, she said, so as to encourage the public to come and see for themselves that different types of theatre can also be enjoyable. Improving on advertising and marketing skills, therefore becomes a critical focus of the NDC.

“A lot of us in the company believe that if you continue with the trend of being ‘out of the box’ it will catch on. We are trying to educate the audience and we will continue doing that until we can pack the National Cultural Centre… we know we won’t get those numbers right away, but until we do, we have to retrain the Guyanese mind,” she said.

The NDC is currently still flying off of the rave reviews received from the recent staging of Derek Walcott’s, ‘Ti Jean and his Brothers’. The play was staged in honour of Education month and is part of the current Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) syllabus. According to Mark Luke, these are the types of projects that the NDC will also seek to continue to produce.

“We also want to continue to do more educational projects so that we can help the nation’s youth and so that we can also contribute to the improvement of the English Literature results at the CSEC Examinations,” he said.

He stated that he is happy with the progress that the NDC has made since its establishment in 2014 and looks forward to the projects and initiatives that will be incorporated with the new Executive body.

The NDC was birthed from the minds of the 2013 batch of graduates from the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama. The Company’s first project was a play called, “The trouble with Nikita”, which was written by Al Creighton. The play was written specially for educators and sought to showcase the relevance of both creole and standard English in society.

The Company has also enjoyed performances at Carifesta XII in Haiti, where members performed five short pieces: Al Creighton’s “Stick Fight”, Wordsworth McAndrew’s “Ole Higue”, as well as “Baccoo” written by the Company’s own Sonia Yard, also Harold Bascom’s “Makantali”, and the full-length play “Sauda” written by Mosa Telford.

The NDC consists of graduates of the Guyana National School of Theatre, Arts & Drama. These young artists possess myriad talents; they are actors, singers, dancers, stage managers, directors, producers and writers and, according to their Facebook page, possess “a diverse and eclectic mix of artistic backgrounds”. Moreover, the NDC members are also active in other endeavours, but all come together with the shared passion for theatre arts.